Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tore into Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Twitter on Friday after he tweeted his disapproval of any motion to impeach President Trump following the rioting at the Capitol this week.
“As President @realDonaldTrump stated last night, it is time to heal and move on,” Graham tweeted Friday, referring to the president’s video remarks condemning violence from his supporters at the Capitol Wednesday.
“If Speaker Pelosi pushes [impeachment] in the last days of the Trump presidency it will do more harm than good. I’m hopeful President-elect Biden sees the damage that would be done from such action.”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) recently suggested House lawmakers would move to impeach the president if Vice President Pence and other Cabinet officials declined to invoke 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office.
Ocasio-Cortez responded to Graham’s tweets by calling him out for defending the president, whom many Democrats and some Republicans have condemned as responsible for inciting Wednesday’s riots.
“‘Move on?’ ‘Moving on’ does not mean ‘forget about it,’ @LindseyGrahamSC,” she wrote. “’Moving on’ requires accountability. Attacking our nation without recourse or responsibility isn’t ‘moving on.’ A Capitol Police officer just died. Why are you defending this?”
Graham did not immediately respond to Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet, but he continued on in a thread on Twitter stating that impeachment would be unsuccessful in the Senate.
“Speaker Pelosi is hanging by a political thread, and Senator Schumer lives in fear of a primary from the radical left. It is up to President-elect Biden to step in and allow the nation to heal,” he wrote, referring to Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.). “Any attempt to impeach President Trump would not only be unsuccessful in the Senate but would be a dangerous precedent for the future of the presidency. It will take both parties to heal the nation.”
Biden condemned the violence on Wednesday and called on Trump to respond after a pro-Trump mob swarmed the Capitol complex as Congress prepared to confirm the Electoral College votes, forcing lawmakers to shelter and evacuate and delaying the vote count.
“Let me be very clear — the scenes of chaos at the Capitol do not reflect a true America, do not represent who we are. What we are seeing is a small number of extremists dedicated to lawlessness. This is not dissent. It’s disorder. It’s chaos. It borders on sedition and it must end now,” he said.
On Thursday, Trump called for calm and said that he is focused on moving forward with an orderly transfer of power.