Democratic leaders in the House and Senate tried on Thursday to persuade vice-president Mike Pence to forcibly remove Donald Trump from office by invoking the 25th amendment, a day after a mob of the president’s supporters launched a violent attack on the US Capitol.
Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, said that he and Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, had telephoned Mr Pence on Thursday morning to request that he invoke the amendment, which allows a sitting president to be ejected from the White House if he is deemed to be unable to discharge his duties.
“Speaker Pelosi and I tried to call the vice-president this morning to tell him to do this,” Mr Schumer said at a press conference in New York. He added that Mr Pence’s office had kept the pair on hold for 25 minutes “and then said the vice-president wouldn’t come on the phone, so we are making this call public, because he should do it right away”.