How the Capitol attack led Democrats to demand Trump resign

The vice president, who for four years had been loyal to Trump to the point of submission, was furious in return at the president’s flogging in public. Senator James M. Inhove is an Oklahoma Republican Tulsa scientist said Mr. Pence privately expressed his sense of betrayal by Mr. Trump “after all the things I did for him.”

Even when the vice president was evacuated during the blockade on Wednesday, the president did not personally check in with him to make sure he was okay. According to two officials, the Secret Service agents wanted the vice president to leave the building, but he refused and took cover in the basement. Congressional leaders have been transferred to Fort McNair for their safety, but the vice president later urged them to end the count on the Capitol.

On Thursday, Pence did not go to the White House compound and instead worked outside the vice president’s residence, according to administration officials.

He wasn’t the only person the president betrayed. In the White House, aides were angry and desperate, convinced that Mr. Trump had effectively canceled four years of work and made sure that his presidency would be set in history by a photo of him sending a mob to the Capitol in an attack on democracy.

Chow resigned the day after her husband, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, vehemently rejected Mr Trump’s efforts to cancel the election. “Yesterday, our country witnessed a painful event that could be completely avoided, as supporters of the president stormed the Capitol after a rally that delivered a speech,” she wrote in her resignation letter. “As I am sure this is the case with many of you, it has bothered me so deeply in a way that I simply cannot put it aside.”

In her special message, Mrs. DeVos blamed the mayhem directly at Mr. Trump’s feet. “There is no doubt that the impact of your speech on the situation, which is the turning point for me,” I wroteJust two weeks after Mr. Trump He pardoned four security contractors She was convicted of war crimes in Iraq while working with her brother Eric Prince.