Mike Gallagher:

Mr. President, you have got to stop this. You are the only person who can call this off. Call it off.

Frederica Freyberg:

That was Wisconsin U.S. Representative Mike Gallagher in a Tweet during the siege on the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. He went on to vote to certify the Electoral College votes of states as he had supported before the violent rioting. Our U.S. Senators Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson also voted to certify, though Johnson was fully behind voting to reject until the capitol was overrun. Of Wisconsin’s other members of Congress, only newly-elected Scott Fitzgerald and 7th District U.S. Representative Tom Tiffany voted to reject electoral votes. Those votes have the state’s largest newspaper calling for them and Senator Johnson to be immediately expelled from their seats or to resign as members of what’s been dubbed the “sedition caucus.” Tough words for actions in a failed attempt to overturn results of the election. In a moment, we will be joined by Republican U.S. Representative Glenn Grothman. Joining us now is Democratic Mark Pocan, U.S. Representative from Madison. And thank you very much for being here.

Mark Pocan:

Glad to be here.

Frederica Freyberg:

At this point, you are among those calling to impeach President Trump, but why with only 12 days left in his term?

Mark Pocan:

Because with 14 days left in his term, we had an attempted coup on the U.S. Capitol and who knows what could happen in the remaining days. I mean Donald Trump is not normal by any stretch of the definition. No previous Democrat or Republican has brought so many of his followers into Washington D.C. when you’re there to certify the electors, asked them to march on to the Capitol. Egg them on for their actions. And we don’t know what else he could do in the remaining two weeks. Today Nancy Pelosi had to reach out to the head of the Joint Chiefs and worry about access to the nuclear codes in case Donald Trump would do something. It’s the Wall Street Journal. It’s the Association of Manufacturers, neither of which is a liberal organization. It’s Republicans and Democrats who are all calling for this right now because we have real concern for our country.

Frederica Freyberg:

Some Republicans say such moves just enhance divisions at a time when President-elect Biden is calling for unity.

Mark Pocan:

We absolutely should have unity but you can’t have unity if you’ve got someone who could do a dangerous action. The last time that there was a storming of the U.S. Capitol was in the War of 1812 by the British. So since this is something that Donald Trump did that hasn’t happened in several hundred years after following a pandemic that we haven’t had a 100 years, we’re starting to notice a pattern here. This President has acted in unprecedented ways and they have been unprecedented attacks on this country. Let’s face it, Donald Trump doesn’t care about the country. He cares about Donald Trump and his family and his family’s business. And I think people really woke up this week to that. But all the more we’ve got to protect our democracy and the integrity of the country. And you do that by either, one, having the cabinet do what they should do is invoke the 25th Amendment or, two, if they won’t, we have to do impeachment.

Frederica Freyberg:

What’s your response to Capitol Police losing control and allowing the building to be breached in that way?

Mark Pocan:

Yeah. It was sad. The feeling I still have is sadness from what happened the other day. One, I think there was some ill preparedness. They weren’t ready for what happened and they should have been better prepared. We lost one of the officer’s lives during this. And, you know, by the end of the day, they had 1800 people to make sure we could get the rest of the business done. I’m glad we went back immediately into session and got the business done that we had to. But it never should have gotten that far. We never should have had to worry about something like that. Donald Trump invited those people to come that day and he went to a rally and he and his family and his lawyer egged them on for their actions. So no one can act like Donald Trump is innocent on this and unfortunately, as you saw from the editorial, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and other places, they’re now referring to people as the “sedition caucus” who voted to overturn election results. None of this is normal. I’m just hoping that in a couple weeks we can get back to a place where business is done the way it traditionally has been done when Joe Biden is president. But in the next two weeks, I’m still very concerned for what could happen.

Frederica Freyberg:

I just wanted to point to this. How different do you think this would have been for the protestors had they been Black Lives Matter demonstrators?

Mark Pocan:

No question. There were only 55 arrests. During the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, there were over 200 arrests. This was a very poorly-executed effort and already, my committee, the Appropriations Committee, one of the subcommittees that has oversight over the Capitol Police is having a hearing. There’s probably going to be more reviews and reports done. The chief of the Capitol Police is resigning as are the sergeant-at-arms. This clearly was done poorly. And to say you’re going to go and arrest people after the fact, arrests that day would have helped quite a bit.

Frederica Freyberg:

Do you have real concerns for the next days in terms of national security with Donald Trump still the sitting president?

Mark Pocan:

Absolutely. Absolutely. Donald Trump is so unpredictable. He’s such a narcissist. Who knows what else he could do? And that’s what I think our real worries are. He’s already been talking about being tougher on Iran. We don’t need to start a war in the last couple weeks of anyone’s presidency when you’ve got someone new coming in on January 20th. That’s why I think we’re so concerned and why we think not only does he have to be punished for what he did, which was an assault on our democracy on Wednesday, but we have to make sure that he doesn’t do any more damage to this country.

Frederica Freyberg:

Meanwhile, nearly lost in all of this, Democrats just won control of the Senate. What will Democrats do with this leadership?

Mark Pocan:

So it’s a tight margin. It’s a 50-50 Senate. The tie-breaking vote is going to be Kamala Harris, the vice president-elect. Our House margin is a relatively small margin. So it’s not like you’re going to see a lot of action happening on things that I might like to see as someone who’s more of a progressive Democrat. But it does mean that hopefully we can get some of the appointments through that we need to. We can get some basic bills that need to fix some of the damage that was done by the Trump presidency through Congress. But it’s not exactly a huge margin in either house.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. U.S. Representative Mark Pocan, thanks for joining us.

Mark Pocan:

Absolutely. Thank you.