GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) — A northeast Wisconsin congressmen says impeaching former President Trump is the wrong move.
Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher drew controversy earlier this month when he blamed President Trump for the riot at the US Capitol on January 6th.
“I think he bears responsibility for telling those people something that wasn’t true,” Gallagher said Monday on WTAQ’s ‘The Regular Joe Show’. “Which is that [Vice President] Mike Pence had the authority to overturn the results of the election on January 6th.”
But Gallagher, appearing on WTAQ’s ‘The Regular Joe Show’ says the president didn’t actually incite the violence, in which five were left dead, and therefore the impeachment charge of ‘Willful incitement of insurrection’ shouldn’t stick.
“Willful implies that [President Trump] woke up that day thinking ‘I want to get everyone riled up so that they will violently storm the capitol’,” Gallagher explained. “I genuinely don’t think that’s what Donald Trump intended.”
The impeachment trial is set for next month.
Congressman Gallagher, prior to the 6th, was one of the Republicans who discouraged efforts to overturn the results of the election. Monday, Gallagher said there were concerns and issues during the election that will have to be used as lessons for the future, saying he believes that the election was, by the letter of the law, legitimate.
“The first debate did not go well for President Trump, and it happened at the worst possible time,” said Gallagher. “Combine that with general Twitter fatigue, I think that’s why we lost suburban areas in Wisconsin.”
The direct influence of tech companies, Gallagher said, also weighed in on the results.
“Suppressing the Hunter Biden story in particular was worth about two to three points,” said Gallagher. “It was obvious hypocrisy, and that’s actually congressional failure. We should have reformed section 230 a long time ago.”
US Code Section 230 provides protections for digital platforms from third-party content posted by their users. By deliberately throttling the reach of stories written about documents and photos on a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son, including emails between Hunter’s Ukrainian business connections and photos of Hunter abusing drugs, Republicans argue that Facebook and Twitter were acting as publishers. Publishers are not protected by section 230.
Gallagher was asked during ‘The Regular Joe Show’ about the “Democracy in the Park” event in Madison, in which people were able to vote absentee in public in an event organized by the Madison City Clerk’s office. Gallagher said that if the event weren’t illegal, it probably should have been. That event was pointed to during efforts to overturn the results of the Presidential Election in Wisconsin, which Biden won by around 20,000 votes.
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