“After the president’s reality show ended last night, while the nation nervously watched the chaos that engulfs us, President Trump probably laid in bed pleased with himself for descending another rung on the dictatorial ladder,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said on the Senate floor on Tuesday morning. “He probably wore out his remote control watching the clips of General Barr’s victory over the unarmed in the battle of Lafayette Square.”
He added: “It’s all so sad, so pathetic, so weak.”
On the other side of the Capitol, wielding her own Bible and quoting from the Book of Ecclesiastes, Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged the president to focus on “a time to heal,” adding that the aggressive scene that played out in Washington on Monday had “no place” in the nation’s capital.
“We would hope that the president of the United States would follow the lead of so many other presidents and be a healer in chief,” Ms. Pelosi said, “and not a fanner of the flame.”
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“There is no right to riot, no right to destroy others’ property and no right to throw rocks at police,” Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, said in a statement. “But there is a fundamental — a constitutional — right to protest, and I’m against clearing out a peaceful protest for a photo op that treats the word of God as a political prop.”
His comments echoed those of Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only black Republican in the Senate, who denounced the move in unequivocal terms during an event hosted by Politico.
“If your question is, ‘Should you use tear gas to clear a path so the president can go have a photo op?’ the answer is no,” Mr. Scott said.