Rep. Rouzer on DC riots: ‘The president wasn’t helpful by any means’

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — The fallout from Wednesday’s riots at the US Capitol continues. Now, some lawmakers are talking about impeaching President Donald Trump as soon as next week. Even members of his own part are speaking out about what happened including North Carolina Republican Congressman David Rouzer. 

Rep. Rouzer represents NC’s 7th District which includes the Cape Fear region.

WWAY’s Jeff Rivenbark spoke to Rep. Rouzer on Friday about the riots that transpired at our nation’s Capitol.

Rivenbark: After the breach on the US Capitol this week, you still chose to vote against the state certification of electors. Why?

Rouzer: Well, absolutely. We are participating in a constitutional process. A process that is authorized by the constitution. You have roughly 39 percent of this country believes that this election had serious issues of fraud. In fact, a recent poll by Reuters suggests that 39 percent believe the election was rigged. We’re all individual members of Congress. We have constituents to represent and I happened to be one of those who believes there was a significant amount of fraud as well and the point that we were making on the House floor is simply this: You’ve got to process where the constitution lays out where you can object to individual slates of electors and those objections were made basically because in these particular state that are in question. They change their laws leading up to the election. Just a few weeks and days before Election Day and those changes weren’t made by state legislators that is required by the constitution. They were made by individuals in third parties so that was the basis and it’s a very legitimate constitutional question.

Rouzer continued: The other side of the debate real quick is some read the constitution and say there is no real way to evaluate the vote on face value and the only time that you can differentiate is if you have two or more slates of electors. So there’s a difference in the viewpoint on what the constitution says and what we can do. That’s a very important distinction in the debate.

Rivenbark: What are your thoughts about the events at the US Capitol? Should the president be held accountable for his rhetoric at the rally speech prior to that mob coming into the Capitol?

Rouzer: Well, it’s regretful what happened and we are all very, very disturbed. In fact, shocked at what took place on Wednesday. There was no reason for that. It needs to be condemned in the strongest way, in the strongest possible terms and the president wasn’t helpful by any means. In fact, many of us are upset with him about that. You know, we’ll move forward. We got to come together. This is a great country and Wednesday is not reflective of who we are.