Foreign leaders respond as Capitol attack ‘shakes the world’
'This is not merely a U.S. national issue, but it shakes the world, at least all democracies,' said Peter Beyer, the German government's coordinator.
Following this week’s shocking siege at the Capitol, which many believe was incited by outgoing President Donald Trump, world leaders from across the globe have responded to the chaos that took place in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday.
“We currently witnessed an attack on the very fundaments of democratic structures and institutions,” said Peter Beyer, the German government’s coordinator for trans-Atlantic affairs. “This is not merely a U.S. national issue, but it shakes the world, at least all democracies.”
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“These pictures made me angry and sad,” Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said on Thursday. “I deeply regret that since November, President Trump has not accepted that he lost, and did not do so again yesterday.”
“Democracy – the right of people to exercise a vote, have their voice heard and then have that decision upheld peacefully should never be undone by a mob,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand wrote on Twitter, noting that she and her countrymen were “devastated” by Wednesday’s events.
Even Matteo Salvini, the nationalist League party leader in Italy, who once was a vocal admirer of Trump, seemingly backtracked his support by asserting on Twitter, “Violence is never the solution, ever.”
As we previously reported, President-elect Joe Biden did not mince words about the glaring disparity in treatment that Black Lives Matter protesters would’ve faced had they breached the Capitol.
“No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesting yesterday, they wouldn’t have been treated very, very different than the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol. We all know that’s true, and it is unacceptable. Totally unacceptable,” he declared.
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Several White House officials have also resigned from their positions in Trump‘s administration after the siege. Thursday, Mick Mulvaney, who was the president’s chief of staff at one time, resigned from his role as a special U.S. envoy to Northern Ireland.
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“I called [Secretary of State] Mike Pompeo last night to let him know I was resigning from that. I can’t do it. I can’t stay,” Mulvaney said in an exclusive interview on CNBC‘s “Squawk Box”.
“Those who choose to stay, and I have talked with some of them, are choosing to stay because they’re worried the president might put someone worse in,” Mulvaney told the show’s host, Andrew Ross Sorkin.
“We didn’t sign up for what you saw last night,” he continued. “We signed up for making America great again, we signed up for lower taxes and less regulation. The president has a long list of successes that we can be proud of.”
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