Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., on Saturday criticized Republican lawmakers who met with former President Trump in a private meeting earlier this week, calling the positive atmosphere surrounding the visit “scandalous and disgraceful.”
The Maryland lawmaker’s comments came just two days after President Trump visited the U.S. Capitol on Thursday — his first since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack — and sought to portray Republican unity.
“He returned to the scene of the crime. He has not apologized to the 150 Capitol Police officers, MPD and Montgomery County Police officers who unleashed a mob on us that day that injured us,” Raskin said. He said in an interview On MSNBC’s “The Weekend.”
“Some Republicans, at least at the time, tried to allege fraud, but now they have swallowed that doubt altogether… [and] “They’re trying to make it seem like nothing big happened so that Donald Trump can be proud of his cult-like control and power over the Republican Party,” he continued. “But this is a scandal and a disgrace to the country.”
At a news conference after the meeting, Trump touted his “great relationships” with Republican lawmakers and vowed to “resolve” any differences. The presumptive GOP presidential nominee also appeared to repair ties with some of his party’s most vocal critics, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and outgoing Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah.
The former president has supported House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) in recent weeks, inviting him to speak at his Mar-a-Lago resort. Johnson was among the Republican senators who attended Trump’s hush-money trial in Manhattan, which recently ended in a historic guilty verdict.
“All they talked about was politics, and how we’re going to get more people elected to give more power to Donald Trump,” Raskin said after the panel played footage of Johnson’s meeting with Trump, in which Johnson said the parties were “united” to help each other win the November election.
Asked whether the GOP’s endorsement of Trump was a harbinger of what might happen if he were re-elected to the White House, Raskin seemed to agree.
“What’s happening in the Republican Party, what’s happening to Republican members of Congress, is a total corruption of their jobs,” Raskin responded. “I mean, we don’t swear to defend the Constitution of the United States, we don’t swear to defend the interests of any particular person, or any particular political party, or any billionaire patron, and yet this is what’s happening.”
“Then yesterday they caved in to the gun manufacturers and ignored the rule of law and got exactly what they wanted,” he added, citing the Supreme Court’s decision on Friday that struck down the ban on bump stocks, devices that can be attached to a firearm to turn it into a rifle capable of firing hundreds of rounds per minute.
The ban was introduced by President Trump after a gunman used the device to kill 50 concertgoers in Las Vegas in 2017, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
Friday’s ruling comes as the former president, who received an endorsement from the National Rifle Association earlier this month, has sought to present himself as the Second Amendment’s “best friend” and has vowed to strengthen protections for gun owners if he wins November’s election.
