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Ohio Rep. Anthony Gonzalez faces immediate pressure at home to be one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach President Donald Trump this week and is acting swiftly to defend a decision it could hurt him politically.
Under difficult questioning Thursday morning by local conservative radio host Bob Frantz, Gonzalez said Trump’s behavior before and during the deadly riot on Capitol Hill “turned [him] across the whole scale. “
“It’s a series of things that happened that you can just read on Twitter. You can listen to the speeches. You may remember, “OK, what was the purpose of the Stop the Steal rally?” Said Gonzalez, who represents a suburban neighborhood outside of Cleveland. “And we can disagree on that point, but in my opinion it was an attempt by the President of the United States to circumvent the Constitution to overturn an election.”
The radio interview with Frantz, a longtime right-wing WHK commentator who affects Rush Limbaugh’s tone and cadence, was mostly civil. But Frantz often interrupted him and made known his dissatisfaction. He has repeatedly compared the impeachment process in the House to a regular criminal trial – a step that comes later in the impeachment process and takes place in the Senate – and analyzed what Trump said at the rally.
“A fiery speech alone?” Not unforgivable, ”Gonzalez said, explaining that his vote was not just on the words Trump used at the rally that prompted the rioters.
“So me and my colleagues attacked,” he added. “The United States Capitol is under attack. Most of the people were there peacefully. I spoke to some people in the district that was there, and – they were praying – I believe you mentioned it earlier – they were praying. They chanted. … They were doing perfectly appropriate things. But the people who stormed the Capitol killed a policeman. Five people died. The Capitol under siege. We implore the President to help, to stand up, to help defend the United States Capitol and the United States Congress, which was under attack. We were begging, essentially, and he was nowhere to be found. Okay? And so, in this case, if it was a foreign country, Bob, if it was a foreign adversary, if it was an Islamic terrorist group, if it was Iran, if it was China, we would send missiles now. At once.”
Gonzalez, 36, is a former NFL wide receiver and outstanding athlete at Ohio State University. He won the 16th seat in the Ohio Congressional District in 2018 after coming out of a primary where he was opposed to a pro-Trump conservative who campaigned with the president’s allies. At the time, Gonzalez’s advisers bristled at the contrasts that made him a comparatively lesser supporter of Trump, though the representative also cited Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse – one of the Party chairman’s most vocal critics. republican – as a model.
Ohio’s 16th District, as drawn now, is safely Republican, although the next round of redistribution could dramatically change things. On Frantz’s show Thursday, Gonzalez reminded listeners that he had campaigned for Trump’s re-election and that he was the campaign’s honorary co-chair in Ohio. He also called the impeachment process “terrible” and said he wished there was more time for it before Trump stepped down next week, but he remained firm in his belief that the president deserved to be removed.
Jim Renacci, a Trump loyalist who held the seat before an unsuccessful Senate bid, now chairs the Medina County Republican Party. He told BuzzFeed News he had been “criticized by residents who called on Anthony Gonzalez to resign, to be recalled and / or primarized.” Renacci cited a recent poll by a Trump pollster that found 76% of Republicans were less likely to vote for a congressman who votes for impeachment.
“It should be troubling” for Gonzalez “if the election is 30 days away,” Renacci, who wants to become the incumbent Republican governor of Ohio next year, wrote in an email. “That being said, 30 days in politics is a long time and 22 months is an eternity. So there will be a lot more votes and voters are still less likely to remember something from 22 months ago. But only time will tell. “
Gonzalez told Frantz he knew the listeners “were mad at me … and I know you are too.”
“But let me tell you this,” he added. “Every person listening, every conservative listening right now, we have to come together at some point. We have to do it, and I know we’re divided right now, but Joe Biden will take office in a few days. We have a democratic Senate. We have a House controlled by the Democrats. We are going to have to be unified and push back the agenda which we know is so bad for this country.
Frantz praised Gonzalez for answering his questions.
“You have guts for coming the day after the vote,” said Frantz, “because you know a lot of people are angry. You knew you were going to be challenged here, so thank you for coming. But I’m going to say this: I’m going to question that commitment to freedom you just made on all these other issues because for me the ultimate testament to freedom is the Constitution, and yesterday you voted to deny Donald Trump’s constitutional right to duty process. “
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