Congressman Gives Militarized Capitol a Fitting New Nickname
Republican Congressional members are asking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to provide reasoning for detaining National Guards troops in Washington, D.C, with one representative nicknaming the Capitol “Fort Pelosi.”
“I’m still a serving national guardsman, and I can appreciate that those soldiers were pulled out of their businesses, their jobs, their families, and they’re sitting there with this open-ended mandate,” Republican Rep. Michael Waltz of Florida told Fox Business Network.
“I’ve repeatedly asked, as have a number of my colleagues, the Army, the National Guard Bureau, the Department of Justice, what is the threat that is so large, specifically, that requires more soldiers on Capitol Hill than we have in Iraq and Afghanistan combined? And then what are we going to do about it? What are we going to do going forward?”
“I’m calling it Fort Pelosi at this point,” he added. “The Guard can’t serve as her private security force, and we need answers and we’re not getting any.”
The National Guard has been stationed in Washington since the Jan. 6 incursion of the Capitol.
There were 25,000 troops deployed for President Joe Biden’s inauguration, and 7,000 remained at the Capitol during the Senate impeachment hearings over concerns of “civil unrest.”
Five-thousand troops will remain until March 22, according to Fox News.
In a President’s Day letter to her Democratic colleagues, Pelosi said “security is the order of the day” as she announced the creation of an independent 9/11-type commission to investigate the incursion of the Capitol.
“Now, as always, security is the order of the day: the security of our country, the security of our Capitol which is the temple of our democracy, and the security of our Members,” she wrote.
“For the past few weeks, General Honoré has been assessing our security needs by reviewing what happened on January 6 and how we must ensure that it does not happen again.”
Republican Rep. Lisa McClain of Michigan asked Pelosi why National Guard troops need to stay in Washington as security.
“Just tell me why. I feel like there’s a boogie man under my bed. So, at the end of the day, is just explain to us why we have the National Guard troops,” she told “Fox & Friends” Monday.
“Think about it this way. We have more servicemen and women protecting the Capitol than we do in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. To the tune of already $500 million. And that number for the taxpayers is only going to grow if we keep them there.”
Michigan has talked about sending 1,000 more troops to Washington “for reasons that we don’t know.”
McClain said she would rather have National Guardsmen helping her constituents.
“I would rather put those National guard men and women to help my constituents in my state, help with the distribution of the COVID relief vaccination. That I know is a credible threat,” she said. “This threat over here I have no idea, because we can’t even get a briefing on it.”
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