Himes made his plea after the President-elect took to Twitter Sunday night blasting NBC Nightly News for their criticism of him choosing not to receive daily intelligence briefings, writing that the show is "So biased, inaccurate and bad, point after point," and that it, "Just can’t get much worse."
Himes tweeted, "We’re 5 [weeks] from Inauguration & the President Elect is completely unhinged. The electoral college must do what it was designed for."
During an interview on CNN’s "New Day," Himes said that Trump’s public denouncement of federal agencies and refusal to acknowledge supposed Russian interference with the US election could have a damaging effect on the image of the US abroad.
He explained, "What finally pushed me over the edge was when the President-elect of the United States criticized the CIA and the intelligence community," adding, "Can you imagine what the leaders in Beijing and Moscow and Tehran are thinking as they watch the next president of the United States delegitimize and criticize his own intelligence community and stand up for the defense of Russia, one of our prime adversaries."
The lawmaker stated, "The Electoral College, if you read the Federalist Papers and understand why it is there, it is a group of people. It is not an algorithm. It is not a set of ballots. It is a group of people that our Founding Fathers, you know, to whom supposedly we all sort of defer to, pledged the idea that if someone gets elected that is manifestly ill equipped to be president … that the Electoral College can step in."
The congressman said that although keeping Trump from office would require "an awful lot of litigation," it would be worth it to keep from having a president that is not fit to be the "mayor of a small town in Connecticut." according to the New York Post.
A group of Democratic Colorado electors, dubbed "The Hamilton Electors," are on a similar path, attempting to sway Republican electors to change their votes from Trump to another Republican candidate to keep him from being chosen as President.
The group named themselves after Alexander Hamilton, who once said, "the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications."
Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein has also tried to block Trump’s election by calling for a vote recount. In late November she gave an interview to Democracy Now, saying, "It’s really important that we be able to improve our election system and our political system as a base, a point of departure, for improving all the other things that are melting down around us—our healthcare system, our jobs, our climate, the endless wars that are making us less secure, and so on. We need to start by verifying our votes and ensuring that this is a democracy that we can work with."
