Bernie Sanders leads Democrats calling for Donald Trump to resign over sexual harassment allegations

President plagued by accusations since election campaign

The head of state has previously been publicly admonished for using misogynistic language (Getty Images)

Senator Bernie Sanders and two of his Democratic colleagues have suggested that President Trump should consider resigning, after a run of sexual-harassment scandals has driven out some members of Congress.

Senator Al Franken “felt it proper for him to resign,” Sanders said in an interview with NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday morning, referring to the Democrat from Minnesota. “Here you have a president who has been accused by many women of assault, who says on a tape that he assaulted women. He might want to think about doing the same.”

Sanders's comment, which built on a tweet he sent last week, came after Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley and Cory Booker suggested that the #MeToo moment should prompt another look at the women who accused Trump of sexual harassment during the 2016 presidential campaign.

“The president should resign because he certainly has a track record with more than 17 women of horrific conduct,” Merkley said last week in an interview for the weekday version of “Meet the Press.”

On Saturday, during his campaign swing as part of Alabama's US Senate race, Booker told Vice News that the standard that brought down Franken should be applied to the president.

“I just watched Senator Al Franken do the honourable thing and resign from his office,” Booker said. “My question is, why isn’t Donald Trump doing the same thing — who has more serious allegations against him, with more women who have come forward. The fact pattern on him is far more damning than the fact pattern on Al Franken.”

Democrats made those comments just days after a largely ceremonial effort to impeach Trump, pushed by Republic Al Green, failed in the House of Representatives. Although polling has found that a large number of voters favour an effort to remove Trump from office, most Democrats have suggested that investigations into the 2016 Trump campaign's Russia connections run their course before any such action. In a Quinnipiac University poll released last week, 70 percent ofrespondents said Congress should “investigate the accusations of sexual harassment against President Trump.”

The Washington Post