Trump says 'tremendous anger' over impeachment, but wants 'no violence'

President Trump on Tuesday said he wants "no violence," but condemned Democratic leaders in Congress for trying to oust him from office.

"For Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to continue on this path, I think it's causing tremendous danger to our country and it's causing tremendous anger," Trump said on the White House lawn before he departed for a trip to Texas. "I want no violence."

In his first public comments since pro-Trump protesters rioted inside the Capitol, leaving several dead, Trump said the House Speaker Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Schumer trying to impeach him or invoke the 25th Amendment is just part of a "witch hunt." 

"As far as this is concerned we want no violence, never violence," Trump told reporters. "We want absolutely no violence. And on the impeachment, it's really a continuation of the greatest witch hunt in the history of politics. It's ridiculous. It's absolutely ridiculous. This impeachment is causing tremendous anger, and you're doing it and it's really a terrible thing that they're doing."

With eight days to go in his presidency, Trump, who made building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico boarder a cornerstone of his winning 2016 presidential campaign, also said: "We're going to Texas. We're going to the southern border. As you know we've completed the wall. They may want to expand it. We have the expansion underway.

"It's been tremendously successful, far beyond what anyone thought. We're stopping in large numbers the drugs coming into the country for many, many years and decades. We're stopping a lot of illegal immigration. Our numbers have been very good."

Later, just before Trump boarded Air Force One, a reporter asked: "Mr. President, what is your role in what happened at the Capitol? What is your personal responsibility?

"So if you read my speech — and many people have done it, and I’ve seen it both in the papers and in the media, on television — it’s been analyzed, and people thought that what I said was totally appropriate," Trump said. "And if you look at what other people have said — politicians at a high level — about the riots during the summer, the horrible riots in Portland and Seattle, in various other — other places, that was a real problem — what they said."

"But they’ve analyzed my speech and words and my final paragraph, my final sentence, and everybody, to the T, thought it was totally appropriate," he said.