Trump must go, says Southern Baptist theologian Russell Moore

Influential evangelical leader Russell Moore is a longstanding critic of TrumpFacebook

Southern Baptist theologian Russell Moore has called for Donald Trump to resign after Wednesday's attack on the Capitol.

On Twitter, Moore, a long-time Trump critic, wrote: "Mr. President, people are dead. The Capitol is ransacked. There are 12 dangerous days for our country left. Could you please step down and let our country heal?"

There have been calls from others for Trump to be removed from office after Wednesday's deadly events, including from Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer.

Moore made his comments in response to a tweet by Trump prior to his Twitter account being permanently suspended.

In it, Trump said: "The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape, or form!!"

Moore repeated his call for Trump to go in a webinar hosted by the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

During the webinar, Moore said he wanted to appeal to the president's "sense of responsibility". 

"This is a moment where the entire country is waiting to see what is going to happen next. It is a very dangerous sort of time. This is a very, very dangerous time," he said.

Moore said the events of the past week called for a time of healing and a "stable, unifying leadership" of the country that goes beyond partisan politics. 

"What we need is leadership that is going to say 'let's heal' and the way that we heal is by saying 'violence and attacks on the United States government are always wrong and we're going to prosecute them,'" he said. 

"This is a dangerous time in which people have been killed and it has to be taken very, very seriously.

"One of the things that we're dependent on in this country is the kind of presidential leadership that in moments of great crisis is speaking not only to one's supporters but also to the entire country."