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The most absurd part of the presidential rematch between President Biden and former President Trump is Trump’s outrageous attempt to convince voters Biden is the real threat to democracy and the January 6 insurrection never happened.
It was just three years ago America watched Trump’s violent insurrectionists rampaging through the U.S. Capitol beating police officers unconscious and threatening the lives of elected officials in both parties to overthrow Biden’s presidency.
Trump’s lies ever since that it was a peaceful protest have Republicans ready to nominate him for president again. Only 19% of Republicans in a recent poll said they believed Jan. 6 was a serious threat to American democracy while nearly 90% of Democrats and more than 60% of independents still remember how deadly and destructive it was.
A majority of 86% of Democrats and 53% of independents also agree that violent assault on democracy should never be forgotten while 72% of Republicans are eager to forget about it as quickly as possible.
GOP: Embrace the Lie
It gets worse. In that same poll, a growing number of Republicans embrace Trump’s most preposterous lie that it wasn’t the Proud Boys and other lawless militias Trump called to Washington who provoked the January 6 violence. It was undercover FBI agents conspiring with Antifa and left-wing Democrats.
A quarter of all Americans said it was “definitely” or “probably” true that the FBI instigated the attack on the Capitol. That total was boosted by 34% of Republicans and 44% of Trump voters. Where would Americans get such a crazy idea? No surprise, 39% said Fox News was their primary news source. Only 16% who named CNN or MSNBC and 13% who named ABC, CBS or NBC believed such an absurdity.
FBI Director Christopher Wray, a conservative Republican appointed by Trump, described the attack on the FBI as “ludicrous” and “insane” before a hostile House Republican investigating committee shouting over him.
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One poll respondent from Odessa, Texas, summed up everything he learned from Trump and Republicans about the insurrection: “The people that went there to express their views, to support Trump were peaceful. The government implants were the violent ones—the FBI, the police people that were put in there, the Antifa and BLM (Black Lives Matter) hired by George Soros. Everybody knows that.”
Trump Rewrites Facts
That’s why Biden’s first major election-year campaign speech on the eve of January 6 near Valley Forge where George Washington fought to create our democracy focused on what Biden defines as the central issue in 2024—Trump’s violent effort to remain as president after Americans cast the most votes in history to defeat him and his promise to destroy democracy for good by suspending the Constitution and jailing his political opponents if he’s ever elected again.
“In trying to rewrite the facts of January 6, Trump is trying to steal history the same way he tried to steal the election,” Biden said. “Trump’s mob wasn’t a peaceful protest. It was a violent assault. They were insurrectionists, not patriots. They weren’t there to uphold the Constitution. They were there to destroy the Constitution.”
There will be multiple issues driving a record voter turnout this year just as there have been in every national election since 2018. After Trump’s surprise victory in 2016, every major election has been to protect our democracy from Trump’s disastrous presidency.
Protecting democracy sounds like a grandiose concept, but for voters it’s as simple as having every American vote counted, restoring Constitutional rights for women to make their own decisions about abortion, sustaining human life on our catastrophically heating planet and banning civilians from purchasing military assault weapons firing hundreds of rounds that has made mass murder commonplace in America.
Congressional Extremists
Despite what Trumped-up MAGA Republicans say, those aren’t liberal or conservative issues. They’re the views of most American voters. It is only a minority of extreme rightwing Republicans in the House and Senate who are preventing Biden and Democrats from passing every single one.
The other barrier to protecting democracy is the extreme, rightwing supermajority on the U.S. Supreme Court, half of them appointed by Trump. Those justices are clearly wrong. The South didn’t win the Civil War. Constitutional rights in our democracy are supposed to be enforced nationwide. Each state doesn’t get to decide whether to support equal rights for all Americans.
It will take years to appoint a Supreme Court Americans can depend on to enforce Constitutional rights instead of rolling them back. Until then, Biden has laid out what all the rest of us have to do to prevent supporters of political violence from destroying our democracy.
“This is the first national election since the January 6 insurrection placed a dagger at the throat of American democracy,” Biden said. “We all know who Donald Trump is. The question we have to answer is: Who are we? That’s what’s at stake. Who are we?”
