Photo Credit: Evan Vucci / Associated Press
Trump
President Donald Trump speaks during a rally protesting the Electoral College certification of Joe Biden as President, Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Shortly after Trump’s overwhelming defeat, a senior Republican speaking anonymously, the only way prominent Republicans ever tell the truth about Trump, explained why the party was supporting Trump’s false claims he won by a landslide. “What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time? No one seriously thinks the results will change. . . He’ll tweet some more about how the election was stolen and then he’ll leave.”
On Wednesday, America watched in horror the consequences of that Republican miscalculation. Trump incited thousands of his violent terrorist supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol trying to prevent his own Vice President Mike Pence and a joint session of Congress from certifying incoming President Joe Biden’s election. Elected officials, fearing for their lives, sheltered behind locked doors with furniture piled against them for protection while the mob ransacked congressional offices, scrawled ugly graffiti on the walls, defaced historic art and smashed windows, chairs and desks. Some were arrested with handcuffs and plastic zip ties. Online posts ahead of time threatened to kidnap and even murder lawmakers.
Citing Trump as a clear and present danger, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer are demanding Trump’s resignation or removal by Pence and the cabinet under the 25th Amendment as unfit or incapable of fulfilling his duties as president. If Pence doesn’t act quickly, Pelosi said the House will vote on impeaching Trump a second time for inciting the most violent American insurrection since the Civil War.
Irrational Next Move?
Ignoring any Republican responsibility to protect Americans including themselves from their madman president, soon-to-be Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said he wouldn’t reconvene the Senate until the day before Trump’s term expires. That’s risky for Republicans since none of them including McConnell really have any idea what their irrational president might do next to try to overturn his election defeat.
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Trump fired up the violent mob that took the Capitol with an incendiary hour-long speech falsely claiming he would march with them. “We’re going to the Capitol. We’re going to try and give them (Pence and Congress) the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.” Trump’s final inflammatory lie: “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Then with thousands of rioters streaming toward the Capitol, Trump returned to the White House to watch the mayhem he’d created on TV.
Even after he saw the same horrific scenes we did. Trump proudly called the rioters “great patriots” and blamed others for the barbaric assault by his supporters on democracy. “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long,” Trump tweeted. “Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”
Praising the Mob
That was one of his tweets praising the deadly and destructive attack that finally led Twitter to permanently ban Trump, something that should have happened long ago. Also long overdue are a growing but still shockingly small number of prominent Republicans finally acknowledging Trump’s unfitness for office. Trump has been an unfit president for four years. The flashing neon proof of his total incompetence is the world record American coronavirus death toll heading toward 400,000 and obliteration of the record growing economy President Obama and Biden left him. Trump’s disastrous trade war and failure to protect Americans in the pandemic will make him the first president since government records began in 1939 to leave office with fewer jobs than when he started.
When Congress reconvened just hours after the wreckage, two-thirds of House Republicans including Wisconsin Congressmen Scott Fitzgerald and Tom Tiffany still voted to support Trump’s illegal attempt to reverse his election defeat by throwing out millions of legally cast votes in Pennsylvania and Arizona. Sen. Ron Johnson had said he would join them but changed his mind after the terrifying attack. Those three previously supported disenfranchising millions of Wisconsin voters to try to flip the state for Trump. All three need to be removed from public office when they’re up for re-election in 2022 if not before.
Republicans have long relied on voter suppression and corrupt gerrymandering to disenfranchise racial minorities and other opponents. Under Trump, their political tactics have deteriorated into support for an authoritarian president and public opposition to democracy itself.
Biden said the barbarians rampaging through the Capitol “do not reflect who we are.” We all want to believe that. Their acts certainly weren’t the acts of decent Americans. But Trump’s openly racist appeals and hateful rhetoric have never attracted the support of decent Americans. Until Trump is gone and Republicans cleanse what was once a legitimate political party of all those who support his terrorist attack on America that will be exactly who Republicans are.
