Will diehard Donald Trump enablers ever acknowledge their beloved hero tried to sabotage democracy?
Listen to what Rep. Liz Cheney said during the first televised congressional hearing concerning the insurrection attempt at the Capitol: “Tonight I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible. There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”
Another Republican, J. Michael Lettig, known for his impeccable conservative credentials, appeared at the third televised hearing. In tones of grave warning, he said this:
“Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy. They would attempt to overturn the 2024 election in the way they attempted to overturn the 2020 election but succeed in 2024 where they failed in 2020.”
Three days after that hearing, Trump spoke to a crowd in Nashville. Seething with rage and ranting loudly with vicious bitterness, the Sore Loser claimed the Capitol rioters were not violent but great patriots. He lambasted Mike Pence as a “human conveyer belt” for (according to Trump’s never-ending lie) accepting millions of fake votes.
Trump’s unhinged Nashville rant was an example of what former Attorney General William Barr meant when he told the committee there were times when he wondered if Trump had become “detached from reality.” What?! Barr had to “wonder” that?
As we have seen, Trump’s Train, “The Narcissist,” stoked by loud self-serving lies, keeps on chugging down the tracks.
It’s a bleak (almost comic) irony that it wasn’t Joe Biden who “stole” the election; it was Donald Trump who tried to do just that. He’d mentally prepared his followers for the Big Lie months before the election by insisting voting fraud would prevail, psyching them up like attack dogs.
Sixty-two voting challenges by Trump loyalists found no election chicanery. Umpteen White House lawyers and aides told Trump there was no voting fraud. In tantrums, Trump spurned them all, turning to any and all crackpots who could keep stoking the Big Lie. Such sidekicks in crime included lawyers John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, “Pillow Guy” Mike Lindell and former Trump enablers Steve Bannon and Mike Flynn. Oh, me oh my, how they worked mightily to shore up the Big Lie with lunatic conspiracy theories!
Trump and his schemers tried the court challenges that didn’t work. Trump cajoled Georgia and other states to “find” him votes; didn’t work. Trumpers in some states sent lists of fake electors to the U.S. Congress, hoping the lists would cause confusion or convince Pence not to certify; didn’t work; the plotters pressured the Justice Department to convince some states to overturn results; didn’t work. Trump and “his” team bullied the vice president, trying to convince him to do as they asked; didn’t work. In a final burst of impotent rage, Trump and others incited an angry mob to attack the Capitol where the would-be insurrectionists brutally beat scores of police officers and tried to find Pence so they could hang him.
The congressional committee is bringing all of those issues to the fore and connecting all the dots.
Almost 6 of 10 Americans think Trump should be charged criminally – 91 percent of Democrats, 19 percent of Republicans. That according to a June 20 ABC Ipsos poll. Alas, sad to say, there are about one-third of Americans who will never be convinced Trump ever did anything wrong, ever. Some do not seem to care about “messy” democracy but would prefer a “strong” leader (authoritarian/dictator), a swaggering loudmouth.
Enraged by Pence, Trump wrote this tweet:
“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution . . . USA demands the truth!”
Yes, Mr. Trump, so why don’t you start telling the truth, for a change?
“Lock him up!”
