After Trump was elected (again!), I vowed to myself to quit sounding alarms about his blustering baloney and his deeply dangerous threat to our Democracy.
Oops, sorry, I just broke my vow.
One day into his reign, he signed with his bold spikey show-off signature a document pardoning all Capitol insurrectionists, whom he calls “patriots” and “hostages.” In pardoning them, he was more or less erasing – trying to erase! – his own role in helping incite that riot. It was not only a blatant attempt to overturn a free-and-fair election but a punch in the face to the peaceful transference of power.
“Fight like hell!” Trump told a mob gathered outside of the White House, pointing them toward the Capitol building.
Those thugs eagerly obeyed. They stormed the Capitol, hurling vicious threats and insults, brutally beating Capitol cops, spraying them with bear spray, busting windows and doors, surging through the hallways, some of them smearing excrement on the walls and chanting sinister taunts, “Nancy, oh Nancy (Pelosi), were are yooou?!.” They tried to find V.P. Mike Pence, too, whom they threatened to lynch on a makeshift scaffold.
Meantime, back home, that Inciter-in-Chief, Donald Trump, watched gloatingly the violence on TV. Many White House insiders/witnesses have testified to Trump’s self-satisfied approval of that assault on Democracy.
Even his own daughter, as did others, begged him to call off the rioters. One advisor rushed in to warn him rioters are threatening to hang Mike Pence. According to that advisor, Trump glanced up at him and said, “So what?”
That violent attack is what Trump later referred to many times with nostalgic fondness as a “Day of Love.” Love?! What’s love got to do with it?
Months before the 2020 election, Trump had pre-primed his millions of supporters that the election would be stolen, another fraud-filled “hoax.” He was of course priming them not to accept his possible defeat, no matter what.
Later, he knew he’d lost, according to many closest to him. But he threw a titanic temper-tantrum, convincing most of his enablers-apologists-sycophants that a terrible injustice had been perpetrated – dead people and hordes of illegal immigrants had voted, rigged voting machines, poll workers hiding boxes stuffed with invalid ballots.
Trump was following the advice the toxic lawyer Roy Cohn pounded into his head many years ago: Never admit defeat! Deny! Deny! Deny!
At least 60 legal challenges were filed, claiming voting fraud. Not one of them was deemed legitimate by judges, including many judges who’d been appointed by Trump himself in his first term.
On a charge of “incitement of insurrection,” Trump was found not guilty by the Senate on a vote of 57-43. Many who voted not guilty had earlier said he should be held accountable, including long-time Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell. A dismissive attitude developed. Yeah, yeah, Trump fomented that Capital riot, but so what? Oh well, never mind.
Trump was also charged with hoarding top-secret documents and meddling with election results in Georgia. But after his re-election, those charges have been swept away. Slate wiped clean. So let’s forget all about it. Let’s just slip into a snoozy amnesia, drifting into alternate realities, dismissing criminal accountability in this new Never-Mind Land.
Trump won re-election by an electoral-vote landslide, yes, but the popular vote was close, just a percentage-point difference. Unlike Trump in 2020, Harris didn’t pout, whine and fulminate about a “stolen election.”
I’m willing to consider the notion that Trump, maybe accidentally, might do some good things for this country, this world. At this point, I do agree with Trump that current or former violent immigrants should be imprisoned and/or deported.
Trump might happily surprise those of us who could never stand him. I’d like to hope so.
But we who always warned against him should remain wary. He who used to scowl, scoff and yell “Witch Hunt!” is now on a vicious Witch Hunt of his own. “Project 2025,” as they call it, has just begun. Fasten your seatbelts!
