“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”
~ Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United States of America
First, there is dissonance, when the mind has no frame of reference to process the visual images that it is receiving. And then there is the slow, agonizing horror in the realization that what was once thought to be unthinkable in America, is playing out live before your eyes.
On January 6th, as required by the Constitution, Congress met to count the formal Electoral College certifications submitted by the 50 states. The event is ceremonial, but rich in symbolism — steeped in history and consequence. January 6th was the 58th time in American history that Congress has met to certify the winner of a presidential election. From the first count for George Washington in 1788, to the American Civil War in 1864, from the Great Depression and WWII to the fierce partisan debates in the 21st century since, Congress has never failed to fulfill its constitutional duty.
But the election certification of 2021 was sadly destined to be different.
The US Capitol, the seat of legislative power of the United States, was stormed by insurrectionists, intent on preventing Congress from fulfilling its constitutional duty to certify the election. It was the first time since 1814, when the British captured Washington, DC and burned its public buildings to the ground, that the United States government lost control of the Capitol.
This wasn’t a protest or a riot where participants, inflamed by the passion of the moment, lost control. This was a planned and coordinated attack by supporters of President Trump to force Congress to invalidate the legitimate results of the 2020 election; something that has never happened in American history.
The insurrectionists were armed. Pipe bombs were strategically placed in the Capitol, and other IEDs were left at the headquarters of the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee. Many of the insurrectionists carried weapons, wore tactical gear and carried advanced communications gear. They used “flash-bangs.” Others used furniture, bike racks, flagpoles as improvised weapons or carried baseball bats, wrenches and hammers as they ransacked the building and its offices and chambers.
The insurrectionists were hostile. More than 60 police officers were injured trying to protect the Capitol. 15 were hospitalized, including one officer who was literally crushed in a revolving door by the insurrectionists. Officer Brian Sicknick died of injuries suffered at the hands of the insurrectionists who chanted “USA, USA” as they beat him with flagpoles and stomped his body. Both events were, horrifyingly, caught on tape.
The insurrectionists were cold-blooded vigilantes. Their actions forced Members of Congress to seek shelter using evacuation protocols set up after 9-11. And with good reason. Photos show mob members carrying zip ties – used by police as an alternative to handcuffs when there are mass detentions. Video captures the mob chanting about hanging Vice President Mike Pence. One insurrectionist tweeted about putting a bullet in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s head.
There is little doubt what would have happened if the mob had actually found Members of Congress or staff. At a minimum those people would have been detained or held hostage. Given the treatment of law enforcement by the insurrectionists, it’s clearly possible that Members or staff could have been hurt or killed.
What makes this act of treason even worse is that it was all based on a lie.
Donald Trump did not win the 2020 election. The election wasn’t stolen or rigged. There was no election fraud – at least none that would have changed the result. Election integrity was not compromised. This is not an opinion, but a stone-cold and indisputable fact.
159 million Americans voted in 2020; 21 million more than in 2016. This explains why Trump could win 74 million votes – the second highest vote total in history – and still lose to Joe Biden, who won 81 million votes (3 million people voted 3rd party). Joe Biden’s margin of victory in the popular vote increased from 2.9 million in 2016 to more than 7 million in 2020.
In the Electoral College, where the election is officially decided, Biden margin of victory in Michigan was 14x Trump’s margin in 2016. In Pennsylvania, Biden’s 2020 margin was nearly double what Trump won against Clinton. Wisconsin was essentially a flipped script, with Biden winning by almost exactly the same number of votes as Trump did in his first run. With only these states, Biden would have won the election by a margin of 261,000 votes, compared to Trump’s 2016 margin of 77,000. Yet, in 2016, the Clinton campaign did not demand recounts or file endless, frivolous lawsuits. After the election canvassing by the states, they accepted the result. Trump, who lost these three states by more the 3x the number of votes as Clinton had lost in 2016 refused to face facts. And of course, this does not include Georgia (Biden +11,779) and Arizona (Biden +10,457).
Despite the scale of his loss, beginning on November 4th, and contrary to all tallies, analytical counts and modeling, Trump or his campaign began filing more than 40 lawsuits in local, state and federal courts in six states. He lost every one of them. Trump lost with Democratic judges and Republican judges. He lost at the Supreme Court twice where three Trump-nominated justices sit. The fantastical claims made by Trump supporters about Dominion voting machines are risible lies. But don’t believe me. The Republican Secretary of State in GA, where Dominion machines were used, counted the vote – and the ballots – three times, all with the same result. Ballot signatures not matching? GA could only find one case where that happened. Dead people voting? Yes, a single case. And it was a vote for Trump.
But the best proof that Trump didn’t win is Trump himself.
If the Trump lawsuits were a lawful exercise by the President and his campaign to ensure the “integrity of the vote,” the actions after those lawsuits failed certainly weren’t. The President actively solicited Michigan election officials to refuse to certify their vote counts. Trump badgered officials in Arizona and Pennsylvania to disrupt certifying the vote. In Georgia, the President undertook an active campaign of intimidation on social media and in private to prevent Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, from certifying the votes from his state. Only days before the insurrection, the President called GA’s Secretary of State and urged him to “find” 11,000 plus votes that would make him the victor in GA, itself a state and possibly federal crime. Only a team that knew it had lost would engage in what is clearly election tampering.
Despite the epic and serial failure of Trump and his lawyers to prove any impropriety in the election, and contrary to the statements of his Attorney General and head of DHS cyber that there was no fraud, the right-wing media machine created an effective alternate reality, where Trump not only won, but where he could still claim victory over Joe Biden. The coverage, increasingly unmoored, required the active suspension of disbelief to embrace. The incendiary and utterly false rhetoric from FOX News, OANN, and Newsmax, not to mention radio commentators and social media, amplified daily by the President himself and handful of aides, has created a cauldron of rage without any rational or factual basis. But the poisonous lies have worked. Fully half of Republicans believe that Trump rightfully won the 2020 election and that it was stolen from him, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
Worse, GOP elected representatives in Congress, all of whom know better, chose to promote this alternate reality to appease the Trump base of whom they are terrified, and then use the manufactured outrage from the grass roots as justification for even more punitive action to call election legitimacy into doubt. In almost all cases this course of action was rooted in breathtaking cynicism – to preserve their electoral viability at the expense of their duty as public officials – adding high octane fuel to a burning fire of disinformation.
Evidence? 126 House Republicans from 16 states backed a ridiculously unconstitutional lawsuit requesting that the Supreme Court overturn the 2020 election. Far worse were the cynical and opportunistic Members, six Senators and 121 House members who chose to object to the certification of President-elect Biden’s victory based on utterly false claims of problems with “election integrity.”
Representative Liz Cheney, stunned by the complicity of her GOP colleagues in a stunt that could have grave ramifications in future elections wrote a 20-page memo regarding Congress’ role in federal elections, stating:
“Nothing in Article II, the 12th Amendment or any other Constitutional text provides for any debate, objection or discretionary judgments by Congress in performing the ministerial task of counting the votes. Nothing in the Constitution remotely says that Congress is the court of last resort, with the authority to second-guess and invalidate state and federal court judicial rulings in election challenges… The Constitution identifies specifically the only occasions when Congress can take any non-ministerial action when no Presidential candidate has a majority of the electoral votes…Accordingly, both the clear text of the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act compel the same conclusion – there is no appropriate basis to object to the electors from any of the six states at issue.”
The memo fell on deaf ears.
Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, both ambitious politicians who sought to capitalize on the “Stop the Steal” falsehood, which they themselves had stoked since Election Day, claimed fact-free election fraud, with Cruz proposing a “10-day emergency election audit,” which Cruz, who attended Princeton and Harvard Law, knew had absolutely no constitutional grounds. All 127 of these Members violated their oath to the Constitution by pursuing baseless claims that served only to further enrage the Trump base.
When quack pundits and supposed constitutional scholars falsely asserted that Vice President Pence had the power to invalidate electoral votes during the certification on January 6th, a position publicly supported by the President, the Vice President himself had to author a letter stating he had no such power under the Constitution.
At the heart of the insurrection, the catalyst, has always been Trump. He fed his base a steady diet of election lies and misinformation. Trump and his enablers deliberately assembled a mob over the course of weeks. He deliberately encouraged them to march on the Capitol with he and his advisors using unmistakably incendiary language that was the preface to violence. It wasn’t an accident. Trump knew exactly what he was doing.
And in so doing, Trump and the GOP, that he has remade in his own image, crossed the Rubicon, embracing insurrection and sedition against the government of the United States to overturn a free and fair election, in a manner that was ethically, morally, institutionally, democratically, legally, and criminally wrong. Forged in the tribulation of civil war 160 years ago, where the Republican Party stood as the bulwark against insurrection and slavery, Trump’s GOP has the ignominy of standing as a catalyst of insurrection against the United States in order to invalidate the votes of 81 million Americans.
There is no coming back from this for the GOP.
The physical damage to the Capitol will soon be repaired. Before Joe Biden becomes president, the seat of our legislative power will again be pristine. But the insurrectionists didn’t simply destroy windows and doors and ransack offices. In a futile effort to keep President Trump in power, the mob subverted the founding principles of America.
After inventing powers not included in the Constitution to serve their purposes, the insurrections cast our founding law aside in favor of vigilantism. In trying to hunt down Members of Congress, a violent mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol with the expressed intention to overturn two centuries of free and fair elections, governed by the rule of law, and the powerful tradition of the peaceful transfer of power.
The stain is real and will be lasting.
There can be no unity, no healing, without accountability and justice, and that must be swift and certain, to prevent this from ever happening again.
To that end, President Trump is a clear and present danger to the United States. He’s violated his oath of office, promoted sedition and catalyzed insurrection in order to protect his political power and position. He must resign, be removed under the procedures of the 25th Amendment, or be impeached and convicted by Congress. It doesn’t matter how many days are left in his term. There is no statute of limitations on what he has done.
The Senators and House Members who abetted the charade of election fraud with their vote against accepting the results of the Electoral College should be censured and expelled. If they are lawyers, they should be disbarred. There is Civil War precedence for this.
To the mob of insurrectionists who invaded the Capitol, reeked mayhem, injured and killed law enforcement, they should be found, arrested, charged and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. They are domestic terrorists and should be treated as such.
We are about to go through the nine most dangerous days in American history. Social media is replete with messages of an even greater gathering that will descend on Washington to prevent President-elect Biden from assuming office.
A warning is in order.
The catastrophic failure of Capitol police to defend the building is ultimately premised on a deeply held American belief – that no American would storm the Capitol to try and interfere with a constitutional process. Now that the Trump insurrectionists have shattered a noble and solemn tradition dating to the founding of the Republic, there will be no “second time.”
Know this, Trumpers – if you insist on violence to prevent the duly elected president from assuming office, you will reap the whirlwind.
That’s not a threat. That’s a promise.