THE SECOND ACQUITTAL OF DONALD J. TRUMP

 

This past weekend, the Republican Party leadership and the vast majority of its politicians decided where they stood. Would they defend the party’s traditions of conservatism, American unity, law and order and liberal democracy, or would they underscore still further the party’s vertiginous downward spiral into the sordid depths of populism, personality cultism, vigilante violence and mob rule over the will of the majority and over the rule of law? In the end—and, unfortunately, surprising to no one—they chose the latter.

Earlier in the week, GOP senators (ad hoc jurors in the second impeachment trial of ex-President Donald J. Trump), like their Democratic colleagues, heard the cogent and well-researched presentation of congressional impeachment managers laying out the case against Trump on the charge of inciting insurrection against the United States of America. Their case was illustrated by all too familiar video footage of the former president’s rabble-rousing speech given on the Ellipse near the White House on January 6^th and of the frenzied mob then following Trump’s instructions to go to the Capitol, where its members proceeded to clash violently with police and to enter the building by force, vandalizing the hallowed halls of Congress and searching for narrowly evacuated members of the congressional opposition, as well as dissenting members of the GOP (including Vice-President Mike Pence) whom they were promising to lynch.

But the presentation also included a great deal of new, formerly undisclosed footage that proved graphically violent and from which a number of members of Congress turned their eyes away—some because it was too painful for them to watch, but others because they were seeking, cynically, to demonstrate that they had nothing to do with this process and considered it politics as usual in the era of Trump. It didn’t matter to them that part of what they were watching was the brutal mob-murder of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, or the desperate bravery of Officer Eugene Goodman who, armed only with a billy club, stood off dozens of insurrectionists, making himself their target, until his colleagues could seal the Senate chamber and until he could taunt the rioters up the stairs to where police backup was waiting. It didn’t matter that they were seeing the violation of the congressional inner sanctum, the Executive-inspired terrorist raiding of another co-equal branch of government, the subversion of democracy by the followers of a president sworn to defend it. It didn’t matter that they, as members of the so-called “party of law and order” were watching how seditious thugs clubbed, mauled, abused and injured more than one hundred forty guardians of the Capitol in order to try and stop the democratic process by force and to maintain a would-be tyrant in power.

Their minds were made up before the trial ever began, despite swearing an oath to be impartial jurors, to say nothing of their standing oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United
States of America. They saw what everybody else saw. A national tragedy, unique in the two and a half century-history of the United States. But they simply didn’t care. They put party over country and personality cult over party. They were willing to let democracy and the nation lose in the tenuous hope that they themselves wouldn’t when it came time for the most radical and extreme of the former president’s base to vote in a future election.

Ignoring the evidence, which most top Republicans admitted was compelling, when it came time to stand up and be counted in defense of democracy, the rule of law and the Constitution of the United States, the GOP leadership caved. It claimed there was a technicality that kept the GOP from doing anything but voting to acquit. That technicality consisted basically of the fact that Donald Trump was no longer president and the Senate was, then, supposedly no longer competent to try him. And the GOP leadership continued to maintain this fallacious argument despite repeated statements from experts in constitutional law that it simply wasn’t true, and that there was even at least one historical precedent to prove that it wasn’t. Nor was it upheld by the House of Representatives, which is, according to the Constitution, the sole authority for setting the rules for an impeachment process. 

And then the GOP punted. They couldn’t do anything, they claimed, but there were other competent authorities who could, and they would leave the matter in the capable hands of federal and state justice. In other words, no way we’re going to grab this hot potato. We’re passing the buck to the Biden administration’s Department of Justice and to the courts of Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania and other aggrieved swing states. To the civil courts, as well, where Trump and his top surrogates are already being sued in multi-billion-dollar libel cases. And when the crap hits the fan, we can always tell Trump supporters we had nothing to do with it. It was the damned Democrats and a few unholy Republican outliers.

Many media observers were this weekend bending over backwards to pat Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on the back for giving what amounted to no more than a wink and a nod to justice. In a wriggling and convoluted speech that too many analysts found “important”, McConnell said, in so many words, that the ex-president was indeed guilty of inciting the insurrection that took place on January 6^th. Not merely because of the seditious speech that he made that day on the Ellipse, but also through his repeated and endless statements to the effect that the election had been stolen, that his voters had been robbed, that he was the legitimate president, and that if his followers didn’t “fight like hell” they “weren’t going to have a country left.” But that, as he interpreted the Constitution, he had no right to judge “a private citizen”.

McConnell even found a way to blame the House Democrats for the acquittal, saying that while they had indeed gotten a majority to vote to impeach while Trump was still president, they had failed to deliver the article of impeachment to the Senate until after he had left office. He admitted that constitutional scholars on both sides had provided cogent arguments regarding whether or not a former president could be tried by the Senate. While he praised and said he respected both, he clearly decided on the one that was most convenient for his never-ending political career. Namely, that while he laid the blame for the January 6^th attempt to overthrow the US government on one man, Donald J. Trump, his hands were tied.

McConnell’s speech was, in a week of GOP profiles in cowardice, the number one most cowardly act. Only seventeen GOP senators out of fifty would have had to do their patriotic duty and vote to convict in order to restore the integrity of American democracy. In the end, only seven did, and despite the fact that they were only doing their duty to the Constitution and democracy, those seven are being held in hero status by small-d democrats all over the country, because they will clearly be dubbed traitors by the followers of the man who has once more sidestepped Congressional authority, played the country, and bolstered the de facto power of what conservative writer George Will has so aptly described as “the Lout Caucus”.

Mitch McConnell could have changed all that. He could have voted to convict and convinced the necessary nine other Republicans to do the same. And by that single act of patriotism and honesty, he could have ensured that no other self-styled despot like Donald Trump ever took office again, and that January 6^th, 2021, was a single tragic stain on the fabric of democracy that would never happen again.

But he didn’t. He could have made all the difference in the world to American democracy and he failed to step up. And hopefully history will remember him for it.

 

THANK YOU MR. PRESIDENT

You don’t hear it much anymore, but there is a saying that every cloud has a silver lining. I’ve been thinking that perhaps that’s true even of the shameful events that we have just witnessed in the United States, where, for the first time in history, a sitting president sought to use violence, sedition and insurrection as a means of rejecting a peaceful transfer of power after he lost an election.

After giving it a lot of thought and, as the Spanish expression goes, consulting the matter with my pillow, I have decided that small-d democrats owe Donald J. Trump a debt of gratitude, so let me just say thank you for a few things that he has done.

Thank you, Mr. President:

 - For demonstrating clearly from Day One that your sole “policy” was to destroy every achievement accomplished by the previous administration, while taking credit for the economic recovery that it had fostered after the worst crash since the Great Depression. And, once that was underway, for also showing a complete and utter lack of respect for every basic American tradition and institution.

- For making it clear from the outset that you bought into everything that diminishes an erstwhile democratic country’s leadership and greatness: xenophobia, isolationism, radical nationalism, racism, religious discrimination, inequality, disrespect for science and education, and scorn for the rule of law.

 - For showing a crystal clear lack of any and all empathy by means of demonstrative actions such as separating migrant and refuge-seeking parents from their children for the “crime” of daring to seek a better life in a nation once known as the melting pot of the world and as a country that once took pride in being a nation of immigrants. And, furthermore, by locking those children in cages, often deporting their parents without them, then losing track entirely of the family ties between one and the other so that many, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of those minors had to be placed in foster care, with a full five hundred forty-five of them being lost—yes, lost!—without a trace, as only had previously happened in some of the world’s worst dictatorships.

 - For never even pretending to be honest. Telling lies one on top of the other, by the hundreds, by the thousands, by the tens of thousands, lies so blatant and so provably false that they have actually been collected for posterity by fact-check nerds.

- For never making any attempt at disguising the fact that you didn’t believe in democracy or the rule of law. For praising some of the world’s worst dictators and considering them “strong” compared to democratic leaders whom you always sought to cast as “weak”.

 - For further underscoring your love of bad actors on the world stage, by not only praising and treating them with deference, but also by insulting and alienating practically all of our traditional allies, including the very closest ones, who have stood by us in the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance since World War II.

 - For providing proof positive of your contempt for urgent international efforts to keep the global environment from becoming uninhabitable in our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren’s lifetimes by pulling us out of the greatest climate accord ever developed and in the creation of which, the United States was instrumental. (See item one).

 -  For clearly expressing your disdain for world peace in general and in peacemaking in the Middle East in particular, by acting as if a nuclear treaty with Iran that was impeccably engineered, carefully negotiated, painstakingly debated and internationally orchestrated among numerous countries was just so much toilet paper stuck on your shoe, and scraping it off, leaving the rest of the world community to deal with the results. For empowering your friends in Saudi Arabia’s murderous dictatorial regime to foster the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in Yemen. For handing Syria over to Russia and its bloody puppet regime, whose leader, Bashar al-Assad, has slaughtered, jailed and tortured hundreds of thousands of his own people and created the world’s worst refugee crisis. Also for showing your true colors by first using courageous Kurdish fighters to help defeat the ISIS Islamic terror organization along the Syrian border and then abandoning them to their fate when your Turkish dictator friend  Recep Tayyip Erdogan attacked them ruthlessly in the void you left.

 - For blithely ignoring the COVID-19 crisis, seeking only to find “a silver bullet” vaccine before election campaign season began, but suppressing vital information, failing to provide timely distribution of medical equipment, ignoring the need for a national strategy to deal with the worst pandemic in a century, treating it only as an inconvenience for the success of your presidency and convincing your base that it was “fake news”, in the process rendering the US the worst-hit nation on earth, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of deaths that could have been avoided, and then downplaying the incredible achievement of two viable vaccines in just nine months—a world record—because they didn’t arrive in time to be useful to you in your run for a second term.

 - For warning us time and again that you would refuse to leave if you didn’t win a second term. That you would, in effect, cling to the power that you believed to be yours rather than that of the office entrusted to you. That you were willing to do whatever it took to remain—lie, cheat, steal, organize your own army of white supremacist fanatics. That even after a second term you might go for a third or even—like the Russian, Chinese and North Korean authoritarians you so admire—go for president for life.  (Bless our naïve hearts, we thought you were kidding)!

 - For trying to incite a populist coup by calling in your fanatics from all over the country and sicking them on the two houses of Congress that were in session to certify the election that you clearly and unequivocally lost by seven million popular votes and seventy-four electoral votes, thinking that you could halt the democratic process by force and that that would be enough for you to remain in power—that and a little help from a handful of autocrats in the Senate and a few dozen undemocratic interlopers in the House. For sparking, thus, the first invasion of the hallowed halls of Congress since the early eighteen hundreds when the British thought they could take back their lost colonies by terrorizing the American Legislature and adding a new Day of Infamy to the history of the United States of America.

 - For making clear your deep feelings for domestic terrorists springing from their mindless loyalty to you over their country—a senseless mob, who faced off with overwhelmed law-enforcement and held US representatives and senators hostage while ransacking the halls and offices of the Capitol Building, the most sacred and living symbol of American democracy—by telling them that you “loved them” and that they were “very special” to you. Just as you did during the Charlottesville riots, where you referred to them as “very fine people”.

 - In short, within your complete general lack of honesty, for never having been dishonest about who and what you were: a sociopath, a narcissist, a man who never has had an unselfish thought, a person with a twisted and broken inner child, an unprincipled, self-serving, undemocratic, un-American, autocratic, misogynistic, racist misanthrope who has given new and sad meaning to the idea that anyone can become the president of the United States.

Thank you for all of this, Mr. President, because perhaps the people of the United States, or at least the majority of us, have learned some valuable lessons springing from the Era of Trump:

 - That democracy cannot be taken for granted.   

- That while our institutions may be highly resilient, they are also vulnerable, and only as good as the people who exercise them.

 - That character matters in political candidates and the facts weigh more than “beliefs”.

 - That democracy and populist personality cults are opposites.

 - That no matter how the players and names may change the system must remain strong and inviolate.

 - That the office of the presidency can only be respected if the person exercising it respects it and is respectable.

 - That if the people we elect to office do not believe in America’s founding principles then we have misplaced our vote and our trust and they must be voted out of office or impeached for violating those sacred principles.

 - That appeasement breeds tyranny.

 - That checks and balances work as long as the people exercising them believe in them and enforce them.

 - That a military that is loyal to the Constitution and a Supreme Court that is firmly grounded in the rule of law are the last line of defense for democracy.

And, finally, that no matter how far-fetched a notion it may have seemed four years ago, the establishment of an authoritarian regime in the United States of America is only impossible if those whom we choose to lead us are unequivocally determined to protect us against it and to defend the Constitution in both letter and spirit.

 

AN ATTEMPTED COUP

 

This afternoon, I became aware that Donald Trump’s attempt to burn to the ground the democracy he couldn’t dominate had reached a new and ever more incendiary stage. Word was that there were nationwide protests around public buildings by irate die-hard Trump supporters. Even in my own small hometown in Ohio, folks were asking each other on-line what was going on, that “people carrying flags” were circling the county courthouse.

Inciting insurrection

Just after that, I became aware that there were “massive protests” at the Capitol Building in Washington DC. But as I speed-read numerous reports and watched live coverage, I quickly realized that the “protests” were much more than that. The Capitol was under siege. Rioters (not protesters) had clashed with undermanned federal police officers and had not only managed to enter the Capitol by had also made it to the doors of the two chambers and engaged in standoffs with law enforcement. The security of Congress, in other words, had been completely overrun and police had ended up with their backs to the doors of the Senate and House, trying desperately to keep Trumpsters from pushing through. At least one person, a woman, was shot and critically wounded during the standoff and at least six other people, including one police officer, had to be hospitalized.

Inside those chambers, voting to certify the Electoral College results had to be suspended as members of Congress and their staff were forced to shelter in place in the face of a major national security breach. Vice-President Mike Pence eventually ordered the Senate evacuated and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi requested National Guard assistance to clear the Capitol Complex. The entire complex had already been placed on lockdown.

Normally, the president of the United States would have taken national security measures under such grave circumstances and immediately reinforced security with more federal police, the Secret Service, the FBI and/or the National Guard. But in this case the presidency was conspicuous by its absence. Or better said, the occupant of the White House was no longer acting as the president of the United States, but as the leader of a domestic terror organization that had managed to breach national security in his name. That doesn’t mean, however, that he won’t eventually order full-scale security measures, and considering who and what he is—a public official in clear rebellion against the established order—this is further cause for concern about the security of the nation. Some constitutionalists fear that, after inciting insurrection and allowing it to get completely out of control, Trump could then invoke the Insurrection Act and, basically, take over Washington DC using active duty federal troops, and citing the national security breach that he himself has fostered.

Shots fired! Members of Congress shelter in place

Aghast at what he was watching, CNN’s star political anchor, Jake Tapper, correctly said that what we were witnessing was “unprecedented”, that nothing even close to this had happened since the Vietnam War protests, and that those had been peaceful. This was something else. This was, he said, “sedition.”

But he was wrong about that. This was quite clearly insurrection. That is, “a violent uprising against an authority or government.” Sedition had indeed taken place prior to this and was the catalyst that caused it, and the author of that sedition was Donald J. Trump. The insurrectionists had come directly to the Capitol from a Trump rally on the Ellipse, just south of the White House. There, the forty-fifth occupant of the White House addressed the raging hoards of his supporters calling on them to “fight for” him. He encouraged their rage by indicating that they were part of a popular crusade.   

“All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical Democrats,” he harangued the crowd. “We will never give up. We will never concede. It will never happen. You don’t concede when there’s death involved. Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore.”

The so-called “Save America March” was organized entirely on the basis of Trump’s false claims that he won the election and on his lies regarding “mass voter fraud”, which have been definitively and repeatedly debunked and disproven in more than sixty court cases in favor of Biden. In his rabble-rousing speech, the president-in-rebellion told his hard-core base that elections in “Third World countries” were “more honest” than the one that he lost. “We will not let them silence your voices.” he said.

Seeking to bring populist pressure on the vice-president, whose ceremonial duty under the democratic system is to declare Joe Biden president-elect once congressional certification is completed, Trump told the crowd, “I hope Mike is gonna do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so, because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election.”

Secret Service members, guns drawn in Congress 

That is, of course, utter rubbish, as was his later assertion that “one of the top constitutional lawyers in our country” had informed him that the vice president has “the absolute right” to throw out the election results. Unless Trump considers Rudy “El Loco” Giuliani one of the country’s top constitutional lawyers, no attorney could seriously have told him that, since it is a bare-faced lie. As Mike Pence himself is reported to have told Trump, he has absolutely no legal authority to refuse congressional certification of the president-elect’s clear and proven win.

Trump also lashed out at Georgia Republicans after they lost both senatorial run-offs and, as a result, the Senate passed to Democratic control. The president-in-rebellion called that election process “a setup,” and slammed the current Republican administration in that state as “weak” and “pathetic”.

“We have to primary the hell out of the ones that don’t fight,” Trump raved. “If they do the wrong thing,”—i.e., throw the election—“we should never ever forget (what) they did.”

He also expressed his approval for how his backers had turned out at the airport in Washington to harass Senator Mitt Romney of Utah—sharp critic of the president’s anti-democratic machinations, and the   only member of the GOP who voted in favor of his impeachment conviction—when he flew in for the Electoral College certification vote. “I wonder if he enjoyed his flight in,” Trump scoffed to cheers from his fans.

As if all of his previous inflammatory rhetoric hadn’t been sufficient, it was the president himself who urged his by now enraged supporters—reportedly including elements of the Proud Boys and other violent ad hoc “militias”—to march from there to the Capitol, so as to “give our Republicans the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”

Long Trump’s “partner in crime” in defying democracy during his last four years as Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell delivered a belatedly impassioned speech against Trump’s effort to overturn the election results, while Trump rioters clashed with law enforcement officers outside the Capitol, before they managed to breach the building’s security and storm inside.

If history is honest, what happened—indeed, what is happening—today and what has happened over the course of the two and a half months since the November presidential election, will be recalled for what it is. Not the whims of an unstable president. Not the ravings of a lunatic who was never fit to serve. Not even one man’s delusional efforts to legally overturn voting results because, narcissist that he was, he simply couldn’t understand how he could possibly have lost.

If honesty and objectivity reign, these incidents will be recorded and remembered as the seditious attempt by a sitting president of the United States to incite insurrection and to stage a populist coup d’état. An attempt that, no matter how unsuccessful it may ultimately be, is treasonous, and has succeeded in disrupting the business of government and in breaching national security in one of the most security-sensitive venues in the entire country.