On Wednesday, 6 January, a massive mob of Donald Trump cultists, set to the task by the lies of their "president," attacked and overran the U.S. Capitol with the aim of preventing the imminent congressional certification of the electoral college vote that would remove their noxious leader from the presidency--the aim of, in effect, overturning American democracy itself. The cultists totally overwhelmed the building's oddly lax defenses (with what sometimes appeared to be the aid of the defenders), battered their way inside and went on a rampage. Erecting a gallows, they prowled the halls like hungry zombies in search of lawmaker-meat. They came prepared to take hostages. They came prepared for murder. They were after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. "Hang Mike Pence," they chanted, Trump's otherwise obsessively loyal Vice President having earned their ire by refusing the entreaties of his boss and others to assume extraconstitutional powers and void the election. It takes little effort to imagine what they would have done if they'd gotten their hands on someone like Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortex or Ilhan Omar--both long demonized by Trump and far-right media. They broke things. They stole things. They smeared feces along the Capitol interior. It went on for hours, an unnerving tableaux, even for those of us who have long noted the rising fascism that spawned it--the most powerful liberal democracy in the world reduced to a scene from a dysfunctional banana republic.[1]
And then, when the Capitol was cleared, congress marched back into session and 6 Republican Senators and 138 Republican congressmen found a way to make it worse. Giving the violent cultists exactly what they wanted, the elected officials persisted with their pre-assault plans to
vote against certifying the electoral college results on the grounds of false claims of "election fraud" in several battleground states. Of those who had loudly planned to go along with throwing out the election results, only 4 backed off in the face of the horror they'd helped create. The moral obscenity that is Florida congressclown Matt Gaetz even took to the floor to claim the attack had actually been the work of anti-fascist activists. He was backed in this by
other Trump-loyal legislators, including Alabama's Mo Brooks, who had actually been one of the opening speakers at the rally that preceded the attack and had, himself, spewed some of the toxic rhetoric that had encouraged it.
Trump had been the featured attraction at that rally and his speech had been even more inflammatory. After losing the election, Trump had spent months poisoning the minds of his followers with the black fantasy that he'd actually won but the election had been stolen by a massive leftist conspiracy. This, repeated into infinity by Trump, his underlings, his sycophants in congress and his enablers in the far-right media that spawned him, was the damnable lie that gave birth to this entire appalling situation. After a rather unconscionable delay of a few days, congress impeached him for "incitement of insurrection," making him the only U.S. president to be impeached twice.
In the commentary on this matter to date, there has often been both an impoverished analysis of Trump's speech at the rally--inadequately conveying how incendiary it was--and, more importantly, a disproportionate focus on it. This author isn't a big fan of a word like "insurrection," as it comes with, among other things, a lot of historical baggage that would be somewhat burdensome to unpack at present, but whatever one calls it, Trump's incitement of it began long before that single speech.
Trump was, in fact,
encouraging his followers to assault those who
disagreed with them since virtually the beginning of his first
presidential campaign. Since Trump descended that escalator at Trump
Tower in 2015 and threw his hat into the political ring by calling
Mexicans rapists and criminals, there has always been a protofascist, often overtly fascist, character to his rhetoric and while, in this writer's view,
it isn't, for a number of glaringly obvious reasons, even close to defensible to call his
administration "fascist," it's inarguable that Trump has
always used
the language of fascism and has, in fact, frequently preached fascism. That's how, among other things,
he drew a fanatical following of overt fascists. Fascism is ultranationalistic and promotes national renewal by means of the destruction of the liberal society and its many manifestations. For the fascist, leftists, immigrants, the free press, insufficiently submissive women, racial, ethnic and religious minorities, etc. have no place in their national community. Such people are demonized, dehumanized, said to be involved in an endless string of conspiracies against the cultural milieu chauvinistically favored by the fascist. The message is, "we'd be better off without them." Trump regularly leads his followers right up to that edge, but what separates real fascists from feckless wannabes like Trump is that the real things gleefully charge into the abyss beyond, calling for "redemptive" violence against such elements. Trump has as well, at times, but it's hardly any sort of systematic policy with him. Still, given that the logical extension of "we'd be better off without them" is "let's get rid of them," many have simply refused to draw too strong a distinction.
Maybe that many are right. The last 5 years have certainly been marked by a parade of violence inspired by
Trump and the right-wing media that both feed and feed off him. Three
Trump fans in Kansas plot to
massacre Muslim refugees (one later citing Trump's rhetoric, with which he and the others were enthralled, as
a reason he should receive a more lenient sentence). The "MAGA Bomber"
mails 13 explosive devices to various media figures and elected officials whom Trump had attacked. Driven
by Trump and
right-wing media to resist "the Hispanic invasion of Texas," a Trumper in El Paso massacres 23 people and injures 23 others. It
goes on and on. And is likely to continue to go on and on for some time.
None of this is new. In its proper context, the attack on the Capitol is really just the latest manifestation of what's been happening all along. It--or something like it--was entirely predictable. Trump, in fact, spent most of 2020 priming his followers for it. His campaign oratory was persistently laced with the fascist's apocalyptic vernacular. Democrats, he told his followers, aren't just Americans with whom he has political disagreements. They're depraved, dangerous, inhuman devils that, if elected, would do nothing less than
end them, end America, end everything--hyperbolic demagoguery so far outside any reasonable or legitimate
political discourse that it would require scientific notation to graph
the distance.
A brief pause for some exposition: The public outrage following the grisly murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police gave rise to a nationwide protest movement demanding reforms to address abusive cops. The Republican right, closely aligned with law enforcement, wasn't having
any of
that. Right-wing media--and Trump--decided to address the situation via a campaign of gaslighting, focusing their attention on rioting and vandalism that sometimes broke out alongside these demonstrations to, on a daily basis, portray the demonstrations themselves as nothing more than violent riots. Though violence was condemned by mainstream political figures across the board, the denunciations by Democratic political figures never made it into the narrative. Instead, anyone who said anything less than condemnatory--or heaven forbid, supportive--of the demonstrations was labeled "Democrats" and portrayed as not only failing to denounce violence but actively supporting, advocating and even aiding it. Anyone who pointed out that the demonstrations had been overwhelmingly peaceful was mocked and presented as an apologist for rioters. But because
they were, in fact, overwhelmingly peaceful, they didn't generate nearly enough dramatic footage to maintain the illusion of the contrary, so Fox News, in its "coverage," began
constantly recycling old, out-of-date riot footage, b-roll that was days, weeks, even months old. When that wasn't good enough, they
manufactured straight-up fake images. Republicans, at their national convention, displayed a video showing various riot footage that proclaimed, "This is a taste of Biden's America," over riot footage from what was actually supposed to be
Trump's America but that
turned out to be from Spain from 2019! The George Floyd protests were, by sheer numbers, the biggest protest movement in the history of the U.S. They went on for months and
an estimated 15 million to 26 million people participated in them across every state. If they'd been nothing more than violent riots, the U.S. would be nothing more than a smoking hole in the ground now. Nevertheless, Trump played to that false narrative throughout the campaign, taking things even further in rhetoric so extreme it would be hilarious if it wasn't taken so seriously by so many.
Trump in Tulsa, Oklahoma (21 June):
"If the Democrats gain power, than the rioters will be in charge and no one will be safe... Joe Biden and the Democrats want to prosecute Americans for going to
church, but not for burning a church. They believe you can riot,
vandalize and destroy, but you cannot attend a peaceful pro-America
rally. They want to punish your thought, but not their violent crimes... When the chips are down, Biden will always cave to the radical left.
He'll always bow to the angry mob and he will never protect you or your
family and you know that... If Joe Biden were to become president, an emboldened left will launch a
full scale assault on American life. You know that. They'll expel anyone
who disagrees with them... They want to crush religious
liberty. They don't want religion. Silence religious believers,
indoctrinate your children with hateful and vicious lies about our
country..."
At an Ohio
speech, (6 Aug.), he said that Biden--politically, basically a Republican--is the "messenger" of "radical left ideology" and that if the devoutly Catholic Biden was elected, there would be "no religion, no anything. Hurt the Bible,
hurt God. He's against God." In Minden, Nevada, Trump
said of Democrats, "we're dealing with very sick and very bad and evil people... [T]hey
want to punish you for praying in church while they let agitators and
arsonists burn your churches down." In a
speech in Minnesota (17 Aug.), Trump insisted Biden "is the puppet of left wing extremists" who is seeking
to "replace
American freedom with left wing fascism. Left wing. We're going to left
wing all the way. Fascists. They are fascists." Biden would do no less than "abolish the
American way of life."
In a
speech at Mt. Rushmore (3 July), Trump described his Democratic opposition as a "dangerous movement," as "a growing danger that threatens every blessing our ancestors fought for," that seeks to take from Americans "our country and all of its values,
history, and culture."
"In our schools, our newsrooms, even
our corporate boardrooms, there is a new far-left fascism that demands
absolute allegiance. If you do not speak its language, perform its
rituals, recite its mantras, and follow its commandments, then you will
be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted, and punished."
He invokes China's Cultural Revolution, in which millions of people were killed:
"Make no mistake. This left-wing cultural revolution is designed to
overthrow the American Revolution. In so doing they would destroy the
very civilization that rescued billions from poverty, disease, violence,
and hunger, and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement,
discovery, and progress... The radical ideology attacking our country advances under the banner of
social justice, but in truth, it would demolish both justice and
society. It would transform justice into an instrument of division and
vengeance and it would turn our free and inclusive society into a place
of a repression, domination, and exclusion. They want to silence us, but
we will not be silenced... Their goal is not a better America, their goal is to end America."
In
Scranton, Pennsylvania, (20 Aug.), he says, "at
stake in this election is the survival of our nation. It’s true."
"Joe Biden is a puppet of the radical left movement that
seeks to destroy the American way of life... If you want a vision of your life under a Biden presidency, think of the
smoldering ruins in Minneapolis, the violent anarchy of Portland, the
bloodstained sidewalks of Chicago, and imagine the mayhem coming to your
town and every single town in America."
Trump's gaslighting portrayal of cities with Democratic local governments as lawless, wasted hellscapes destroyed by violence was certainly
news to the residents of those cities. But cities aren't where Trump voters tend to congregate.
Trump, of course, sees himself as the hero of his own tale:
"There's only one thing
standing between your family and the radical left
wing mob, and that's your vote this November. This is a very important.
I feel like I'm a wall... If you want mobs and criminals, you got to
vote Democrat... [W]e're the wall between the American dream and total
insanity, and the
destruction of the greatest country in the history of the world. We're
all that stands. We're all that stands."
In Freeland, Michigan (10 Sept.), he said, "if Biden wins, the mob wins. If Biden wins, the rioters, anarchist, arsonist and flag burners win... The left wants to get rid of me so they can come after you. It’s very simple."
"Biden and his party tried to lock law-abiding Americans into their homes
while they encourage rioters and vandals rampaging through, in all
cases, Democrat-run cities... [Joe Biden's plan] is to appease domestic terrorists. My plan is to arrest them, to lock
them up. If Joe Biden is elected, far left lunatics won't just be
running failed Democrat city, they'll be running the Department of
Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and the United States
Supreme Court, and we can't let that happen. No city, town, or suburb
will be safe. On November 3rd, your vote will save America. Remember,
it's the most important election we’ve ever had."
In
New Hampshire (28 Aug.):
"This November, each of you will vote in truly the most important
election in the history of our country... Joe Biden is the puppet of the radical left
movement that seeks to obliterate and destroy everything that you hold dear... Today’s Democrat party is filled with hate. Just look at Joe Biden
supporters on the streets screaming and shouting at bystanders with
unhinged manic rage... [If Biden wins,] the agitators will go from rioting in the streets to running the halls
of government... No one will be safe in Biden's
America... We are all that stand between the American people and the left wing
mob. If you want to save democracy from the mob, then you must vote to
defeat [Biden]."
In
Oshkosh, Wisconsin (17 Aug.):
"This is the most dangerous election we've ever had. The most dangerous,
because I don't think we can ever bring it back if [the Democrats] get in. I don't
think there's anything called the comeback. It'll be another Venezuela... I now say it very strongly because it's a
similar ideology. This will be a large scale, very large scale,
Venezuela if they win."
Trump
told a Henderson, Nevada crowd (13 Sept.) that "if Biden ever did win,... he would allow left-wing anarchists to burn down your businesses." In
Bemidji, Minnesota (18 Sept.), the people around Biden are "radical left Democrats and they're very dangerous" and "your state will be overrun and destroyed, if Biden and the radical Left
win. That's what’s going to happen." In
Winston-Salem, North Carolina, "the left is running that [the Democratic] party... You don't want to be dealing with the left. These people are stone cold crazy." In
Reading, Pennsylvania (31 Oct.), he said Philadelphia was just "ransacked by violent mobs and Biden supporters":
"Our
opponents stand with the rioters, they stand with the anarchists, they
stand with the looters... Biden will... [let] rioters roam free and loot your streets and loot your store.
Under Biden, there will be no school, no graduations, no weddings, no
Thanksgiving, no Christmas, no Easter, no 4th of July. There will be no
future for our country."
The theme of the 2020 Republican National Convention, repeated by speaker after speaker, was, "no one will be safe in Joe Biden's America." From
Trump's acceptance speech:
"At
no time before have voters faced a clearer choice between two
parties, two visions, two philosophies, or two agendas. This election
will decide if we save the American dream or whether we allow a
socialist agenda to demolish our cherished destiny... Your vote will
decide whether we
protect law-abiding Americans or whether we give free rein to violent
anarchists, and agitators, and criminals who threaten our citizens. And
this election will decide whether we will defend the American way of
life or whether we will allow a radical movement to completely
dismantle and destroy it... [T]his election is shaping up to be church, work and school versus
rioting, looting, and vandalism, or in the words of Biden and the
Democrats, 'peaceful protesting'... No one will be safe in Biden's America."
There's much one could say about all of this, most of which should go
without saying. If feels absurd to have to point out the profound disconnect between this and any semblance of the reality of politics in 2020. Joe Biden is a
lifelong political enemy of progressives who, for nearly the entirety of his long career in politics, has been essentially a Republican in all but name. He defeated the progressive ticket to become the Democratic nominee precisely because he was conservative, someone who,
it was said, wouldn't alienate "moderate" voters. For that matter, Bernie Sanders, the progressive in the race, was anti-violence, anti-riot and never advocated bringing Armageddon to America either. Trump's attacks, of course, represent a
complete abandonment of the social contract necessary for the functioning of a liberal democracy. If Democrats are these malevolent fiends who pose a direct, even physically direct, threat to people, that's the end of any sort of cooperation, compromise, even discussion with them, and agreeing to be ruled by them for a few years if and when they win elections is expressly off the table. It's outrageous and completely irresponsible to present one's political opponents--particularly today's farcical Democratic party--as violent criminals who, if elected, will do no less than destroy you, your family, your community, your country, everything you hold dear. Trump's attacks aren't defensible on any level or in any way, shape or form.[2]
For our purposes here though, what matters is that Trump spent much of the year telling his followers that Democrats are violent, dangerous, hateful, insane criminals who, if given power, pose an existential threat to them. The kind of people who should be prevented from holding power and resisted by
any means necessary.
Besides a general rationale--virtually a call--for political terrorism, it's also specifically laying the foundation for the Capitol attack.
The other important part of that foundation came alongside this one. Even if Democrats are as irretrievably evil as Trump says, they could still be defeated in an election. Except Trump began telling his followers that Democrats--being, after all, iniquitous villains--were going to rig the election.
It's been a favorite saw of his. He did the same thing in 2016. After suffering an embarrassing loss to rival Ted Cruz in that year's Republican primary race, Trump
claimed that "Ted Cruz didn't win Iowa, he stole it," that Cruz had "illegally" stolen the vote and tweeted that, "based on the fraud committed by Senator Ted Cruz during the Iowa caucus,
either a new election should take place [in Iowa] or Cruz results nullified." In the final stages of the general election campaign, when it looked like he was about to lose to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, Trump would allege there would be voter fraud and a "rigged" election. His many false claims on this subject have
been debunked again and again, but they aren't intended to be true anyway; they've always just been something he's used to stir the shit and explain away any losses--an entirely cynical exercise (after endlessly raving about the 2016 election being "rigged," Trump said he would
accept the results... if he won).
In 2020, multiple states began adopting measures aimed at making voting safer during the covid-19 pandemic. Trump's attacks on them were immediate and relentless. He
initially opposed making it easier to vote on the grounds that the higher turnout this would encourage would mean "you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again." Then he
switched gears:
"'Mail ballots are a very dangerous thing for this country, because
they're cheaters' said Trump, during Tuesday's daily White House
briefing. 'They're fraudulent in many cases'... The president has been arguing mail-in ballots are frequently fraudulent
for the past week, after originally saying voting reforms like
expanded vote-by-mail shouldn't be implemented because of the political ramifications."
David Corn,
writing in Mother Jones (21 April):
"Last week, as the coronavirus continued to burn through the United
States, Trump’s campaign sent out an email from him soliciting
contributions for his reelection effort and made a dangerous accusation:
the 2020 election cannot be trusted. The first line of the email--which
likely was sent to hundreds of thousands, if not more, people on
Republican and conservative email lists--reads, 'It's no secret that the
Democrats are trying to steal the Election out from under me.' The
letter asserts that Democrats have 'been plotting against me from the
very beginning' and are deploying 'fraud' to 'rig the game' because
'they know they can’t beat me at the ballot box.'
Less than seven months from Election Day, Trump was trying to undermine the process and cast doubt on its legitimacy... Trump was inviting his supporters to disbelieve the election results, should he lose."
The
Washington Post (20 May):
"President
Trump on Wednesday escalated his campaign to discredit the integrity of
mail balloting, threatening to 'hold up' federal funding to Michigan
and Nevada in response to the states' plans to increase voting by mail
to reduce the public’s exposure to the cononavirus.
"Without
evidence, Trump called the two states' plans 'illegal,' and he
incorrectly claimed that Michigan's 'rogue' secretary of state is
planning to mail ballots to all voters. The state is planning to send
applications for mail-in ballots to all voters--not ballots themselves.
"'This
was done illegally and without authorization by a rogue Secretary of
State,' Trump tweeted about Michigan. 'I will ask to hold up funding to
Michigan if they want to go down this Voter Fraud path!'"[3]
On 23 June, Trump gave
a speech to the execrable Turning Point USA in Phoenix, Arizona:
"The Democrats are also trying to rig the election... using the China virus, as the excuse for
allowing people not to go to the polls... This will be in my opinion, the most corrupt election in the history of
our country and we cannot let this happen. They want it to happen so
badly... There’s tremendous evidence of fraud, whenever you have mail in ballots."
On 20 August, the same day Joe Biden was to accept the Democratic nomination, Trump gave
a speech in Biden's original hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania."[T]his is just a way they're trying to steal the election and everybody
knows that," he said. "Because the only way they're going to win is by a rigged
election. I really believe that." His story was the same on 24 Aug., when
he told North Carolina Republican delegates
"This is the greatest scam in the history of politics, I think, and I'm talking about beyond our nation... What they're doing is using covid to steal an election. They're using covid to defraud the American people--all of our people--of a fair and free election.... We're gonna' win this election. The only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election."
In
Oshkosh, Wisconsin (17 Aug.):
"[W]e're going to lose this election is if the election is rigged,
remember that. It's the only way we're going to lose this election... The only way they’re going to win is that way."
On 11 Sept., the Washington Post
reported that "more than 100 times this year, President Trump has peddled false claims or imaginary threats about voting by mail." The story quoted some of those claims and tried to correct them. In
Minden, Nevada (12 Sept.), Trump was undeterred:
"[I]t's Democrats. They’re trying to rig this election, at every single place... [W]e have a rigged election. It’s a rigged election. It’s the only way we’re going to lose... They're trying to rig an election, and we can’t let that happen... Be careful of the ballots, that's the only way we're going to lose. Can't have this happen to our country."
Trump
appeared on Fox & Friends (15 Sept.) and said, of Nevada,
"I'm winning that state easily. But the one thing you can't beat, if they cheat on the ballots. Now [the governor of Nevada will] cheat on the ballots, I have no doubt about it... [Y]ou're gonna' see something with these ballots. You're gonna' see corruption like you've never seen. You're gonna' see a rigged election."
Trump wasn't "winning" Nevada, "easily" or otherwise; Biden had led him there all year and, at the time of this tv appearance, Trump was 6
points behind, in 538's polling average.
Trump went on to lose Nevada in November.
General election voting
only began on 18 Sept. All of this--and for every example included, there are dozens more--predated it. Once voting began, Trump's song remained the same. In
Middletown, Pennsylvania (26 Sept.):
"They're gonna' try and steal the election. Look at this crap. The only way they can win Pennsylvania, frankly, is to cheat on the ballots."
At the time he was speaking, Trump
was behind by nearly 5 points in Pennsylvania. As with Nevada, he had never been in the lead in that state:
...and, as with Nevada, he went on to lose Pennsylvania.
In his first
presidential debate with Joe Biden (30 Sept.), he declared, "this is going to be a fraud like you've never seen," and went into an extended--and, as usual,
false--rant against mail-in voting. He also
refused to commit to accepting the election results if he loses, an attack on another front of the cornerstone of liberal democracy: the peaceful transfer of power. He'd made a great show of
declining to do this for months (at the Vice Presidential debate, Pence
did the same), while screaming "fraud" at every turn.
And so on.
Trump rode this demented unicorn right to Election Day and then beyond, telling his followers at every opportunity that the only way he could lose is if Democrats stole the election, but a trip to RealClearPolitics shows that Trump was behind Biden throughout the whole of 2020. At no point did Trump lead the race:
Trump lost the election by, once the counting was over, more than 7 million votes but instead of conceding with whatever dignity he thought he may have left, he laughably
declared victory ("Frankly, we
did win this election") then pitched a two-month fit. "If you count the legal votes, I easily win,"
he raved two days after the election and with counting still underway. "If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us."
"We'll not allow the corruption to steal such an important election, or
any election for that manner. And we can't allow silence, anybody to
silence our voters and manufacture results... There's tremendous litigation going on, and this is a case where they're
trying to steal an election. They're trying to rig an election and we
can’t let that happen."
Election officials in every state
reported within a week there was no indication of any fraud or significant irregularities but Trump and the Republicans dismissed the election results as a "coup" and a "steal" and dragged the matter into the courts, Trump charging his lawyers with trying to find something--
anything--that could be used to support the narrative he'd so tirelessly implanted in the minds of his followers long before a single vote had been cast.
What followed was an extended farce. Rudy Giuliani, Trump's lead lawyer, assembled a collection of ramshackle "witnesses" who claimed to have been involved in the election process or were offering after-the-fact "analyses" of it, all of which supported the conclusion Trump had declared before the process had even started. Giuliani and other Trump underlings would go on television and huff and puff about how these people had signed affidavits "under penalty of perjury" claiming they'd seen fraud and would wave around sheaves of paper, Joe McCarthy-style, to illustrate the point. Trump's lawyers held
an insane press conference at which they claimed the election had been a "massive fraud," claimed "Trump won by a landslide" and, among other things, said there had been an international conspiracy against Trump involving, among others, George Soros, Venezuela, China, Cuba and the ghost of Hugo Chavez! While they were screaming "Fraud! Fraud! Fraud!" in public though, Trump's lawyers were
noticeably avoiding sweeping charges of fraud when standing before a judge--and subject to professional ethics rules--in any of the many, many lawsuits they filed. When their "witnesses" were introduced into the proceedings, it turned out what they said was hearsay, irrelevant and/or not credible. The courts would so rule or their tales would be otherwise debunked and then Giuliani and co., who didn't have anything else, would just
go right on citing them anyway, hauling them out in public for repeat performances, repeatedly filing
the same cases with these same "witnesses" before different judges, hoping for a different outcome. This may be a subject of a future piece but for now, it's enough to say Trump and the Republicans filed
dozens of cases and never won a single one. There was never any legitimate basis for questioning the outcome of the election. The lawyers involved in these cases perpetrated an unconscionable fraud on the courts and the public (and now face a raft of disciplinary actions, potential disbarment and ruinous defamation lawsuits for their activities). In this, they had the assistance of
right-wing media[4] and Trump-sycophant Republican
elected officials, who were singing the same false tune. Trump had only to say these things to have them accepted by the rabid personality cult that has gathered around him since 2015 but as a combined force, he, the lawyers, the congressclowns and the media ghouls deployed the Big Lie technique and managed to convince a depressingly significant number of Republicans, many of whom were indoctrinated by their media not to believe anything ideologically inconvenient long before Trump came along, that the election had been stolen and that Trump had actually won.
The large number of Republican congressclowns who, alongside this, began making a public show of announcing they would oppose certification of the electoral college vote were unforgivably despicable and ripping up the bedrock of American government itself by promoting a fraud claim they knew to be a lie but at least they were, in opposing certification, operating within constitutional strictures. Entirely outside of and contrary to those were the ubiquitous authoritarian schemes, inspired and promoted by Trump, to undo the election results. Rightist figures like Mark Levin
raved about how Democrats were "undermining democracy" while simultaneously pressing Republican legislators in swing-states Trump lost to ignore their own laws and the U.S. Constitution, throw out the election results and declare Trump the winner. Trump approvingly retweeted this, and
began leaning on
state officials to
make it happen. Only days before congress was to certify the electoral college results, he
called Georgia Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger, tried to get the Secretary to allow he and his lawyers access to Georgia voter information that is, by law, confidential; Trump threatened Raffensperger with undefined criminal prosecution if he didn't let Trump "find" the votes Trump needed to win the state.[5] Texas congressclown Louis Gohmert advanced the notion that Vice President Mike Pence, who constitutionally presides over the certification of the electoral college vote, had the power to simply throw out results he didn't like. Gohmert and 11 Trump delegates from Arizona actually sued Pence to try to force him to this course of action. It was
laughed out of court, and Gohmert
suggested the ruling meant Trump's supporters would have to "go to the streets" and be "violent." Pence's refusal to assume these powers he didn't have is why Trump was angry with him and ranting against him on the day of the Capitol attack. It's why the pro-Trump rioters had a noose with Pence's name on it. In the days leading up to that attack, Lin Wood, one of the pro-Trump lawyers behind the legal assault on the election, posted on both
Twitter and
Parler that Pence should be executed. There were straightforward calls to simply overthrow democracy and use the military to declare martial law and keep Trump in power. Longtime Trump ally Roger Stone--a felon Trump had pardoned--had been
promoting this course of action even before the election.
Others soon followed. Trump's former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn--another felon Trump had just pardoned and who had developed a huge following in Trump World--
got in on the act.[6] Kelli Ward, the chair of the Arizona Republican party, took to Twitter
to tell Trump to "cross the Rubicon," a reference to Julius Caesar's infamous river-crossing that led to civil war and Caesar's rise to dictator. Pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell retweeted this meme:
Violent, apocalyptic language was
omnipresent among the Trump base,
talk of secession, civil war, rightist self-portraits as heroic martyr wannabes willing to
lay down their lives for Trump or their country, which, in these formulations, were treated as the same thing. "A senior administration official,"
reported Axios in late December, "said that when Trump is 'retweeting threats of putting politicians in jail, and spends his time talking to conspiracy nuts who openly say declaring martial law is no big deal, it's impossible not to start getting anxious about how this ends.'"
Pummeled for months by everyone to whom they were willing to listen with the toxic fiction that they'd been defrauded, robbed of their wet-dream Maximum Leader by the illicit machinations of a gang of depraved savages who, if given power, posed an existential threat to them--to everything--and with the assumption of power by said savages imminent, Trump's supporters got the message loud and clear.
And some of them acted on it. "The supporters of President Donald Trump who rioted in the US Capitol
building on Wednesday had been openly planning for weeks on both
mainstream social media and the pro-Trump internet,"
reported Buzzfeed (6 Jan.). "On forums like
TheDonald, a niche website formed after Reddit banned the subreddit of
the same name, they promised violence against lawmakers, police, and
journalists if Congress did not reject the results of the 2020 election."
"According to Advance Democracy, a nonprofit research organization,
all corners of the social web were signaling imminent violence in the
days leading up to the riot.
"'On TheDonald, more than 50% of the
top posts on January 4, 2021, about the January 6th Electoral College
certification featured unmoderated calls for violence in the top five
responses,' the organization found... This was also the case on Parler..."
The name of the rally preceding the attack on the Capitol was "
Stop the Steal," the "steal," of course, being the false and off-the-scale inflammatory characterization of the results of a democratic election. Those who attended could protest what was going to happen but with congressional certification of the electoral college results imminent--only hours away--the assembled crowd was entirely incapable of doing anything to "stop" it except by force of arms.
Yet that's exactly what speaker after speaker at the rally--at a lectern upon which was posted the words "Save America"--told them to do.
Trump adviser
Kimberly Guilfoyle, for example:
"Look
at all of us out here--God-loving, freedom-loving, liberty-loving
patriots that will not let them steal this election... [Trump] will
continue to save America. We will continue to stand for President Trump,
stand with him and for this country. We will not allow the liberals and
the Democrats to steal our dream or steal our election."
"[W]e are not going to let the socialists rip the heart out of our
country," Alabama congressclown Mo Brooks
raved. "We are not going to let them continue to corrupt
our elections and steal from us our God-given right to control our
nation's destiny!" He'd characterized certification of the election
results as support for "election theft" and a "vote to turn America into
a godless, amoral, dictatorial, repressed and socialist nation on the
decline."
"Today is the day American patriots start takin' down names
and kickin' ass! Now, our ancestors sacrificed their blood, their
sweat, their tears, their fortunes and sometimes their lives to give us,
their descendants, an American that is the greatest nation in world
history. Now, I have a question for you: are you willing to do the
same?... Are you willing to do what it takes to fight for America?!"
Later that evening, Brooks would try to blame the attack on the Capitol on anti-fascist activists.
And, of course, the biggest and most important speaker was Donald Trump himself. Trump had
heavily promoted the "Stop the Steal" event for weeks and he brought
his blowtorch:
"We beat them four years ago! We surprised them. We took them by surprise and this year, they rigged an election. They rigged it like they've never rigged an election before... All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical left Democrats, which is what they're doing and stolen by the fake news media! That's what they've done and what they're doing! We will never give up! We will never concede! It doesn't happen! You don't concede when there's theft involved! Our country has had enough! We will not take it anymore and that's what this is all about. To use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with, we will stop the steal!"
***
"You could take Third World countries. Just take a look, take Third World countries. Their elections are more honest than what we've been going through in this country. It's a disgrace. It's a disgrace... There's never been anything like this. We will not let them silence your voices! We're not going to let it happen! Not going to let it happen."
***
"I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do... He has the absolute right to do it. We're supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our constitution, and protect our constitution... All Vice-President Pence has to do is send it back to the States to recertify, and we become president... I just spoke to Mike. I said, 'Mike, that doesn't take courage. What takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage,' and then we're stuck with a president who lost the election by a lot, and we have to live with that for four more years. We're just not going to let that happen!"
***
"We're gathered together in the heart of our nation's Capitol for one very, very basic and simple reason, to save our democracy... They've used the pandemic as a way of defrauding the people in a proper election... [W]e're going to have somebody in there that should not be in there and our country will be destroyed, and we're not going to stand for that!"
***
"[T]his year, using the pretext of the China virus and the scam of mail-in ballots, Democrats attempted the most brazen and outrageous election theft. There's never been anything like this. It's a pure theft in American history, everybody knows it... [Y]ou'll never take back our country with weakness! You have to show strength, and you have to be strong!"
****
"As you know the media is constantly asserted the outrageous lie that there was no evidence of widespread fraud. You ever see these people? 'While there is no evidence of fraud…' Oh, really?... We will not be intimidated into accepting the hoaxes and the lies that we've been forced to believe over the past several weeks! We've amassed overwhelming evidence about a fake election! This is the presidential election!"
Trump spent extended periods of his speech reciting his "overwhelming evidence," a string of false, already-debunked claims--many debunked nearly 2 months earlier.
"We love you! We love you! We love you! We love you! We love you! We love you! We love you! We love you! So when you hear, when you hear, 'While there is no evidence to prove any wrongdoing,' this is the most fraudulent thing anybody's… This is a criminal enterprise! This is a criminal enterprise and the press will say, and I'm sure they won't put any of that on there..."
***
"If we allow this group of people to illegally take over
our country, because it's illegal when the votes are illegal, when the
way they got there is illegal, when the States that vote are given false
and fraudulent information."
***
"We won! We won in a landslide! This was a landslide! They said, 'It's not American to challenge the election.' This is the most corrupt election in the history, maybe of the world!... We must stop the steal and then we must ensure that such outrageous election fraud never happens again, can never be allowed to happen again..."
After his speech,[7] Trump retreated to the White House and watched the Capitol attack on television. Trump
denounced Mike Pence in an angry tweet, saying the Vice President "didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution," while the Vice President and his family--in the Capitol at the time--were on the run from Trump cultists loudly intent on murdering him (the cultists came
within seconds of catching him too). Trump never even bothered to call the Vice President to check on him or his family,
reported the Washington Post (12 Jan.).
"Marc Short, Pence's chief of staff, eventually called the White House to
let them know that Pence and his team were okay, after receiving no
outreach from
the president or anyone
else in the White House."
While 5 people died, Trump
was reportedly delighted by the attack. The scene, as described to Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) by White House aides, was that Trump was "walking around the White House confused about why other people on his
team weren't as excited as he was... He was delighted." Displaying criminal negligence, he shooed away aides who were pleading with him to do something. Mark Meadows, Trump's chief of staff, appealed to Ivanka Trump, hoping she could reason with him. Senate Republican leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)
did the same with Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.
"But as senators and House members trapped inside the U.S. Capitol on
Wednesday begged for immediate help during the siege, they struggled to
get through to the president, who--safely ensconced in the West Wing--was too busy watching fiery TV images of the crisis unfolding around
them to act or even bother to hear their pleas... Several Republican members of Congress also called White House aides,
begging them to get Trump's attention and have him call for the violence
to end. The lawmakers reiterated that they had been loyal Trump
supporters and were even willing to vote against the electoral college
results--but were now scared for their lives, officials said."
Yeah.
Eventually...
"[A]
small group of aides--including Ivanka Trump, White House press
secretary Kayleigh McEnany and Meadows--was imploring Trump to speak
out against the violence. Meadows's staff had prompted him to go see the
president, with one aide telling the chief of staff before he entered
the Oval Office, 'They are going to kill people.'
"Shortly
after 2:30 p.m., the group finally persuaded Trump to send a tweet:
'Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement,' he wrote. 'They
are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!'
"But
the Twitter missive was insufficient, and the president had not wanted
to include the final instruction to 'stay peaceful,' according to one
person familiar with the discussions.
"Less
than an hour later, aides persuaded Trump to send a second, slightly
more forceful tweet: 'I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to
remain peaceful,' he wrote. 'No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of
Law & Order--respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue.
Thank you!'"
At no point during the attack did Trump express any concern for the congressmen, senators, journalists, innocent bystanders and others caught up in the melee, or the active insurrection his oath of office required him to resist. Besides the absurdity of tweeting "stay peaceful" and "remain peaceful" to a violent mob occupying the Capitol--which at no point since it breached the Capitol grounds had been peaceful--these messages sound more like something born of concerns over legal liability. Trump "
rebuffed and resisted" activating the National Guard in the face of the chaos. Mike Pence, probably exceeding his authority,
had to do so.
It was hours into the siege before Trump agreed to create a brief video address to the rioters. He flattered the terrorists--his terrorists--and continued to repeat his "stolen election" lies (an endorsement of their cause). Told them he loved them.
It was appalling:
"I
know your pain. I know you're hurt. We had an election that was stolen
from us. It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially
the other side. But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We
have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law
and order. We don't want anybody hurt. It's a very tough period of time.
There's never been a time like this where such a thing happened, where
they could take it away from all of us. From me, from you, from out
country. This was a fraudulent election. But we can't play into the
hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you.
You're very special. You've seen what happens, you see the way others
are treated that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel. But go
home and go home in peace."
And with Trump, it always gets worse: A couple of hours later, Trump
took to Twitter again, justified the rioters actions and openly celebrated them as heroes.
"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. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!"
Sentiment that was offered over the corpses of Americans who pointlessly died for nothing more than this malignant narcissist's lies and the decision of elected officials and other opinion-shapers on the right to jump on the gravy-train and go along with them, feed them and on them, feed the hate and, themselves, lie to their people about everything. Trump bears the largest responsibility. Right-wing media have told their viewers for years that everyone not of the far-right is utterly depraved but Trump put the most extreme version of that narrative, that they pose an existential threat, into the mouth of the President of the United States. Right-wing media have worked for years to undermine confidence in the electoral process but it was Trump who told his followers Dems could only win by stealing the election,
were going to steal it then spent months saying they
had, in fact, stolen it. That he has been allowed to remain in office for so much as a minute beyond what it would have taken to remove him is an indication of the extent to which the U.S. is becoming a failed state. Simply put, if this doesn't justify the immediate and uncontroversial impeachment and removal of a chief executive, Americans may as well repeal the impeachment process from the constitution. But all who jumped on the Trump Train and have so relentlessly played his game are indicted by what happened.
It continues. Republicans and right-wing media cheered on the rioters as patriotic revolutionaries in real time,
later insisted on validating the rioters in terms similar to Trump, downplayed their violence then played it up when obscenely positing that it was actually leftist anti-fascist activists who carried
out the attack, denied Trump's speech during the rally was incendiary,
narrowly focused on that speech so as to try to use the evidence of
advanced planning by some of the rioters to exonerate Trump, as if the previous
year never happened--there's no end to it.[8]
And yet it must end. Legally, "incitement" is a specific crime, one required to clear such a high evidentiary bar that it's virtually impossible to successfully prosecute. If Trump was ever charged with it--and he won't be--and it went to trial in a regular court--and it never will--he'd more than likely be acquitted. And yet Trump
did incite this entire situation. None of it needed to happen and without his lies, none of it
would have happened. One of the many reasons I wrote this article is that far too many people are
far too unclear on this point. That can't go on. If it does, what happened at the Capitol is the mildest teaser of what's to come.
--j.
---
[1] This was the first time the Capitol had been overrun since the British besieged it in 1814. More than 155 years after the Confederacy was defeated and decades after the civil rights movement, the Confederate battle flag
entered the Capitol in hideous triumph.
[2] Trump did talk--and talk and talk and talk, as he tends to do--about
actual policy during his campaign. A lot of what he said about his
record was false and while he landed some solid blows on Biden, a lot of
what he said about the former Vice President was bullshit as well but policy debate and
discussion is not only appropriate in a political campaign, it's what
such campaigns should be all about. While Trump's lies about such things undeniably helped fuel what happened, it was up to the Biden campaign or the press to correct them, just as it was up to the Trump campaign or the press to correct Biden's lies. In this analysis, I've set aside policy talk, both real and fictional, and have made no effort to estimate its contribution to the Capitol attack.
[3] The Post story points to the fundamental fraud Trump was
perpetuating with this; all available evidence points to mail-in ballot
fraud being virtually non-existent, Republicans across over a dozen
states--and even the Trump campaign itself--were encouraging people to
vote via mail-in ballots; and, of course, Trump himself had voted via
mail-in ballot in Florida's presidential primary only weeks earlier. He
would
go on to vote by mail-in ballot in the Florida congressional primaries in August. He'd voted the
same way in New York in 2018.
"Others
in Trump’s inner circle have voted absentee, too, including first lady
Melania Trump. Vice President Mike Pence and White House press secretary
Kayleigh McEnany, who has voted by mail 11 times in 10 years, the Tampa Bay Times reported."
[4] In the two weeks after Fox News called the election for Biden, Fox
cast doubt on the election results or pushed conspiracy theories about same
nearly 800 times. It consumed the network and has continued to do so. Fox personalities would
subsequently attempt to justify overturning the election by arguing that so many Republicans feel it was rigged!
No,
really.
[5] Raffensperger and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp were hardcore Trumpanzee Republicans, endorsed by Trump in their respective elections and utterly obsequious to him but when they wouldn't back his "fraud" fraud, they learned the hard way--as so many have before--that, with Trump, loyalty is strictly a one-way street; the "president" to whom they'd so servilely bowed down essentially declared them excommunicate and hurled ugly invective at them at every opportunity.
[6] MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell--yes, that asshat you see on the tv ads all the time hawking overpriced pillows--is a rabid
Trump supporter.
"'God chose Donald Trump for eight years, not four,' [Lindell] said, adding that
'even if Biden is inaugurated, there’s no statute of limitations [on
election theft]. Yes, I will keep investigating this, [even if he's
sworn in], and I'm not going to stop trying to get this out there to the
American people.'"
On 19 Dec., Lindell tweeted to Trump, "please impose martial law" in the 7 swing states Trump lost. Even after the attack on the Capitol, Lindell
went into a meeting with Trump with notes suggesting "martial law if necessary." The notes were captured by a photographer as Lindell arrived at the Oval Office.
[7] Some Republican commentators, in an effort to exonerate Trump, have asserted Trump, in his speech, told his followers to protest peacefully. He didn't. What he said, in his sole throwaway reference to "peaceful," was "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol
building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard." But that isn't an endorsement of a peaceful protest and any effort to read it as such requires entirely ignoring everything else Trump said.
[8] The toxic sewer that is the right-wing media that spawned
Trump--the parasitic organism that wags the tail that wags the
Republican dog--will be a problem facing American liberal democracy long
after
Trump is gone.
