Accountability is coming for Trump
Donald Trump hasn’t accepted responsibility for last week’s insurrectionist riot by his supporters at the U. S. Capitol.
That’s no surprise. He’s the president who said the phone call that got him impeached ( the first time) was “perfect.” He’s the president who said about COVID- 19, “I don’t take responsibility at all.” He’s the one who claimed, after losing the election, that he won in a landslide.
So it was no surprise when he said Tuesday, before getting into a helicopter near the White House, that the speech he gave urging his supporters to march on the Capitol building and “fight” to overturn a “stolen” election was “totally appropriate.” And further, that any move by Democrats to impeach him because of it is a “witch hunt” that presents “a tremendous danger” because of the anger it will stir up among his supporters.
Speaking later in Texas, he said the 25th Amendment ( which can remove a president from office for incapacity) posed no threat to him, but would come back to haunt the “Biden administration.” He again denied responsibility for the riot, saying he wants “no violence.”
Like I said, no surprise. This is not a man who ever accepts accountability. But for perhaps the first time in his life, accountability is coming for him anyway.
He and many of his supporters have been kicked off Twitter and Facebook. Trump’s online fundraising platform has been shut down. Parler, the Trump-friendly social media network where many of the Jan. 6 rioters co- ordinated the attack, has been taken out of app stores and lost its web server hosting services. The PGA Tour has cancelled all events planned at Trump golf properties. Deutsche Bank, which has been Trump’s biggest lender in recent years, has said it will no longer do business with him.
Social media, golf, access to money. These are things that have long seemed more important to Trump than virtually anything else. Now lost.
And of course it’s a fairly good bet that by the end of Wednesday, he will become the first president to be impeached a second time — and face the prospect of being banned from holding office in the future, potentially neutralizing the political threat he might still present.
Members of his cabinet and administration have resigned in protest over the riot. And his partisan supporters have been publicly and privately telling him it’s over. “Our time is coming to an end,” Vice- President Mike Pence told a conference call of governors Tuesday. “We all bear responsibility to reflect on the rhetoric leading up to the abhorrent violence of last week, including the president,” Ronna McDaniel, a Trump loyalist who heads the Republican National Committee, reportedly said in response to Trump’s claim his speech was “totally appropriate.” According to a report by Axios, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who had been supporting Trump’s claims of a stolen election, told him on a private phone call Monday, “Stop it. It’s over. The election is over.” Rep. Liz Cheney, part of the Republican leadership of the House of Representatives, said she would vote to impeach Trump: “There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the constitution.”
McCarthy was reported by the New York Times to be canvassing his caucus about whether to call for Trump’s resignation, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was said by the Times to be privately “pleased” about the impending impeachment, hoping it would rid the party of Trump and Trumpism.
The chickens have come home to roost astonishingly quickly for a president who spent his entire term defying norms, fabricating constantly and shamelessly, and stomping on the guardrails protecting the rule of law and American democratic integrity with apparent immunity.
It’s not hard to see how the shock to the American system is finally pushing it toward accountability. At a press conference Tuesday, the U. S. Attorney’s Office said it has 170 case files open related to the attack on the Capitol, and has already charged about 70. The law enforcement agency is warning of more Trump- inspired violence in the days ahead, saying “armed protests” are planned for all 50 states and the District of Columbia in the lead- up to Joe Biden’s inauguration Jan. 20. A situational report from the FBI in the lead- up to the Jan. 6 riot painted a picture of potential “war,” according to a report in the Washington Post, including detailed plans for how to attack and navigate inside the legislative building and instructions from planners to “get violent … We get our president or we die. NOTHING else will achieve this goal.”
In the moment while it was happening, the storming of the Capitol was a shocking sight, showing how quickly the seat of American government could be overrun. But in the aftermath, it has come to seem a matter of mere luck that the death toll remained at five. Many of those inside the building were armed. They brought zip- tie handcuffs and chemical agents. They were looking for Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and talking about executing them. Some brought bombs and Molotov cocktails.
Trump invited his supporters to come to Washington on Jan. 6to stop Congress from accepting the electoral college results showing Biden’s victory. They did, and they tried. He promised it would get “wild.” It did. He told them to “fight.” They did.
Now he is claiming it had nothing to do with him. Reportedly, behind closed doors, he’s trying to blame “antifa” leftists for the violence. In public comments Tuesday, he said “I want no violence.” And in the next breath, he suggested efforts to hold him accountable might lead to violence.
He will almost certainly be impeached, for “inciting an insurrection,” a permanent mark in the history books whether the Senate convicts him or not. He has lost his favourite propaganda platforms. His businesses are being shunned. Horrifyingly, he might turn out to be right that his supporters pose further threat of violence. But he isn’t sidestepping accountability.