The day Trump brought US democracy to its knees
‘ If the Democratic Party wants to stand with anarchists, agitators, rioters, looters and flag burners, that is up to them. But I as your president will not be part of it. The Republican Party will remain the voice of the patriotic heroes who keep America safe.”
— Donald Trump, Aug 28, 2020 Wednesday was a horrifying and shameful moment in American history. I’ve covered attempted coups in many countries around the world, and now I’m finally covering one in the United States.
Mr Trump and his enablers talk a good game about patriotism. They denounced president Barack Obama for sometimes not wearing a flag lapel pin. They criticised Colin Kaepernick for protesting against police brutality by taking a knee rather than standing during the national anthem — and then Mr Trump incited a mob on Wednesday to invade the United States Capitol. The rioters encountered a minimal police response, not the kind that Black Lives Matter protesters received.
Many of those pro-Trump rioters probably dispute the idea of white privilege. But the fact that they were allowed to overrun the police and invade the Senate and House chambers was evidence of that privilege.
“We are witnessing absolute banana republic crap in the United States Capitol right now,” Representative Mike Gallagher, Wisconsin, tweeted, adding an appeal to Mr Trump: “You need to call this off.”
What the pro-Trump rioters attacked was not only a building but also the constitution, the electoral system, our democratic process. They humiliated the United States before the world and left America’s enemies chortling. They will be remembered as Benedict Arnolds.
“Our democracy is under unprecedented assault, unlike anything we have seen in modern times,” President-elect Joe Biden said. He described it as “an assault on the citadel of liberty, the Capitol itself.”
“Our Constitution was the product of centuries of tradition, wisdom and experience. … A radical movement is attempting to demolish this treasured and precious inheritance. Left-wing mobs have torn down statues of our founders, desecrated our memorials.”
Mr Trump, Sept 17, 2020 Patriotism is not about words. It is not about waving flags or singing America the Beautiful. It is about struggling, imperfectly and inadequately, to make this country we love a better one.
It is not about a president supporting an illegal insurrection or trying to win another term. Whatever a president’s rhetoric, he betrays the constitution when he oversees a campaign to overturn a free election guaranteed by that constitution, and when he galvanises rioters to overpower our democratic process.
Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, isn’t someone I usually agree with. But he was right when he finally stood up to Mr Trump and warned the Senate that legislative moves to overrule voters by excluding some states in the Electoral College count “would damage our republic forever”.
The bankruptcy of the extremist GOP position was evident as Senator Kelly Loeffler of Georgia joined in sabotaging the election by trying to negate the Arizona vote. Having just been rejected by voters, she in turn rejected voters.
“President Trump is promoting national unity through renewing understanding of and commitment to America’s shared founding principles.”
— White House “fact sheet,” Nov 2, 2020 After a year in which Mr Trump presented himself as the law-and-order president and denounced protesters as rioters, he summoned supporters to Washington and unleashed them as rioters on the Capitol as votes were counted. “Be there, will be wild,” he tweeted.
“Let’s have trial by combat,” his lawyer Rudy Giuliani told a rally of Trump supporters shortly before the attack on the Capitol. So pro-Trump crowds dismantled security fences and invaded the Capitol. You can call them rioters or terrorists or coup plotters, but they were not “Making America Great Again”.
In Portland, Oregon, last summer, I saw federal authorities periodically use tear gas even against protesters who were peaceful and outside — so it was astonishing to see waves of protesters invade the Capitol with almost no response. Leftist protests sometimes did become violent in Portland and other cities, and when that happened Joe Biden repeatedly denounced them; he stood up to his base. Mr Trump in contrast incited violence by his base and on Wednesday encouraged his supporters to head to the Capitol.
There have been whispers that Mr Trump might try to take advantage of disorder at home or a crisis abroad by invoking the Insurrection Act and deploy military forces to interrupt the presidential transition. We should all be on alert and remember the warning of every living former US defence secretary that the military should stay out of such a crisis. Mr Trump’s assaults on truth are not as visible as assaults on the Capitol, but they are also damaging. Some 62% of Republicans say they do not accept Mr Biden’s election, and that is toxic for democracy and lays the groundwork for this kind of violence.
Mr Trump and other Republicans talk about personal responsibility and obeying the law. So Tanya McDowell, a homeless African American mum, was imprisoned after misleading school officials about where she lived so that she could send her young son to a better school district and give him a better life. But, hypocritically, Mr Trump fails to take any responsibility after a term in which he has lost the House, the presidency and the Senate — and then unleashes mobs to terrorise the Capitol.
History usually catches up to autocrats and thugs.
They end up in prison, exile or disgrace, whining about the unfairness of it all, monuments to the perils of demagoguery and authoritarianism.
Nicholas D Kristof is a columnist with The New York Times.