Make truth matter again
The United States has 2,500 troops in Afghanistan. By Wednesday, it is expected to have up to 25,000 in Washington, D.C.
That’s right — 2,500 troops to serve as a counter-terrorism force against the remnants of groups like al- Qaida, and 25,000 to protect our own democracy against the threat of another domestic insurrection staged by supporters of President Donald Trump.
That should be a sobering reality to anyone who would continue to defend a president who incited a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6 in a failed effort to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory over Mr. Trump in the Electoral College. It should underscore — perhaps most of all for the U.S. Senate — what’s at stake as the nation prepares for two major events: the inauguration of Mr. Biden and the impeachment trial of Mr. Trump.
The show of force is tragically necessary after the riot by Mr. Trump’s supporters, which left five people, including a Capitol police officer, dead. The FBI has warned of the potential for more violence this week, both in Washington and across the nation.
It’s critical to keep in mind that Mr. Trump did not accomplish this with
To comment: just one speech that day. The violence was months in the making, as he and his allies in Congress and right-wing media hammered home the big lie that the election was rife with fraud and irregularities.
It was not. Mr. Trump and his lawyers had months to make that case in court, and failed at every turn. It was all just one big lie from a president who, by The Washington Post’s latest count, made 30,259 false and misleading statements over the course of 1,455 days in office.
Yet millions of Americans have come to believe that lie, validated by many Republicans in Congress who either insist it is true or, like New York’s own Elise Stefanik of Schuylerville, straddle the gap between fact and fiction by suggesting these lies are just open questions that people deserve to have Congress “discuss.”
Ms. Stefanik’s game didn’t fool the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School, which removed her last week from its Board of Advisors. Ms. Stefanik predictably shrugged this off with a right-wing trope of liberal persecution of conservatives, when in reality Harvard’s ouster of her was based on her promotion of outright lies aimed at the foundations of our electoral process.
To call this, as she does, a conservative rite of passage and a badge of honor only reveals her as unfit for any role in our nation’s politics, including a seat in Congress. She should resign, as should all the House members who are purposely perpetuating this insidious lie designed to divide our nation.
If their counterparts in the Senate are in search of a more courageous example, they should look instead to the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump. That is leadership. That is honoring one’s oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution against a domestic enemy.
Mr. Trump’s steady diet of lies has poisoned this nation to the point where a significant percentage of the population, and a shocking majority of Republicans, have come to believe the worst of them. The only antidote is the truth. The impeachment trial of Mr. Trump offers Senate Republicans the chance to affirm it, to make facts matter again, and to ensure that Mr.
Trump can never return to office.
And if they need further inspiration, they need only look up and down the corridors of the citadel of American democracy, and out the windows there, to see the legacy Mr. Trump is leaving us: 25,000 troops, protecting us from him, and his mob.