How the Trump term had to end
Even as this week’s attempted coup unfolded, no serious or experienced public voice has expressed surprise that the disastrous presidency of Donald Trump now ends in political mob violence. Left, right and center, we all knew it might come to this.
The people who know Trump best have delivered a final, damning verdict.
“The president undermined American democracy baselessly for months. As a result, he’s culpable for this siege, and an utter disgrace,” said Tom Bossert, who was Trump’s Homeland Security adviser.
“This is how election results are disputed in a banana republic — not our democratic republic,” said ex-President George W. Bush in a statement. I’m appalled by the reckless behavior of some political leaders since the election & by the lack of respect shown today for our institutions, traditions, and law enforcement.”
The appalling mob violence incited by Trump was intended to complement the political coup taking place inside the Capitol, orchestrated on the president’s behalf by Republican members of Congress. Their specific goal and intention was to engineer a vote that would invalidate millions of votes cast for President-elect Biden in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin and other states.
An attempted coup that is clumsy, illegal and unlikely to succeed is still an attack on democracy and an appalling scandal of historic dimensions. As critics have warned, the real world doesn’t give us a Hollywood cinematic moment, with ominous music signaling that we’ve arrived at a historic breaking point.
Instead, history gives us a former gameshow host who tells lies each and every day, deliberately inciting followers to violence, democracy be damned. It gives us ex-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, stirring up the mob by calling for “trial by combat,” in a macabre replay of the 1992 riot in front of City Hall, when the mayor shouted obscenities at a mob of angry cops, who then stormed the seat of government.
And history gives us ambitious, deeply unprincipled toadies like Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, who are jockeying for power by repeating Trump’s falsehoods about a supposedly stolen election.
Michael Steele, a former lieutenant governor of Maryland who served as chairman of the Republican National Committee, has compared the likes of Hawley, Cruz and other Trump enablers to the ancient Egyptian servants who were ritually killed, mummified and entombed along with their pharaoh, the better to serve him for all eternity.
Some of Trump’s closest allies declined to take this week’s final step into insurrection.
“The voters, the courts and the states have all spoken. If we overrule them it would damage our republic forever,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told his fellow senators at the start of the farcical proceedings. “If this election were overturned by mere allegations by the losing side, our republic would enter a death spiral.”
Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, the 2012 Republican nominee for president, told CNN what he had been planning to say on the floor of the Senate: “We gather today due to a selfish man’s injured pride and the outrage of his supporters whom he has deliberately misinformed for the past two months and stirred to action this very morning.”
A statement from the next president, Joe Biden, was crisp and to the point.
“To storm the Capitol, to smash windows, to occupy offices…threatening the safety of duly elected officials — it’s not protest, it’s insurrection,” Biden said.
The National Association of Manufacturers, a conservative business alliance, released an angry statement that pulled no punches. “The outgoing president incited violence in an attempt to retain power, and any elected leader defending him is violating their oath to the Constitution,” the group said. “Vice President Pence, who was evacuated from the capital, should seriously consider working with the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to preserve democracy.”
Under the 25th Amendment, a majority of the Cabinet can remove the president immediately. It’s not likely to happen, but for a prominent conservative business group to call for it is one more indicator of how serious Trump’s attempted coup truly is.
My friend Bill Grueskin, a former Wall Street Journal editor, departed from his normal even-keeled commentary to say: “Trump’s authoritarian instincts and eagerness to overturn institutional norms have been obvious to anyone who has read a history book. Anyone who has tolerated this, for this long, bears responsibility — and owes the country an apology, as well as an exit from public life.”
After the arrests have been made and the criminals prosecuted, and after Trump finally leaves the White House, we’ll all need to ask ourselves what, if anything, we have done to preserve our democracy. The failed Trump presidency is a mirror held up to our republic — and an urgent reminder it can be shattered if we give power to men who are clearly and obviously unfit and unworthy.