We’ll remember Trump for two things: His surprise win in ’16, shameful exit
Forget everything else. If President Donald Trump is ousted for anything, it should be for inciting a riot. But it may be too late for that.
His term is up next week. And if he doesn’t have to go home, he can’t stay here.
But he is leaving under a cloud. His remarks to thousands of supporters outside the White House led directly to the mob storming the Capitol and shutting down the Congress.
After members of the House and Senate fled, the rioters trashed the place. Others roamed the corridors of the building trashing democracy. People died.
In a mockery of democracy, one rioter posed in House Speaker Nancy’s Pelosi’s office chair, his feet up on her desk. Another defiantly raised his fist from the rostrum in the House chamber where shortly before Vice President Mike Pence had begun deliberations over the Electoral College vote.
The thousands of pro-Trump rioters turned Washington into a banana republic.
“I have not felt this sad for our county since President Kennedy was killed,” one longtime politico said to me.
If not stopped the rioters would probably have burned the place down the way arsonists set fire to the Reichstag (Parliament) in 1933 Berlin. That crime led directly to the end of any semblance of German democracy and established the Nazi dictatorship.
And Trump not only instigated the riot but watched it as well. He did not call for any restraint until the siege was practically over. And then, in his brief remarks, he still complained about a rigged election, which helped start the riot in the first place. He did not do much better the next day either.
Trump acted like the arsonist who, after setting fire to the tenement, innocently joins the spectators to watch people scramble for their lives as the building burns.
And after the siege was over, and the damage done to the country, Trump announced that he was in favor of a peaceful transition of power.
It was too little too late. Trump ruined his presidency. His accomplishments — and there were many — will be forgotten. He will be remembered largely for two things — the surprising way he won the White House and the shameful way he left it.
It is true that Trump was frequently and unscrupulously hounded by Democrats, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a corrupted media for four long years. It is also true that they looked upon Trump supporters with disdain.
Also, it is the same sick media, now demanding Trump’s resignation over the siege, that looked the other way when antifa and BLM looters and arsonists wrecked Democrat-run cities.
While an angry Trump and his supporters were incensed over the media double standard, and with the “rigged” outcome of the election, there still was no excuse for attacking the heart of democracy, which is what they, at Trump’s urging, did.
Meanwhile, the country is lucky that no foreign power took advantage of the chaos and disarray that Trump created. Think what would have happened if a handful of bomb carrying Islamic terrorists had breached the Capitol along with the mob.
America is most vulnerable to aggression, foreign or domestic, during the transition of power from one president to the next. This is especially true now when the incoming president is replacing the incumbent he just defeated in a bitter and controversial election.
Terrorists and other enemies of the United States will no doubt be studying how easy it was for rioters to breach security, take over the Capitol and shut democracy down. Could the White House be next?
Trump’s delusional performance was so bad that he nearly accomplished the impossible — and that was to make Joe Biden look presidential.
Speaking of delusion, Biden did not do much better when he played the race card. Biden said that if the rioters were BLM rioters rather than Trump’s “mob of thugs” they would have been treated differently, presumably more harshly.
Perhaps in Biden’s view, equal justice means that BLM should have been allowed to thrash the Capitol the way Trump’s thugs did.
This is a big moment for Biden. Biden needs to drop his attacks and reach out to the millions of law-abiding Trump supporters. They may be opponents, but they are not enemies. They are Americans, and they love America, too.