Trump maintains grip on Republican Party despite violent insurrection
WASHINGTON — As a raging band of his supporters scaled walls, smashed windows, used flagpoles to beat police and breached the U.S. Capitol in a bid to overturn a free and fair election, Donald Trump’s excommunication from the Republican Party seemed a near certainty, his name tarnished beyond repair.
Some of his closest allies, including Fox News Channel hosts like Laura Ingraham, warned that day that Trump was “destroying” his legacy. “All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough,” said his friend and confidant Sen. Lindsey Graham. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader
The president’s remarks launched the start of daylong remembrance, drawing a contrast between the truth of what happened and the false narratives that persist about the Capitol assault, including the continued refusal by many Republicans to affirm that Biden won the 2020 election.
“We must be absolutely clear about what is true and what is a lie,” Biden said. “The former president of the United States of America has spread a web of lies about the 2020 election.“
He said: “We are in a battle for the soul of America.”
“I did not seek this fight, brought to this Capitol one year from today. But I will not shrink from it either. I will stand in this breach, I will defend this nation. I will allow no one to place a dagger at the throat of this who worked closely with Trump to dramatically reshape the judiciary, later denounced him as “morally responsible” for the attack.
But one year later, Trump is hardly a leader in exile. Instead, he is the undisputed leader of the Republican Party and a leading contender for the 2024 presidential nomination.
Trump is positioning himself as a powerful force in the primary campaigns that will determine who gets the party’s backing heading into the fall midterms, when control of Congress, governor’s offices and state election posts are at stake. At least for now, there’s little stopping Trump as he makes unbending fealty to his vision of the GOP a litmus test democracy.”
Republican leaders and lawmakers largely stayed away from the day’s events, dismissing them as overly politicized — some continuing to spread false claims about the election.
From Florida, Trump showed no signs of letting go, and in fact revived his unfounded attack on the elections. He accepted no responsibility for egging on the crowd that day. Instead, in one of several statements Thursday, he said Biden was trying to “further divide America. This political theater is all just a distraction.”
Even among congressional Republicans who condemned the attack in the days afterward, most have stayed loyal to the former president.
Rep. Liz Cheney, chair of the House committee investigating for success in primary races, giving ambitious Republicans little incentive to cross him.
“Let’s just say I’m horrendously disappointed,” said former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, a longtime Republican who now serves on the advisory committee of the Renew America Movement, a group trying to wrest the party away from Trump’s control.
“His ego was never going to let him accept defeat and go quietly into the night,” she added. “But what I am surprised by is how deferential so many of the Republican elected officials” have been.
Rather than expressing any contrition for the events of Jan. 6, Trump often seems emboldened and has continued to lie the attack and one of the few GOP lawmakers attending the Capitol ceremonies, warned that “the threat continues.” Trump, she said, “continues to make the same claims that he knows caused violence on January 6.”
“Unfortunately, too many in my own party are embracing the former president, are looking the other way or minimizing the danger,” she told NBC’s “Today.” “That’s how democracies die. We simply cannot let that happen.”
She was joined by her father Dick Cheney, the former vice president and now a respected Republican Party elder, who was greeted warmly by several Democrats. He stood with her, the only Republicans seen, for a moment of silence on the House floor. about his 2020 election loss. He frequently — and falsely — says the “real” insurrection was on Nov. 3, the date of the 2020 election when Democrat Joe Biden won in a 306-232 Electoral College victory and by a 7 million popular vote margin.
Federal and state election officials and Trump’s own attorney general have said there is no credible evidence the election was tainted. The former president’s allegations of fraud were also roundly rejected by courts, including by judges Trump appointed.
Undaunted, Trump is preparing for another run for the White House in 2024, and polls suggest that, at the moment, he would easily walk away with the GOP nomination.