Trump and the siege of Washington
If you’re reading this 100 years from now and you want to know whether the Siege of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was as bad as the history books say, you should know this: it was.
Five people died – one was shot to death, a police officer was fatally injured, and three others succumbed to medical emergencies. Still, it could have been worse. Had just one of the insurrectionists had a gun, or if police had indiscriminately opened fire, the results would have been catastrophic.
Or the rioters might have torched the place. A lighted match, a smuggled fire bomb – who knows how that would have turned out. The Nazis lit up the German parliament in the 1930s. The Reichstag Fire paved the way for the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler and the slaughter of millions.
Now, it’s not usually a good idea to bring Hitler into the picture. Hitler killed millions; he was uniquely evil.
Donald Trump is just uniquely diabolical. In the history of the American presidency, there’s never been anyone like him. It’s not even close. Richard Nixon was villainous but he was still capable of shame. He resigned the presidency, under intense pressure from his fellow Republicans, for sure. But resign he did. In his own weird way, Nixon believed in the fundamentals of American democracy.
What does Donald Trump believe in?
The truth is, Trump has never been interested in the job of president, a fact that’s come into even sharper relief ever since his defeat in November to Joe Biden. Pandemic? Russian hacking? He just doesn’t care.
His only concerns have been to glorify himself and to find a way around the will of the people – to reverse the outcome of a free and fair election, an election that he lost by seven million votes. Seven million!
Trump despises American democracy.
His disdain for the Supreme Court was evident in the way he expected the conservative majority on the court to ride to his rescue. Instead, the court unanimously rejected two election fraud cases brought on his behalf.
As for Congress, it goes beyond saying that he hates the place. Witness his incendiary remarks before the outrage on Capitol Hill and once the siege was underway.
“We will never concede” the election, Trump told the thousands of his supporters who had gathered on the ellipse near the White House earlier in the day. He called members of his own party, like Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, “weak Republicans, pathetic Republicans” whose leadership had gone “down the tubes.”
He then told his supporters to march to the Capitol where the Electoral College vote was about to get underway. He said he would lead the march, but he then ducked back into the White House. (The White House, incidentally, remains encircled – since summer – by vast security fencing. The Executive Mansion is a walled off, one-man fortress, a Trumpian monument to the “carnage” he’s engineered the last four years.)
Later, in a taped message from the Rose Garden, as protest devolved into rampage, Trump blew kisses to the insurrectionists. His admonition to them to leave town was little more than perfunctory.
For all of this and more, Trump needs to go, now. At the very least, Vice President Mike Pence and the Cabinet need to find someway to seal him off from further decision-making.
Images and bitter ironies abound from last week. Such as: The French president, Emmanuel Macron, finding it necessary to stand in front of an American flag and state, in English, “We believe in American democracy.”
Then there’s the photograph of the vanguard of the Trump army scaling a wall on the west side of the Capitol. Did they imagine themselves the U.S. Army Rangers scaling the heights of Pointe du Hoc on D-Day? Who knows what was coursing through their tiny brains?
Talk about a tiny brain. Former state senator and would-be congressman Rick Saccone was in the crowd that stormed the Capitol, tweeting, “We will save the nation. Are u with me?”
He later tried to explain away his insurrectionist language. “It’s hyperbole that you use when you’re speaking figuratively.”
Finally, there’s democracy-denier and Trump cheerleader Republican Rep. Guy Rescenthaler, who intoned that ransacking the Capitol was no way to advance the “conservative” agenda.
Do you really think so, Congressman? Thanks for the insight, and for your many contributions to “conservative” thought. In other words, thanks for nothing.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. His latest book, “JFK Rising,” is available on Amazon. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.