“If that happens, if the Democrats cannot prevail over Republican obstructionism and find the political voice to care for working-class Americans, the only question that remains is what these modern-day Hoovervilles will be called: Trumptowns or Bidenvilles?” Dale Maharidge, “How America Chose Homelessness,” in the Nation.
By all that is righteous, Donald J. Trump should be convicted and barred from holding ANY public office ever again. But the odds of this happening are long because the Senate of the United States is a strange place operated under arcane rules known only to a select few. It’s like something out of the Ministry of Magic from Harry Potter. The senators should wear black robes like Professor Snape. They could be adorned with colorful stripes, corporate emblems, or maybe TRUMP OWNS MY SOUL in gold letters on the back. Lindsey Graham would love that look. Can you see Ted Cruz in a dark robe? Josh Hawley? Marco Rubio? In my youth the United States Senate was referred to as the world’s greatest deliberative body, where men like Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Robert F. Kennedy, George McGovern, and George Mitchell argued big questions and made difficult compromises that allowed meaningful legislation to be made. It never was as high brow as that, I know, but nor was it completely gone over to the dark arts like today’s splintered and unhinged GOP. Cruz and Hawley and Ron Johnson and Lindsey Graham could sit through 72 hours of footage of the January 6 Insurrection and still vote to acquit. These men are full of ambition and lust after power, but none have any honor. The same can be said of most of their colleagues.
He was always a very small man playing the very biggest man in the land, a coward pretending to be a fearless and unapologetic Big Boss.
If Trump is acquitted as many are predicting, it surely proves that an American president cannot be held accountable. If inciting a mob to attack the legislative branch isn’t enough to convict, what is? Trump’s second-string legal team will contort logic like a giraffe trying to mate with a chihuahua when their turn comes.
The American constitutional system is broken, that’s all there is to it. If the instigators of the January 6 Insurrection go unpunished, I honestly think America is done. There will be a next time.
Trump’s enforced radio silence has helped millions of people (I am definitely one) settle down and breathe easier. The Orange Menace knows how to rile people up and pit them against each other. It’s a peculiar skill. A social media platform in Trump’s tiny hands is a deadly weapon; it came close to tearing our country apart. Social media spread Trump’s Big Lie faster than Coronavirus in a nursing home. 74 million Americans will disagree with me, but Donald J. Trump is a mentally-ill man, a sociopath with no regard for anyone but himself. He was always a very small man playing the very biggest man in the land, a coward pretending to be a fearless and unapologetic Big Boss. I watched the House managers lay out the evidence, the footage, the graphs, the words spoken by Trump himself over many months, and it’s obvious that Trump knew what some of his most devoted followers were capable of. January 6 was his last shot at monkeywrenching the election outcome. His black soul and white hands are splattered with blood.
Imagine where we’d be today if GOP senators had placed the country and the Constitution over power and party in 2020 and removed Trump then. How many lives might have been saved if we had entered the pandemic with Trump exiled at Mar-A-Lago? January 6 wouldn’t have happened. Brian Sicknick would still be alive.
No matter how compelling and conclusive the House case, Trump’s going to skate. It’s not a court of law, it’s the Senate, a place where powerful people, mostly men, make rules that let them evade responsibility and accountability.
All who vote to step on the Constitution with a bloody boot and allow Trump another pass should suffer the fires of Hell and the ridicule of history.
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