Donald Trump attempted to subvert the 2020 election to retain power. It was a failed coup d'état.
Republicans see it differently. They don't think they are supporting a modern-day Benedict Arnold. They think Trump is being picked on for nothing.
This week Special Counsel Jack Smith outlined Trump's crimes in his revised indictment. Trump arranged for fake electors to sign false affidavits of election. He pressured Pence to use those ballots to justify discarding legitimate votes for Biden. He summoned a crowd to the Capitol. He watched a demonstration turn violent against members of Congress. He watched the violence on Fox News and did nothing. Told that Pence was in danger from the rioters, Trump told the aide, "So what?"
So how do Republicans of good character continue to support Trump? These are people who earnestly say the Pledge of Allegiance. These are generally law-abiding people. So how is what Trump did acceptable?
They don't think Trump did anything wrong. They think he was just asking questions. They think he didn't do anything different from what Democrats did in questioning the 2000 vote in Florida or the 2004 vote in Ohio. He just filed and lost some 60 lawsuits, but the court results mean nothing. The courts didn't prove the election was fair, only that the Trump campaign did not provide evidence of fraud. Lack of evidence doesn't prove the election was legitimate.
What about the calls to Georgia's Brad Raffensperger and Brian Kemp and Arizona's Doug Ducey, urging them to reverse the vote in those states. Were those okay? Yes. He was just asking questions. Besides, these Republicans were in on the steal.
What about Trump's Attorney General Bill Barr, who told Trump that Biden won the election? Same thing; he's a backstabber.
What about the people he summoned to the January 6 rally and then sent to the Capitol to intimidate Pence? Was that okay? Yes. Trump was just exercising his right to freedom of speech. The people who rioted were on their own. Trump used the word "peacefully" once in telling them to go to the Capitol, which absolves him of liability.
Should Trump have tried to stop rioters during the hours they were attacking the Capitol? He had no obligation to do that. Trump realized those patriots felt strongly about the election. Besides, Democratic politicians in Seattle and Portland didn't stop violence in George Floyd protests, so it is a double standard to say Trump should have done more.
What about Trump's plan to substitute fake electors and void the election? The electors thought they maybe won their states, or should have won them, so they signed that they were "duly elected" with a clear conscience. They were just giving Pence an option.
Bottom line: Trump did nothing wrong. If it had really been a coup d'état, it would have worked. Rioters would have been armed.The Secret Service would have succeeded in getting Pence in the car and away from the Capitol so that the elderly Senator Charles Grassley (R -IA, who would preside over the Senate at that point instead of Pence) could have thrown the election to Trump. As JD Vance said in the VP debate, on January 20 Biden took office, so what's all the fuss?
Republicans think the prosecution of Trump is a slap in the face of those who believe Trump should have won the election, and maybe did. "Illegals" may have voted. Black-majority counties in swing states -- Detroit's Wayne County and Atlanta's Fulton County -- may have had shenanigans. That happens in places like that. Maybe there is no proof, but there is no way in heck that a feeble old man like Biden could have legitimately received seven million more votes than a great president like Trump.
Trump did nothing wrong.
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10 comments:
"Trump did nothing wrong" may capture the MAGA base, but there's much room between that and "attempted coup d'etat". Including for Republicans who do not think Trump is fit for office.
If Pence had folded, absent military backup (as in a conventional coup attempt) it would all have ended at the Supreme Court. Had Trump tried to override SCOTUS, then we're couping.
Now they are doing everything they can in swing states to gum up the election results with cheating the new norm for republicans. They are a diseased political party now. Their only path to survival is complete humiliation in the upcoming election, I’m hoping. Their disease is making the United States also weakened and possibly dying.
I think LD misunderstands what would have happened. The Supreme Court would have found a reason to accept the process. Here is what would have happened. If Pence had gotten into the car and been whisked off to Andrews Air Force base "for his protection" then, in that Constitutional upset Senator Grassley would have taken charge in the VP's place. It would already be a spoiled process amid a chaotic situation.. In that environment, with Grassley new to both sets of ballots, both allegedly valid, he would have said that to preserve order he would NOT make an independent decision, one in which Trump says he has power and Democrats screaming that he does not. His decision would e the "modest" and even-handed one, the one that does not claim a dubious power. He would instead say that in the event of uncertainty about his power and the election outcome, the decision should go the way the Constitution provides because it was a spoiled election -- and his very presence demonstrates that. It would go to the house of representatives, each state with one vote, which is the fair and longstanding procedure for dealing with a questionable election. That is the constitutional firm ground. Of course Democrats would protest, saying that the election was not spoiled, but in fact it was spooled since the acting vp said that the votes could not be determined and refused to do a duty that was maybe ministerial and maybe one with discretion. The Supreme Court would not want to be the one to choose which ballots were legitimate, which Democrats were insisting was obvious. Trump and Republicans would say it was not obvious. The safest thing for the Court would be to say that they cannot adjudicate that now, amid crisis, because the decision would not have legitimacy. Instead, they would claim they dont want to claim an ambiguous power and instead would say that they will defer to the Constitution's longstanding alternative way to select a president, the House deciding state by state. That solves their dual problem. They want Trump to win, and he does, and it looks like Trump won because the Supreme Court did NOT intervene in an ambiguous situation.
Then, looking forward, Democrats would be furious and fume. Trump would have been in office and would have laid the groundwork for a miserable 2022 midterm and then for a young, fired up Democrat to win in 2024, empowered by the idea that Republicans totally cheated. He would win with a Johnson 1964 size majority. They would pack the court with 18 judges in rotation and the public would be ok with it, recognizing that the Supreme Court lost all legitimately. Given the chaos following that election, the Senate would have been very undisciplined. Trump would have had a very unsuccessful 2nd term, except for some brutal things at the border, and Ukrainewould have been absorbed into Russia, and NATO would have pulled itself togher in fear of a Russian invasion of Poland and the Baltic states. The Warsaw Pact nations would become Russian. Europe would be screwed, but we would not be part of the European war. We would avoid nuclear war because Putin would not have an American enemy.
The key is that the one that supposedly most reduces the Supreme Court's power is the one that leads t othe outcome they want: a vote by the House.
Trump lies a lot – 30,573 times during his term in office. When he says he won the 2020 election, Republicans believe it because they want to, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. The question is, why?
The most likely reason is the one they elected him for in the first place: his blatant racism. The closest thing he had to any political experience was being the biggest blowhard in the Birther Movement but to Republicans, that qualified him for our nation’s highest office. The MAGA movement is just an extension of that. They love him for his promise to deport 20 million or so people of color, hopefully before they eat all our pets.
For Trump’s True Believers, the lack of evidence for their allegations of election fraud just confirms how widespread it was. That conspiracy theory mentality has become one of the key features of the GOP cult. They’re eating Trump’s BS instead of drinking poisoned Kool-Aid, but in its own way it’s just as toxic.
Peter points out a key problem with Don Old:
"Should Trump have tried to stop rioters during the hours they were attacking the Capitol? He had no obligation to do that ... "
Don Old's only in service to himself. His oath to support the Constitution is meaningless.
A good person, when faced with a choice, thinks of others. Not Don Old.
Also consider while you were scrambling for a COVID test kit Don Old was backchanneling them to Russia's President, telling him that he doesn't care if people find out.
This behavior is why so many people dislike lying Don the Con.
His supporters' excuse of this behavior is why so many people dislike them.
The purpose the election procedures on the state level is to come to a decision about which candidates won and lost. Time is built in for appeals of those decisions to court. Once the deadline for filing an appeal has passed and the state-certified results are transmitted to Congress, the process is over. There is certainty. What Trump has done is create an environment where that certainty can be pushed aside and a process substituted that provides for a different result, based on anecdotal evidence and an ex post facto rewriting of election procedures. To succeed in doing that would absolutely be a coup, even without the riot at the Capitol. The Supreme Court decided in the 2000 election that the need for finality was more important than the need for 100% accuracy, handing the White House to Bush even though later recounts showed that Gore won Florida.
On the matter of the riot, Trump's insistence that using the word "peaceful" once during a speech is his get-out-of-jail-free card is vintage Trump. Always build some deniability into every situation. Sure, my contractor had to sue me for payment and he had to go out of business, but I did pay him for some of his work. Yes, I suggested to Zelensky that he investigate the Bidens while we were talking about U.S. aid to Ukraine, but later I sent the aid so in fact it was a "perfect phone call." What I love about Jack Smith's superceding indictment and his discussion of the non-immune aspects of the election/coup case is that it gets to the heart of what Trump was doing and makes those qualifiers and excuses look irrelevant and ridiculous. I hope a jury (if it ever gets that far) will agree.
No question I could be wrong about what would have happened. SCOTUS begs off because a "political question"? Nonetheless, even if that shamefully occurred I'm not sure it constitutes a "coup". Always back to definitions, I suppose.
OK, if we want to get technical, Trump’s was an attempted self-coup, also called an autocoup or coup from the top: A form of coup d'état in which a nation's head, having come to power through legal means, stays in power through illegal means.
Trump’s coup attempt was both violent and illegal. But don’t bother trying to convince those who dismiss it regardless of all the evidence. They prefer their ‘alternative facts.’ Why? Because they’re nuts.
Peter: have you done any posts on FEMA spending in Southern Oregon?
With the politicalization of hurricane disaster relief by republicans I can't help but wonder if Southern Oregon will be harmed by their asinine behavior.
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