Trump incited mob, then called his remarks ‘totally appropriate.’ Congress must impeach
Donald J. Trump has always made a fool of anyone who imagines that he’s surely learned his lesson this time, or won’t touch that hot stove again. He hasn’t, and he didn’t feel a thing.
Sure enough, on Tuesday, the president remained so unchanged by the historically horrible events he unleashed in Washington, D.C., last week that he claimed that pointing a mob toward the U.S. Capitol and telling those flying his flag to “fight like hell” was somehow “totally appropriate.”
People — his people — have died, yet he promised more of the same should Congress attempt to sanction him.
“For Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to continue on this path” of impeachment, Trump told reporters, “I think it’s causing tremendous danger to our country, and it’s causing tremendous anger. I want no violence.” That’s not a veiled threat but one that’s running around naked: I would hate for anything to happen to your lovely family.
That’s why, since the 25th Amendment won’t be invoked by our sadly servile Vice President Mike Pence, who could very easily have been killed last Wednesday, Congress will have no choice but to impeach Trump for a second time on Wednesday.
U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, a Democrat from Kansas, supports this effort, as does U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat from Missouri. Their Republican House colleagues, as well as Republican Missouri Sens. Josh Hawley and Roy Blunt and Kansas Sens. Roger Marshall and Jerry Moran should follow their lead, though they almost certainly won’t.
To be clear, this is the second-to-last thing our country or our Congress or President-elect Joe Biden needs right now, amid multiple crises at the height of a deadly pandemic. And yes, it no doubt will make some people even madder than they already are, hard as that is to imagine.
But as leaders of the political party that Trump ate for breakfast four years ago have often noted in the past, aspiring strongmen cannot be appeased. And the only thing worse than impeaching the president for launching an attack on Congress would be failing to do so, because to do that would be to say that oh well, sedition happens.
As U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, a Republican from Wyoming, who has said she will vote to impeach, told Fox News, “There is no question that the president formed the mob, the president incited the mob, the president addressed the mob. He lit the flame.”
The FBI is treating the riot as a seditious conspiracy, with arrests expected to number in the hundreds. In the eyes of the law, this wasn’t a protest gone wrong but a criminal plot. Insurrectionists came armed with machetes, Molotov cocktails and semiautomatic weapons, hoping to kill lawmakers and install the candidate who did not win the election. If the president who encouraged them and promised to walk alongside them paid no price, what would that say?
If incitement, not to mention failing to send in reinforcements amid an all-out attack, isn’t among the “high crimes and misdemeanors” the Constitution mentions, we need to declare impeachment impossible and presidents officially immune from consequences.
Even the threat of losing at the ballot box needn’t hold any future officeholder in check if the lesson here is that election results one doesn’t like can simply be challenged in hand-to-hand combat. When that’s the case, then we’re no longer living in a democracy.
Authoritarians only get bolder without punishment
As Ian Bassin, executive director of Protect Democracy, an anti-authoritarian group he co-founded in 2017, has pointed out, history has shown that every leader with authoritarian impulses only gets bolder each time his transgressions are tolerated, excused, minimized or denied outright. That’s what’s happened here, and what can’t keep happening.
“We have to be very tough and very strong right now in defending the Constitution and democracy,” said the tough and strong Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, of Maryland, who after burying his 25-year-old son Tommy last week wound up having to flee domestic terrorists in the Capitol, along with his daughter and son-in-law.
Impeachment is not going to help the Democrats, politically or any other way, but Trump’s actions have made this response unavoidable.
It’s still unlikely that 17 Senate Republicans will vote to convict and remove Trump right now, though many are reportedly considering it. And a twice-impeached president who has made grievance and resentment the centerpiece of his movement is going to be even more of a martyr to his faithful. But that doesn’t lessen the obligation that lawmakers of conscience have to hold the president of the United States accountable for his actions, and to try to prevent him from holding office in the future.
Before last week’s attack on the Capitol, the FBI picked up that “An online thread discussed specific calls for violence to include stating, ‘Be ready to fight. Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in, and blood from their BLM and Pantifa slave soldiers being spilled. Get violent. Stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die. NOTHING else will achieve this goal.”
These extremists won’t be mollified no matter what Congress does or doesn’t do.
It’s time for the country to heal, say those who have enabled a president who’s never missed a chance to divide us. If this weren’t such a sad and dangerous moment, their timing would almost be funny.
This story was originally published January 13, 2021 at 5:00 AM.