It was just one year ago that Congress convened at the Capitol to certify the results of the Electoral College and the election of Joseph Biden as the 46th President of the United States, and Kamala Harris as the first woman to serve as Vice President. It was to be a historic day although an event that has been a pro-forma exercise since the beginning of the Republic over 200 years ago. But it was not to be.
During the morning of January 6, 2021, with the White House in the background, the President of the United States addressed a “Save of America” rally of his supporters gathered on The Ellipse and added more fuel to the “Big Lie” . . . his and his followers’ skewed belief that he had, in fact, won the election and by a wide margin, and that his re-election had been stolen by the “emboldened radical-left Democrats.” He called Republicans “weak” if they did not support him 100%. He repeated several times that the election was stolen; “we're stuck with a President who lost the election by a lot and we have to live with that for four more years. We're just not going to let that happen.” The President told the crowd it was now up the Congress to halt “this egregious assault on our democracy.” With his followers chanting “Take the Capitol,” and “Invade the Capitol,” the President, who swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States four years earlier, incited his supporters to march on the Capitol to stand up for what he felt was right. “And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.” And the President said he would lead the way . . . “we're going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them. Because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated.”
Despite his call to action, the President did not lead the march to the Capitol. He returned instead to the safety of the White House to watch on television what his free-wheeling and irresponsible words had wrought. The protestors who marched to the Capitol were not satisfied with cheering on the legislators they hoped would defeat the certification of the election results. We would soon learn that nothing less than a potentially violent insurrection was already in the work and that it was the President’s careless rhetoric and his litany of falsehoods leading up to the election and beyond that would further fuel what evolved into an attempted coup and the overthrow of democracy in the United States . . . “If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.” And fight they did.
The insurrection that followed was the first time the citadel of our republic had been breached since the British sacked Washington in August 1814. Five people would die along with numerous injuries before order was restored and Congress was finally able to certify the election. During the siege the House chamber and various Congressional offices were invaded and sacked while other protestors committed theft and did grievous damage to other parts of the Capitol building. Throughout the melee during which the Vice President and members of Congress were safely evacuated from the Capitol, the President remained in the West Wing of the White House where he continued to urge various members of Congress to do whatever necessary to object to the counting of the electoral votes in order to overturn the election. White House staffers were cautioned by the White House Counsel not to interact with the President as his actions that morning may have constituted sedition. Although he was finally convinced to call for order at the Capitol, the President’s response was lukewarm at best. By the time things began to settle down the President finally sent a Tweet: "These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long." In other words, he did nothing to halt the violence he had incited.
The American people have been living with the aftermath of that sad day in the history of this once great republic. Many of those who participated in the insurrection have been brought to some degree of justice and Congress continues to investigate the events of that day to determine what role the former President played in instigating the violence. According to a January 3, 2022 CNN News report, the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack has now learned that the former President did nothing to stop the attack as it was unfolding. The leaders of the committee have characterized his failure to intervene, despite being asked to do so, as a "dereliction of duty". Others, including this writer, call his actions traitorous and nothing short of sedition. A traitor, by definition, is one who betrays a friend, a country, or a principle. Here there is no question. On January 6, 2021 the President of the United States, sworn to uphold the US Constitution, encouraged a mob to overthrow a duly elected government and destroy the democratic principles which have ruled the country for over two centuries. And to this day he continues to spread his Big Lie while numerous courts have ruled that there is no validity to it.
Those self-named “patriots” who invaded the Capitol are anything but. They don’t come anywhere close to those true patriots who fought to free this country from the tyrannical grip of a colonial master; those who fought to restore the Union, or the those who fought and died to free the world from the fascism that has proven to be the benchmark of the former President of the United States. And now they are answering for their traitorous crimes. It is high time the man who instigated the violence should answer for his crimes to guarantee that he may never again be able to assume a position of power or influence. And he should go to prison. America deserves better than this. Too many true patriots have sacrificed so much so that democracy might flourish in this land.
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