Skip to content

January 6

  • by

…Democracy stood in the sense that its norms were honored today as they were not four years ago, which is no small thing. But it is a blow indeed that the man who shattered those norms by trying to overturn the will of the American voters and seize the government will soon be leading it again.

It did not seem initially as if any such a resurrection was possible. While MAGA lawmakers and influencers tried to insist that “Antifa” or FBI plants had launched the riot that made congress members hide in fear for their lives while Secret Service agents rushed Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, to a secure location, that left at least seven people dead and at least 140 police officers wounded, and that did about $3 million of damage to the Capitol as rioters broke windows and doors, looted offices, smeared feces on the walls, and tore down an American flag to replace it with a Trump flag, there was little doubt, even among Trump loyalists, as to who was to blame.

All four living presidents condemned Trump and his supporters; Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram all suspended him; members of his cabinet resigned in protest; corporations and institutions dropped their support for Trump.

Indeed, it seemed that the whole Trump ship was foundering. Trump advisor Hope Hicks texted Ivanka Trump’s chief of staff that the Trump family was now “royally fcked.” “In one day he ended every future opportunity that doesn’t include speaking engagements at the local proud boy’s chapter,” Hicks wrote. “And all of us that didn’t have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed. I’m so mad & upset. We all look like domestic terrorists now.” “Not being dramatic, but we are all fcked.”

Even then–Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered a blistering account of Trump’s behavior and said: “There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day.”

But McConnell appeared reluctant to see Trump impeached. He delayed the Senate trial of the House’s charge of “incitement of insurrection” until Biden was president, then pressed for Trump’s acquittal on the grounds that he was no longer president. Even before that February 2021 acquittal, then–House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)—who had had a shouting match with Trump on January 6 in which he allegedly begged Trump to call off his supporters and yelled that the rioters were “trying to f*cking kill me!”—traveled to see Trump at Mar-a-Lago to get him to support Republican candidates in the 2022 election.

Their hunger to keep Trump’s voters began the process of whitewashing Trump’s attempt to overturn our democracy. At the same time, those Republicans who had either participated in the scheme or gone along with it continued to defend their behavior. As time passed, they downplayed the violence of January 6. As early as May 2021, some began to claim it was less a deadly attack than a “normal tourist visit.”

Read more at:

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-6-2025

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *