Traitor-In-Chief

David Bernell

 

President Trump's term in office is coming to an end, and it cannot come quickly enough. The Trump era today descended into violence and an attempted coup. It's dishonest to sugarcoat the storming of the US Capitol building as the work of protestors or demonstrators. They are insurrectionists, criminals and domestic terrorists who sought to stop the process of certifying the victory of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as President and Vice-President. They were sent by the President. Democracy was attacked. People died.

Since election day, Trump has been spouting the lies that he won the election, that the Democrats engaged in fraud and stole the election. And millions of people are buying what he's selling. He tried stopping the count of mail-in ballots. He tried going to court. He tried holding press conferences (the famous Guiliani hair-dye-Kraken-fiasco was the most notable, but the Four Seasons Landscaping debacle was a worthy second place). He encouraged unofficial "hearings." He tried applying pressure to state and local officials in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and most brazenly in Georgia with his hour long call to the Georgia Secretary of State asking him to "find" another 11,780 votes. 

And when none of that worked, Trump told Pence to reject the electoral votes in Congress, which Pence -- to his credit -- said he had no authority to do. In the midst of this Trump called for a rally on January 6, the day that Congress certifies the electoral college vote, saying it was going to be "wild."

With his failure to pressure Pence to gum up the works, Trump sent his people to storm Congress, right in the middle of the vote count, to keep the vote for Biden and Harris from happening. It was an attempted coup that failed. Because this was a Trump operation, it had no strategy, no plan, no organization, no thought, and therefore no success. It failed, but it was still Trump's show, his attack on the Constitution, on American democracy. He is now undoubtedly, the traitor-in-chief.

The President is inciting the hatred and violence. He is telling lies, made up and imaginary stuff, and he's convinced a lot of people to live in his same made up, imaginary world, which has real-world consequences. We've been saying, "Don't worry. January 20 will come soon and Joe Biden will be inaugurated." We've learned for four years that there's no such thing as rock bottom, so we're not safe for another couple of weeks. The political polarization has now reached a level where there has been insurrection and violence, and we don't know what's next. 

In a just world, Trump would be out of the White House immediately, and like it says in the game of Monopoly, he would "go directly to jail."

Maybe, at least, this starts to peel off some of the people who have supported, enabled, aided and abetted Trump for the past several years. Maybe the Trumplicans have burst their own balloon. 

Wouldn't it be nice...

(A later, revised version of this essay appeared in the James Madison blog [http://jamesmadisonblog.info/] under a pseudonym.)