There are arguments to be made that many who participated in the insurrection of January 6, 2021 thought they were being patriots defending a nation from a stolen election, even though it was a nonsensical lie fed to the willingly delusional by an amoral narcissist who wasn’t strong enough to endure the humiliation of failure. There are arguments to be made that some sentences imposed on J6 insurrectionists were excessive, even though capital police were beaten and bloodied. But there are no arguments that January 6th didn’t happen as it was seen, experienced and suffered that day, as Trump gleefully watched.
Yet here we are, Trump re-elected and promising to pardon or grant clemency to his Hallelujah chorus. Here we are, Trump re-elected and urging the jailing of the January 6th House commission for prosecuting him too well, pretending that most of his own administration’s testimony against him didn’t exist or was somehow the result of tampering by then-Congresswoman Liz Cheney, of the radically progressive Cheney clan. Here we are, Trump re-elected as the former vice president acknowledges that the president demanded he violate the Constitution or be hung by Trump’s most violent sycophants.
January 6th happened, and it won’t unhappen because you want it to really bad. It was not a “day of love” as Trump pretends. The insurrectionists were not patriots when they broke windows to enter, stormed the Senate chamber and the Speaker’s office, tried to enter the House chamber ending in the death of Ashli Babbitt. Support Trump if you must, or if you can’t support the Democrats, but do not claim that January 6th was a “day of love.”
That day was an American calamity. Lawmakers huddled for safety. Vice President Mike Pence eluded a mob shouting that he should be hanged. Several people died during and after the riot, including one protester by gunshot and four police officers by suicide, and more than 140 officers were injured in a protracted melee that nearly upended what should have been the routine certification of the electoral victory of Mr. Trump’s opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr.
As his own Republican toadies scampered for cover and condemned his call to “fight like hell” that brought the worst of his followers to the second storming of the Capital, Trump relished in the glory of people willing to kill, or die, for him, not because he cared a whit for any of them but because he cared too much for himself.
Mr. Trump retired to the White House, where he watched the televised violence and ignored advice to tell the mob to leave. Then, after sending two tweets calling for peaceful protest, he posted a video repeating his rigged-election falsehood and saying: “We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You’re very special.”
Trump was re-elected despite January 6th, not because it didn’t happen.
Fortunately, polls show that roughly 60 percent of Americans oppose Mr. Trump’s plan to pardon the insurrectionists. Even many Trump voters didn’t like what happened that day. But the new president’s relentless salesmanship of his exculpatory narrative could fuzz up the issue. The bully pulpit is a good place to bully critics and flush the memory of a Confederate flag near the Rotunda and a noose for Mike Pence on the lawn.
If you have chosen fantasy over reality, and want desperately enough to believe in the absurd excuses constructed around January 6th, so be it. Time will judge Trump’s administration. Time will judge Trump, the vulgar, deceitful, amoral, narcissistic ignoramus. But January 6th happened.
A follow-up tweet ended: “Remember this day forever!”
Indeed. January 6, 2021 was one of the most disgraceful days the United States of America has suffered. It should be remembered forever.