Trump loyalists abandon ship, but can’t outrun their treachery to America

HALIFAX—And so the lame schmuck presidency of Donald Trump lurches toward the exits. A few weeks back in this space, I opined that his leaving would be ugly. With five dead on the Capitol Grounds after Trump’s pitchfork brigade’s antics, I stand by that observation. This U.S. president, a liar, a bully, a masher, an egomaniac, and very likely a psychopath, unleashed his followers on the seat of American democracy because he lost an election to a better man, and can’t accept that. Two months after Joe Biden thrashed him, and with more than 4,000 Americans dead from COVID-19 in just one day last week, Trump remains fixated on floating his debunked theory of a stolen election. Now in the wake of Jan. 6, it’s all the rage to loath the Marmalade Mussolini. There is talk about another impeachment, a Section 25 removal from office, demands for resignation, and at the low end of outrage, a sanction. Let me offer another option: jail. After all, five people are dead because of his incitement to storm the Capitol. And this president took an oath to protect, not kill Americans. Has there ever been a clearer case of inciting a riot and sedition? It will be interesting to see if the criminal investigation into the death of a Capitol police officer will include a conversation with the man who rallied this posse of domestic terrorists, Donald J. Trump. Missing in most of the coverage of Trump’s perverted and calamitous presidency, is that host of Americans who handed him power, and then proceeded to enable him through his worst excesses. These same rats are now swan-diving off the tramp-steamer of the Trump presidency. The cavalcade of hypocrites is long and disgraceful, from White House staff and cabinet, to members of the House and the Senate. The top of that list of infamy is the Republican Party itself. U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence, now apparently furious with his boss, makes Uriah Heep look like a piker. For four painful years, Pence resolved every doubt in favour of a man who locked up children in cages, bragged about grabbing women by the pussy, and extorted foreign leaders to do his political bidding by withholding already authorized financial and military aid. Photograph courtesy of Commons Wikimedia Vice-President Mike Pence, now apparently furious with his boss, makes Uriah Heep look like a piker. For four painful years, Pence resolved every doubt in favour of a man who locked up children in cages, bragged about grabbing women by the pussy, and extorted foreign leaders to do his political bidding by withholding already authorized financial and military aid. That is not loyalty. That is snivelling subservience. Pence is the King of Snivel. Mitch McConnell, whose dance with the devil ended with sore toes and a demotion, enabled Trump to avoid the consequences of being impeached. The former majority leader in the Senate assisted Trump in imposing a new appointment to the Supreme Court, just weeks before a presidential election—something McConnell once said he would never do. And now this reliably spineless creature stands up to Trump on challenging the election results—after the Republicans lost the majority in the Senate, and Trump lost the presidency. How very brave. Ted Cruz, who once said that Donald Trump was a 'pathological liar' and torched him for insulting the Senator’s wife, was prepared to argue the president’s fantasy claim that the election was stolen from him in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. Photograph courtesy of Commons Wikimedia Ted Cruz, who once said that Trump was a “pathological liar” and torched him for insulting the senator’s wife, was prepared to argue the president’s fantasy claim that the election was stolen from him in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. That’s not what Harvard-trained lawyers usually volunteer for. After all, sixty court decisions, including one from the U.S. Supreme Court, countless state election officials, fifty governors, the Electoral College, and even the Department of Justice found the election to be fair and free of mass fraud. So how does Cruz denounce the violence at the Capitol, and then vote in favour of Trump’s baseless claim that the election was stolen from him? By setting a new world record for sucking and blowing at the same time, that’s how. And daydreaming of tapping into Trump’s base for a run for the presidency in 2024. Cruz is the death march of blind ambition. Who is the King Rat? It’s hard to tell. Rudy Giuliani comes to mind. It was the former New York mayor who whipped up Trump’s mob, and then piously denounced their violence on Capitol Hill. His denunciation was as bogus as the conspiracy theories he’s been whispering in the president’s ear. How could he condemn the rioters, when it was Giuliani himself who incited them with the battle cry “trial by combat” before they marched to the Capitol? But Bill Barr, Trump’s former Attorney-General, is also in the running for the lowest honours. He now says that Trump “betrayed” his office by inciting a mob to interrupt the constitutional process of transitioning power from the current administration to president-elect Joe Biden. But this is the same Bill Barr who was Trump’s chief accomplice in sinking the Mueller Report with spin and deceit, in order to save the president from facing the consequences of what he had done. This is the same Bill Barr who effectively said in decision after decision that the executive branch should have more power than Congress—an authoritarian rebuke of the separation of powers that the founding fathers prescribed as the basis of U.S. governance. Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who whipped up Trump’s mob, piously denounced their violence on Capitol Hill. His denunciation was as bogus as the conspiracy theories he’s been whispering in the president’s ear. Photograph courtesy of Commons Wikimedia And finally, this is the attorney general who directly intervened to dismiss cases or lessen sentences against the president’s felonious cronies. Michael Flynn had actually entered a guilty plea to the charge of lying to the FBI, when the DOJ dropped the case because Barr said Trump’s former national security advisor should never have been charged. Barr now presents as a man appalled by the assault on the Capitol Building. Strange stuff from the legal handmaiden of a tyrant who had shown his colours long before he hatched a desperate coup to keep himself in power. Barr’s belated moral judgment of Trump is a fraud. He was not so much attorney general, as the president’s lawyer. As one wag put it, it was a case of “conservative ideologue meeting grifter.” A large swath of the Christian Right has a lot to explain for its years of support for a man who might be described as the opposite of Jesus. They looked the other way at his torrent of lies. They ignored his moral turpitude in cases alleging everything from sexual harassment, to out-and-out sexual assault. No one in that religious community seemed to care about his relentless dance around the golden calf of wealth and Wall Street. Simply put, they had turned their religion into just another lobby group, clamouring for a judge who would reverse Roe V. Wade. When you start thinking of Donald Trump as the chosen one, you know your faith is in trouble. It is now in vogue for social media giants like Facebook and Twitter to lock the president’s accounts or suspend him indefinitely for his role in inciting the smash-up on Capitol Hill. But these same super platforms allowed Trump to poison millions of minds during his presidency with half-baked conspiracy theories, lies, and racism. Where were they when Trump and his minions were creating their dark, alternate universe on these sites? Unwittingly or not, Facebook and Twitter were the recruiting office for the very digital soldiers who invaded the Capitol Building, every bit as much as Fox News. It comes down to this: some very powerful people, some in the Republican Party, some in the religious community, some in business, and some in the media allowed Donald Trump to run amok. They allowed him to be protected by the aura of the office he held, even though he abused it outrageously time after time. With their self-interested enabling of this monster, they were not protecting the presidency, but a brazen man who recognized no rules but his own. Democracy deserves better treatment than that. If it doesn’t get it, it’s never very long before it leaves. Michael Harris is an award-winning author and journalist. The Hill Times