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Evr since losing the election last November, there have been quite credible reports that Donald Trump is playing with presidential pardon to himself. What he will never get is a stay of the verdict of history on his miserable presidency. It will be a defining image and a lasting epitaph: the invasion and looting of the U.S. Capitol by a mob he instigated to prevent Congress from certifying that Joe Biden won a free and fair election. It is highly debatable whether the use of the 25th Amendment or a second indictment will now bring a somewhat earlier conclusion to America’s long national nightmare by impeaching him before his official term ends on January 20. Either way, posterity will condemn him as the president who conspired to overthrow the constitution he has solemnly sworn to preserve and protect.
Historians will also dwell on some of the other players at play, including the Republican senators and members of Congress who engaged in or fueled his plot to overturn the election result by peddling allegations of fraud that were they- even fraudulent and which have been investigated and rejected by all levels of government. . None of this, nor questions about the role of social media and why security around Congress has been so easily breached, should distract us from the fundamental point. The guilt of the violent assault on the heart of American democracy lies squarely on him, as even some of his most ardent apologists have recognized.
An event can be shocking and at the same time not at all surprising. The dark hours when the Capitol was invaded by a pro-Trump horde, some of the invaders sporting Nazi slogans, were the product of four dark years of vandalism it unleashed on America’s body politic. The assault on Capitol Hill was the savage consummation of a presidency founded, fueled and nurtured by division; a presidency that has marked democratic norms, fomented senseless conspiracy theories and made lies the main motto of its public discourse from the very beginning.
It was a terribly fitting finale that he employed lie-fueled demagoguery to invite an onslaught of lawmakers, igniting a so-called ‘Save America’ rally by declaring, “You will never take back our country with weakness.” You have to show strength. His personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, was even more explicitly insurgent when he told the crowd, “Let’s have a trial by combat.” The horde, some of them armed, then invaded the Capitol, shouting Mr. Trump’s lying mantra: “Stop the theft!” The chief gangster, the capo of chaos, then released a prerecorded video expressing his “love” for the “very special” people who threatened the elected officials and went on a rampage in the most sacred chambers of American democracy while regurgitating the lie. that he won the election. Liz Cheney, the third-highest ranked Republican in the House of Representatives, offered a citation for the history books when she said: “There is no doubt that the President formed the crowd, the President prompted the crowd, the President addressed the crowd. He lit the flame. She’s right. Mitt Romney, the Utah senator and former presidential candidate, had something to say to those in his party who came to terms with the ploy to delegitimize the election result. He shouted in their direction, “This is what you got.” He is right.
“This is banana republic crap,” Republican congressman Mike Gallagher said before making this plea to its author. “Mr. President, you must stop this. Cancel! The election is over. Cancel! It’s bigger than you. “He was also right, but desperately naive to think that Mr. Trump could ever design anything bigger than himself.
It wasn’t until much later that he sought to distance himself from the crowd he had provoked and inflamed. In a robotic statement that some equated to a hostage video, he redefined his “very special” people as the perpetrators of a “heinous act”. This face of volte only came after the insurgency had failed, when even some previously diehard loyalists abandoned him in disgust and advisers warned he had exposed himself to sedition prosecution. . A forced raid that reeked of insincerity does nothing to mitigate the most damnatory verdict against this president. You can argue that there are bursts of encouragement to be extracted from the Day of Infamy. After the rioters were evacuated from the Capitol, Congress reconvened in the early morning hours to certify Joe Biden as the next president. Shockingly, over a hundred Republicans in Congress continued to collude with Mr. Trump even after the building was stormed, but it should be noted that others have shown commendable dedication. to democracy.
The horrific events on Capitol Hill overshadowed a revelation earlier in the week that the president unsuccessfully sought to intimidate Brad Raffensperger, a Republican and top Georgia election official, into “finding” enough votes to overthrow the result in that state. Judges threw away more than 60 Trump gambits to discredit the election. The Tory-dominated Supreme Court, three of which are appointed by Trump, has rejected attempts to block ballots in a number of key states that voted for Mr Biden. So you can argue that the constitution and the republic’s commitment to democratic values ultimately proved strong enough to meet the harsh stress test inflicted by this disgraced president.
The American experience of Trumpism comes at a terrible cost, however, and the price will always be paid once he is deposed. The catastrophic wreckage left by his presidency should not only be counted in shattered glass, sacked offices and deaths on Capitol Hill. The cost of Trumpism must also be counted in a poisoning of American politics. It is an electoral failure. Never forget that he lost the popular vote in the two contests he fought, defeated by an impressive margin of over 7 million votes last November. Yet it has been terribly successful in undermining faith in American democracy and gnawing at its respect abroad. Once you would have assumed that the spectacle of rioters desecrating the national legislature would turn Republican voters away. They generally like to think that they belong to the party of law and order. So it’s a testament to the magnitude of his malignant achievement that Trump’s voter poll suggests that two-thirds buy his big lie that the election was stolen and as many approved as lamented the unleashed chaos at the citadel. of the democracy of their country. Mr. Trump has done much more damage to confidence in the American system of government than Vladimir Putin’s cyber agent battalions ever succeeded.
By stripping so basely of his high office, he has also made it all the more difficult for the values of freedom to prevail in the vital world struggle to fight against resurgent despotism. Freedom House’s latest pluralism and democracy audit comes to the gruesome conclusion that the world is becoming less free as dictators tighten their grip in some areas, while in other places budding despots stretch and unravel the fabric of democracy. Mr. Trump is not solely responsible for this dismal trend, but he has helped to exaggerate it by demoralizing those who fight for civil liberties and fair elections while encouraging their opponents. America’s claim to be a “beacon of freedom” has always been questionable. Under him, the idea became laughable.
The violence on Capitol Hill has been observed with horror in the capitals of liberal democracies and with joy among the leaders of Russia, China and Iran. Many of the most disreputable regimes in the world have taken the terrible final of the Trump presidency to justify their own autocracies. Beijing had another opportunity to portray democracy as the recipe for anarchy. Tehran took it with glee as proof of “the vulnerability and fragility of Western democracy”. From Moscow came the sneering assertion that “American democracy is clearly limping on both feet.”
Hopefully, this is the last service Mr. Trump will do to autocracies around the world after four years of giving them encouragement. From Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil to Viktor Orbán in Hungary via Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, the authoritarians recognized themselves in his behavior and drew strength from it. The Trump presidency has encouraged autocrats around the world to believe that liberal democracy is in decline and that tomorrow is theirs. It’s not just America that has suffered a terrible price for the Trump presidency. The cost is paid in lost freedom around the world.
• Andrew Rawnsley is the Observer’s chief political commentator
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