Former United States President Donald Trump returned to Washington this week for the first time since the January 6, 2021 uprising on Capitol Hill. He delivered a rambling speech (nothing new under the sun), while coming within an orange hair of announcing his 2024 presidential candidacy.
That such a scenario is even possible boggles the mind when a congressional commission of inquiry into last year’s events has shown it at its worst.
In his speech, Mr. Trump said the United States should emulate repressive regimes, such as those in China and the Philippines, in tackling drug trafficking, even suggesting the death penalty for offenders. He raised the possibility of sending the National Guard to Democratic-majority states to restore “law and order”. In parallel to this speech, media spoke of the return to the forefront of a Republican plan to purge federal employees without constraints, for frivolous reasons, in order to replace them with loyalists if the party were returned to power. .
Those who consider these to be petty antics should think twice. During the previous campaign and during his catastrophic term as president, Donald Trump had promised to deliver a Republican majority to the Supreme Court in order to tip the scales in favor of the anti-choice in the debate on the right to abortion.
The invalidation of the judgment Roe v. wade, on June 24, reminds us that we must take this sinister character seriously when he expresses himself. Women’s right to control their bodies and to enjoy full equality and full respect for their autonomy has just been set back 50 years. In Republican-dominated states, it’s a race to ram through bills that will lead to the surveillance, tracking and criminalization of women, doctors and citizens who dare to participate, directly or indirectly, in a abortion.
The turmoil around Trump 2024 has yet to win over the entire Republican Party. A few hours before Donald Trump took the floor, his former vice-president discreetly revealed his presidential ambitions by calling on voters to look to the future. Mike Pence is timorous when it comes to denouncing the legacy of the Trump-Pence administration, for obvious reasons. Until he stood up to Trump and helped certify the vote at risk to his personal safety, Mr. Pence was a staunch defender of the “Donald.”
Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, who sits on the congressional committee tasked with shedding light on the January 2021 uprising, was much more vocal. During the hearings, she said that a nation wanting to remain free could not lock itself into the lies professed by Donald Trump, a man whom she considers unfit to exercise elective office. She also has an eye on the presidential election of 2024.
The Congressional investigation shows that Donald Trump knowingly chose not to intervene for almost three hours on January 6, 2021, when an uncontrollable crowd of his supporters invaded the Capitol in order to interrupt the process of certification of the result of the presidential election and to “stop the theft”. The assault on the Capitol was the culmination of a coup attempt in which he was the main instigator, the investigation found.
Even today, despite mounting evidence, a majority of Republican voters believe Donald Trump’s repeated lies that Joe Biden won the presidency through election fraud and cheating. They are fed the nonsense of the conservative media, Fox News in the lead, which oscillates between trivializing the crimes committed on Capitol Hill and amplifying the discourse on the theft of the election.
The American political system is renowned for its pattern of checks and balances — the checks and balances between the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. The extreme polarization of Congress and the limited margin of the Democrats, whose Senate majority is hanging by a thread, make it difficult to make legislative progress that would protect American democracy against the revolt of populism and authoritarianism, especially since Republican states are having a field day adopting measures to regulate and suppress the vote. The president, Joe Biden, may denounce Trump’s lack of courage, but his voice does not carry beyond the political division. As for the Supreme Court, it has become the bastion of social conservatism.
the washington post revealed this week that the US Department of Justice is actively investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. It is the only hope to prevent his return.