January 6 was a horrifying day for America, but the one silver lining I’ll start with is that, for once in the past four years, there seems to be broad agreement among politicians and citizens that it was in fact horrifying. No matter that Trump’s full embrace of violence to get his way was entirely predictable and long-telegraphed —the assault and occupation of the Capitol building by pro-Trump extremists incited by the president was a declaration of war against the nation that few can deny.
This is a situation in which figuring out all the details of what exactly happened needs to take back seat to quick and decisive action to remove Trump from power. In inciting rioters to assault Congress, he both sought to block the certification of his defeat by Joe Biden, and to physically assault the legislative branch of government. If this isn’t treason and sedition, then nothing is.
This whole catastrophe has been shot through with a dangerous and at times surreal inability for many to comprehend the reality of the moment. This may have been exemplified by Joe Biden’s stern calls yesterday for Donald Trump to tell the insurrectionists to stand down. While this made sense on its face, it made no sense given the logic of events. Trump was the one who incited this attack, and unsurprisingly his taped statement released soon afterward made a mockery of Biden’s request (asking the rioters to be peaceful and go home after they had already accomplished their disruptive purpose, telling them that he loved them).
But a more serious contradiction could be found in the attitude of Republicans senators and representatives who quickly denounced the attack, after so many had supported not just Trump’s recent attacks on the election results, but his varied and continuous lawlessness throughout his entire presidency. Whether or not Trump acted in coordination with any members of Congress in his violent plans, the GOP bears damning responsibility for allowing this monster to remain in power through his entire term.
This in turn led to the bizarre spectacle of Democrats and Republicans making a show of not being cowed by the attackers, and completing the presidential vote certification that evening (Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow had a great exchange that captured the oddity of members of both parties wanting to “move on” mere hours after the violent assault on the Capitol). Republicans cannot make false claims that the election was rigged, and then profess shock when the president who promulgates these lies acts as if they have provided him with an excuse to violently overthrow American democracy. The lack of remorse among the GOP was signaled loud and clear: even after the attack, eight senators and 139 representatives ended up voting against accepting the election results, and so declared themselves participants in sedition.
While there are understandable and even compelling reasons for displays of national unity right in the aftermath of this horror show, such displays are counterproductive if they let off the hook those who bear responsibility for the events of January 6. While I can see the reasoning among Democrats in not wanting to escalate matters by turning this event immediately into a wholesale indictment of Republican complicity in the Trump presidency, failing to hold his enablers to account threatens to become its own form of complicity. We can see this playing out now in the clearly urgent discussions in Congress as to whether and how to remove Trump from office in the coming days. House members like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib are calling for his impeachment, while today Senator Chuck Schumer said the 25th Amendment should be used to end this presidency. I have seen reasonable arguments that impeachment would take longer than acting under the 25th Amendment, but the latter route also, quite significantly, places the onus on the Republican Party to clean up the Trump mess. Trump’s cabinet members would have to invoke the act, but surely would not do so without consultation with GOP congressional leaders.
Yet, even in light of yesterday’s events, this seems like only the remotest of possibilities. Republican officials fear the wrath of Trump supporters, and it seems they’d rather risk harm to the nation in the coming weeks than harm to their electoral prospects by angering the Republican base. What seems more realistic is GOP and Democratic leaders coming to some sort of tacit understanding to sideline Trump for his remaining days in office. This would be an unfortunate ducking of the threat that Donald Trump poses to the nation so long as he remains in his office, and open the door to allowing him to escape any punishment for his treasonous behavior after he leaves office.
I would also argue there’s something profoundly offensive and unsettling in the Democrats pressing the GOP to “do the right thing” via the 25th Amendment at the very tail end of Trump’s presidency, after he has already done so much damage with only the barest whimper of resistance. The idea that Republicans might claim credit for stopping Trump is nauseating, a whitewash of their years of enabling his horror show of a presidency.
Speaking of holding people responsible, there’s also a desperate need to suss out how the white nationalist mob so easily breached the Capitol’s defenses. I have seen some early reporting that there was a wholesale failure across multiple agencies to prepare for the rioters, who had signaled their intentions and received encouragement from the president well ahead of time. What is very clear, though, is that the insurrectionists were treated with kid gloves in comparison to how many police departments across the nation treated peaceful civil rights protestors this summer. As observers like Bree Newsome Bass have noted, this was a spectacle of white privilege and violence, and a demonstration that white supremacism is at the heart of the Trump-GOP challenge to American democracy. The attackers seemed not to fear the repercussions of their actions, and the Capitol police made good on this by arresting only 50-some rioters out of the thousands who participated. The idea that Trump supporters could attack the Capitol and disrupt American government, yet walk away largely unpunished, is to me as unsettling as the deranged president’s incitement of their actions. It is not simply as if, but exactly like our democracy not being able to defend itself against its clear enemies. Those who participated must be tracked down and brought to justice; any law enforcement found to have been derelict in their duty need to be relieved of their jobs and punished to the greatest extent possible. The rule of law cannot be maintained while allowing clearly lawless and anti-democratic assaults to go unanswered.