“We Have To Make Our Choice”
Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of their country.
Three years ago today, the 45th president of the United States, having experienced a decisive defeat in the 2020 election, sicced a mob of his supporters on the U.S. Capitol in a bid to disrupt the official certification of Joe Biden’s victory. It was the culminating event in a multi-pronged campaign of deceit, corruption, and intimidation, the aim of which was to overcome the legitimate political process and retain the defeated president in office.
Yesterday, President Joe Biden marked this anniversary with an address at Valley Forge. Early in his remarks he explained the significance of the venue, and returned to the theme later. It is an important speech, and I urge you to watch it in full.
I take as my focus here a passage that makes a vital point.
When the attack on January sixth happened, there was no doubt about the truth.
At the time, even Republican members of Congress and Fox News commentators publicly and privately condemned the attack.
As one Republican senator said, Trump’s behavior was embarrassing and humiliating for the country. But now that same senator and those same people have changed their tune.
As time has gone on, gone on, politics, fear, money, all have intervened.
And now these MAGA voices, who know the truth about Trump on January sixth, have abandoned the truth and abandoned the democracy.
One might understand “MAGA voices” in different ways. Most directly, a MAGA voice is one who actively promotes the 45th president’s authoritarian vision. The 45th president himself and his key accomplices clearly are MAGA voices. So too, of course, is his base of ardent supporters – ordinary people, media figures, and political office holders and aspirants who were always with or at least never contradicted the 45th president.
Think, though, of the category of people who President Biden specifically identified here – those “who know the truth about Trump on January sixth, have abandoned the truth and abandoned the democracy.”
On February 13, 2021, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell delivered a fiery speech condemning the former president. He did so, however, after casting a vote at the conclusion of the second impeachment trial not to hold the former president accountable. The very next day, drawing from the text of McConnell’s speech, I posted on Facebook a resolution of censure I had drafted. Have a look at it:
Whereas, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stated on February 13, “There's no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of” January 6;
Whereas, the events to which Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell referred were, in his words, “a disgrace” during which “American Citizens”:
“attacked their own government”
“used terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of domestic business they did not like”
“beat and bloodied our own police”
“stormed the Senate floor”
“tried to hunt down the Speaker of the House”
“built a gallows and chanted about murdering the vice president”;
Whereas, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stated, former President Trump incited these acts by having to the rioters “fed wild falsehoods…because he was angry he had lost an election” and that his “actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful dereliction of duty”;
Whereas, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnel stated, “The people that stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president” and that “having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole, which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth”;
Whereas, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stated, the incitement encompassed “the entire manufactured atmosphere of looming catastrophe, the increasingly wild myths – myths about a reverse landslide election that was somehow being stolen, some secret coup by our now-president”;
Whereas, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stated, the mob acted upon “an intensifying crescendo of conspiracy theories orchestrated by an outgoing president who seemed determined to either overturn the voters' decision or else torch our institutions on the way out”;
Whereas, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stated, “The unconscionable behavior did not end when the violence actually began” and that the “mob was assaulting the Capitol in his name…carrying his banners, hanging his flags, and screaming their loyalty to him”;
Whereas, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stated, “It was obvious that only President Trump could end this” and “[h]e was the only one who could” and “[f]ormer aides publicly begged him to do so” and “[l]oyal allies frantically called the administration”;
Whereas, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stated, “The president did not act swiftly” and “did not do his job” and “didn't take steps so federal law could be faithfully executed and order restored” and “[i]nstead, according to public reports, he watched television happily…as the chaos unfolded” and “kept pressing his scheme to overturn the election”;
Whereas, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stated, “[E]ven after it was clear to any reasonable observer that vice president Pence was in serious danger, even as the mob carrying Trump banners was beating cops and breaching perimeters, the president sent a further tweet attacking his own vice president”;
Whereas, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stated, “[P]redictably and foreseeably, under the circumstances, members of the mob seemed to interpret this as a further inspiration to lawlessness and violence”;
Whereas, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stated, “Later, even when the president did half-heartedly begin calling for peace, he didn't call right away for the riot to end” and “did not tell the mob to depart until even later” and “even then, with police officers bleeding and broken glass covering the Capitol floors, he kept repeating election lies and praising the criminals”;
Whereas, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stated, it was Donald Trump who did “engineer the campaign of disinformation and rage that provoked” the assault on the bastion of our democracy;
Therefore be it resolved, that Donald John Trump, former president of the United States, for his disgraceful conduct against the United States, its Constitution and our democracy, is hereby censured in the strongest possible terms as one who is unfit ever again to hold the office of president of the United States or any other position of public trust.
I cannot help but think that had Congress swiftly adopted such a resolution then – and in having done so, locked into the historical record the assessment of Congress and of those who later have come to deny it – the security of liberal democracy in the United States would be much greater now.
Tragically, as President Biden noted, “politics, fear, money, all have intervened” and many “have changed their tune.”
All is not lost. As I noted in my previous essay, stout souls – of all political leanings and affiliations as well as none at all – have stood up for the cause of democracy and continue to do so. And as the alliance of the decent and sensible grows in strength and volume, we may even win back some who have walked away.
The passage from President Biden’s speech that I quoted earlier, in which he spoke of people who had walked away from the truth of January 6, continued as follows:
They made their choice.
Now, the rest of us, Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans, we have to make our choice.
I know mine, and I believe I know America’s.
We’ll defend the truth, not give in to the big lie.
We’ll embrace the Constitution of the Declaration, not abandon it.
We’ll honor the sacred cause of democracy, not walk away from it.
Join us!
Thanks Eric I think you did a very good job here. I saw President Biden's Valley Forge speech last night and I think he made a compelling case for his reelection. Once the choices become clear and it seems That is going to come down to Trump versus Biden. I don't think there really is a choice. We have to do everything we can to make sure that Trump is not reelected and doesn't come within a mile of the Oval Office. I will support President Biden's reelection in November, full-stop