GOP SENATOR-JURORS APPEAR TO BE ENABLERS OF THE INSURRECTION & ITS INCITER

 

…Three GOP senators including Ted Cruz met with Trump’s defense team yesterday.  I wonder why?

 

Will any GOP senators pay a price if Donald Trump is once again acquitted?

 

Jennifer Rubin, the conservative writer for the Washington Post recently wrote: “I felt sick to my stomach watching the House managers’ minute-by-minute Wednesday of insurrectionists entering the Capitol, assaulting police officers, terrorizing lawmakers and staff.”

I have to say that I agree with her, but I think the nation is very lucky that the rioting Trump crowd that the president had incited for months with his “big lie”, did not find either Trump’s own vice president Pence , nor the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi.

The near-miss incidents in which lawmakers and staff came within seconds of confrontation with the mob provided riveting viewing. Only the most heartless senators could fail to appreciate that “but for the grace of God,” they and many Democratic Representatives, would have all been beaten or killed.

The visuals were all the more powerful because the people in peril during the riot, were now sitting as jurors in the trial of the disgraced former president who had for months, incited the riot.

What we became aware of the day after the riot was that the president had been aware of everything that the leaders of the riot were going to do, going back for months.  He had been following the white supremacist groups on social media, and on Twitter going back to the election campaign.

Further depressing was the knowledge that most Republican senators, including those whose lives were saved during the evacuation of the Senate chamber were now set to acquit the former president.  The impeachment manager Rep. Eric Swalwell of California said that during the riot, the mob had come within ~50 steps of these same senators.. 

But these GOP Senators have been telling us, some of whom would have been the mob’s victims, they want us to just “move on.”  It defies belief that they are only alive because of the courage of the Capitol Police and the National Guard.  But they haven’t the courage themselves to convict the person who put a target on their backs.

Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) also took us through the former president’s actions during the siege, including the unanswered pleas to demand that his supporters evacuate and his refusal to condemn the domestic terrorists.

Republicans will probably acquit the former president on the grounds that members of the mob went to the Capitol on their own.  The House Impeachment Managers showed that was patently false and that they have no explanation for the commander-in-chief’s abandoning his responsibility to defend the government, including his own vice president.

However, several aspects of the manager's presentation stood out and will stay with us forever.

One could easily sense the barbarity of the rioting mob. The hellish violence, the taunts and the determination to find and kill both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Vice President Mike Pence.  This should be appalling to any decent human being. 

But not the former president.  That is because in a video for the mob, he told them, “We love you, your very special.”  There is no more vivid example of the sociopathic former president who embraces anyone who will “fight” for him.  By placing the vice president, center stage in the trial, the House managers made it clear just how dangerous it was for the then still president to incite a mob that was willing to kill Mike Pence.

The disrespect and violence against law enforcement officers was more stunning than we initially realized.  Video of police officer Daniel Hodges being crushed in a doorway, with blood on his face, should remove anyone of the notion that the former president and his minions respect the police. They stand not for law and order, but for chaos and violence.  (And Trump called himself the, “law and order president”…right!)

And knowing that the vast majority of Republicans will nevertheless vote to acquit.  This is despite the shocking evidence, that should put in perspective how abnormal the Republican Party has become.

To remain in good standing in the GOP today, they must divorce themselves from any sense of compassion for those hurt or killed in the riot.  And they should have gratitude toward those who saved them.  And how are they rationalizing their disgusting support for the MAGA cult leader today?

Finally, the hysteria that the former president whipped up deliberately over the course of months, likely could not have succeeded had social media cut Trump off immediately after the election.  Or if Fox News had not given him an audience of their millions.  His lies were amplified night after night by the Fox News hosts. The “Big Lie” that the election was stolen was embraced by far-right radio talk-show hosts and the Rupert Murdoch media empire. 

Even now, when the results of Fox News handiwork are seen, there is no remorse and no reconsideration of their racket whereby they made money off inflaming ignorant people.  Interestingly, Fox News did cut away when the most searing images of the riot appeared.  Averting their eyes and keeping their viewers in the dark was, "classic Fox".

The Republicans who could sit through that presentation, disregard it and vote to acquit the ringleader-in-chief have irretrievably lost the moral standing to govern this great nation.

There can be no “understanding” of their alleged grievances, no “unity” and no “moving on” so long as they remain loyal to the inciter-in-chief of the mob that wreaked havoc on our democracy. They do not get to self-identify as “constitutional conservatives” or “law and order” Republicans if they vote to let the ex-president off.

Those who would acquit the former president after all of this horrifying evidence of guilt.  They are nothing more than apologists and enablers of a violent insurrection and of the leader who incited it.

Copyright G. Ater 2021