Acquitting Trump would spell grave danger for US
democracy
Jonathan
Freedland
Failing to convict the former president will send a
clear and alarming message: future elections can be overturned by force
Fri 12 Feb
2021 16.44 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/12/acquitting-trump-grave-danger-us-democracy
Rare is the
trial that takes place at the scene of the crime. Rarer still is the trial
where the jurors are also witnesses to, if not victims of, that crime. Which
means that the case of Donald Trump should be open and shut, a slam-dunk.
Because those sitting in judgment saw the consequences of what Trump did on 6
January. They heard it. And, as security footage played during this week’s
proceedings showed, they ran for their lives because of it.
And yet,
most watching the second trial of Trump – only the fourth impeachment in US
history – presume that it will end in his acquittal. They expect that fewer
than 17 Republican senators will find the former president guilty of inciting
an insurrection and so, lacking the required two-thirds majority, the verdict
will be not guilty. Barring a late spasm of conscience by the senate Republican
leader, Mitch McConnell, Trump will pronounce himself vindicated, the case
against him a hoax and he will be free to run again in 2024 – and to loom over
his party as its dominant presence at least until then.
That fact
alone should quash the temptation to regard the current proceedings, which
could conclude this weekend, as a footnote to the Trump era, one to be safely
tucked away in the history books. The reverse is true. The likely acquittal
suggests the danger of Trump has far from passed: the threat he embodied
remains live and active – and is now embedded deep inside the US body politic.
The
Democratic members of the House of Representatives acting as prosecutors have
laid out an unanswerable case. Vividly and with extensive use of video, they
have reminded senators – and the watching public – of the vehemence and
violence of the mob that stormed the Capitol last month, how Trump supporters attacked
police officers, even using poles carrying the American flag to bludgeon those
in uniform. They’ve shown how close the rioters came to finding elected
officials, how they hunted them down marbled corridors and stone staircases,
looking for “fucking traitors”. They had a gallows and noose ready.
Naturally,
Republicans have bitten their lip and said how awful it all was – but have
insisted none of it can be blamed on Trump. So the prosecution reminded them of
Trump’s words on the day, telling the crowd within striking distance of
Congress to head over there, “to show strength” and to “fight like hell”. Oh,
but only “idiots” could take such language literally, say Trump’s defenders.
Except those who sacked the Capitol took it very literally, filmed as they told
the besieged police that they had been “invited” there by the president, that
they were “fighting for Trump” at his urging. They believed they were following
his explicit instructions.
The
incitement was not confined to that speech, but began long before – and
continued after – the rioting started. Trump whipped up the Washington crowd
that bitter January day, but he’d been whipping up his supporters for nearly a
year, telling them the 2020 election would be stolen, that the only way he
could possibly lose would be if the contest was rigged. The big lie that drove
the crowd to break down the doors and run riot was that Trump had won and Joe
Biden had lost the election – that a contest that was, in fact, free and fair
was instead fraudulent, despite 59 out of 60 claims of voter fraud being thrown
out of courts across the US through lack of evidence. Their aim was to stop the
formal certification ceremony, to “stop the steal” – as Trump had demanded they
must for several months.
So much for
incitement before the riot. Among the most shocking facts laid bare this week
was that Trump’s incitement persisted even after the violence was under way.
One of the former president’s most ardent supporters, Alabama senator Tommy
Tuberville, let slip that he had told Trump by phone that vice-president Mike
Pence had had to be removed from the chamber for his own safety. And yet,
minutes after that call, Trump tweeted an attack on Pence for failing to have
“the courage” to thwart Biden’s victory, all but painting a target on the VP’s
back.
Couple that
with Trump’s failure to do anything to stop the violence once it had begun –
the two-hour delay before sending backup for the police – and the picture is
complete: a president who urged a murderous mob to overturn a democratic
election by force, who watched them attempt it, who did nothing to stop it and
even directed their anger towards specific, named targets. Put it this way,
what more would a president have to do to be found guilty of inciting an
insurrection?
Republicans
have sought refuge in the first amendment, saying Trump’s words were protected
by his right to free speech, or else that it’s improper to convict a president
once he’s left office. Most legal scholars wave aside those arguments, but
let’s not pretend Republicans’ objections are on legal grounds. They are not
acting as sincere jurors, weighing the evidence in good faith. If they were,
then three of them would not have met Trump’s legal team to discuss strategy on
Thursday, in what is surely a rather novel reading of jury service.
No, the law
is not driving these people to say Trump should be given a free pass for his
crime. It is fear. They felt fear on 6 January, when some of them went on
camera to beg Trump to call off his mob, but they feel a greater fear now. They
fear the threat Trump made in his speech that day, when he told the crowd “we
have to primary the hell out of the ones that don’t fight”. Republican senators
fear internal party challenges from Trumpists in their states, and they fear a
base that is now the obedient creature of Donald Trump. Their only way out,
they think, is to acquit a man they surely know – must know – is guilty as
charged.
The
consequences are perilous. Most directly, Trump will be able to run again, and
will be free to try the same trick anew – unleashing his shock troops to ensure
his will is done. If Trump loses, say, the New Hampshire primary in 2024,
what’s to prevent him urging his devotees to “stop the steal” once more? Even
after Trump is gone, a grim precedent will exist. House Democrat Jamie Raskin
was right to warn Republicans that acquittal would “set a new terrible standard
for presidential misconduct”. When a future president doesn’t get their way,
they can simply incite violence against the system they are pledged to defend.
Still, the
greatest danger is not in the future. It is clear and present. It is that one
of the US’s two governing parties is poised to approve the notion that
democracy can be overturned by force. By acquitting Trump, the Republicans will
declare themselves no longer bound by the constitution or the rule of law or
even reality, refusing to break from the lie that their party won an election
that it lost. This poison is not confined to the extremities of the US body
politic. It is now in its blood and in its heart.
Jonathan
Freedland is a Guardian columnist
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