Today’s congressional certification of the Electoral College results is also the anniversary of the terrible violence and chaos of four years ago, Jan. 6, 2021. That attack cannot be forgotten or whitewashed and Donald Trump must not pardon the convicted criminals who sacked the Capitol and assaulted police officers in pursuit of his corrosive lie that he didn’t lose the 2020 election.
The facts show just as Trump won in 2024, Joe Biden won in 2020. However, then, the incumbent president stood at the Ellipse and urged a crowd of his angry supporters to “fight like hell” as they readied to march towards the Capitol, which they would seize and force the Congress to flee.
One of the big issues around that dark January day isn’t just how it’s remembered now, but how it will be remembered and officially understood under the administration of the man who sparked it. The stark shift in perception began right away, in the weeks following what was rightly called the most serious attack on U.S. democracy in well more than a century. In the immediate aftermath, as the halls of Congress were still being cleared of broken glass and debris and urine, even shaken allies of Trump declared that things had gone much too far and that this was the last straw.
Then, GOP members of Congress, commentators and Trump himself began talking about that day first as not as bad as everyone remembered, then as downright peaceful or even touristic and finally as not an attack at all but a passionate demonstration of patriotism that was railroaded by overzealous and politically motivated federal investigations. This as the largest federal criminal probe in history was gathering exhaustive evidence against hundreds of participants, showing conclusively that they had used violence in a concerted effort to overturn the American system of government.
Now, Trump, who will be president again in two weeks, has pledged to pardon the Jan. 6 defendants, even as prosecutions are actively continuing. Top leadership of out-and-out right-wing militias that had stood ready to engage in an armed coup against the government could be released unilaterally by the president, who is signaling not just to them but to the anti-establishment right-wing movement around the country that he’s behind them.
As for today’s certification; it is unlikely to be an eventful one, as Vice President Kamala Harris presides over the process and declares her opponent the victor, just as Mike Pence courageously declared the victory of Biden and Harris four years ago. The Democrats are not going to stage phony objections, like too many in the GOP did the last time, falsely claiming voter fraud. The election was fair and free, both in 2020 and in 2024. That is no lie.
The members should not forget that the man they’re certifying to the presidency tried to steal the election, stalled federal investigations notwithstanding, and that it is their responsibility now to act as a check on him. Many of the systems designed to constrain just such a demagogue have failed, with deferential courts in particular having let the former and soon-to-be president skate on nakedly anti-democratic conduct. Now, Trump is duly elected again, and it’s up to the remaining powers that be to remember that ours is not a kingdom.
