Donald Trump and the Big Lie
Much of Trump’s career has been built on outrageous lies and selling them to the public. After he lost the last election by a very large margin (over 7 million votes); he resorted to the last big lie of his Presidency, claiming he won by a landslide. He repeated and repeated and repeated that lie. But when he asked for recounts, he lost two more times in Georgia and once again in Wisconsin. When his lawyers took his over 60 cases to court, he lost each time. Yet his supporters remained obdurately deluded by a lying President.
As a final desperate stab, he asked the Georgia Secretary of State to find him about 12,000 votes so he could claim victory; Brad Raffensberger refused to falsify the vote for Trump. Trump fired every member of his Administration who stood up to his lies. He ousted the Attorney General and tried to fire the Acting Attorney General and fired the US Attorney for Northern Georgia when they refused to go along with his big lie.
Finally out of desperation to maintain his hold on power, he resorted to mob rule and organized and paid for a rally of his supporters in DC and sent them to the Capitol to disrupt the ceremonial tallying of the Electoral College vote. He told them further lies, asserting Vice President Pence had the power to disallow Trump’s electoral defeat. A Capitol police officer died in the struggle to defend the Capitol, and two others committed suicide in the aftermath. The courage and quick thinking of the massively outnumbered Capitol police narrowly averted a catastrophic blood bath of our elected leaders at the hands of Trump’s mob.
As they come before the courts, the would-be insurrectionists all point to Trump and his big lie as the reason they came to Washington and attacked the US Capitol. At the time, Trump told them how much he loved them and what special people they were. Now through his lawyers, he is disavowing them, throwing them under the bus, and claiming they planned and acted on their own and were not actually his supporters.
Those in the GOP like Representative Liz Cheney or Senator Ben Sasse who opposed his lies and his efforts to overturn the Presidential election have been under enormous pressure from Trump for their apostasy and from his most die hard supporters to rally to the President’s defense. Their numbers are small, but their singular courage is inspiring.
The impeachment trial is the last chance for the GOP Senators to dissociate themselves from Trump and the big lie, their last chance to show some measure of backbone and integrity that would justify their positions of great honor and responsibility in our democracy. A few will do so; a few will defend their lying ex-President; many will cower from their true convictions, trying to find refuge in their own new lie that trying and convicting their party’s lying ex-President who tried to overthrow an overwhelming election defeat by force and barring him from future federal office holding is somehow unconstitutional. Our founding fathers adopted the impeachment provisions in the US Constitution for just this sort of eventuality. They need to step up to their oaths of office to protect and defend our democracy.
Prepared by: Lucien Wulsin
Dated: 2/9/21