I realize I’m just a simple newspaper columnist, but it seems having a lame-duck U.S. president openly advocating a coup is a really bad and insane thing, yet the people who most loudly call themselves patriots don’t appear to give a whit.
Maybe I’m on an island here, but the conclusion that can be drawn from the following string of facts concerns me:
1) Joe Biden clearly and unequivocally won the 2020 presidential election.
2) The loser, President Donald Trump, refuses to acknowledge his loss and is goading Republican state legislators to find ways to subvert the election results, all while filing dozens upon dozens of frivolous lawsuits that have all been dismissed because they are baseless, preposterous and grounded in unhinged speculation.
3) Republicans in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, along with loyalists in Trump’s Cabinet and Republicans in legislatures across the country, are acting like this is all perfectly normal and giving credence to the falsehood that Trump has a chance of overturning the election results.
The conclusion is: WHAT IN THE NAME OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY IS WRONG WITH YOU REPUBLICANS?!??!
Let’s set aside the obvious fact that if a Democrat pulled an autocratic stunt like this, every Republican, all of their family members and probably most of their pets would be running around like their hair was on fire, screaming, “TYRANNY!!!”
That would be, and I can’t stress this enough, an entirely reasonable reaction.
That’s why there are people like me, and plenty of other Americans paying attention to Trump’s postelection crapnado of nonsense, who feel like our heads are going to explode because few if any sane Republicans are standing up and saying: “Hey, this is bonkers, deeply embarrassing and unconscionably bad for the stability of our democracy. Knock it off.”
Here is a small sampling of tweets President Trump, who lost both the popular vote and the Electoral College, sent Wednesday morning, accompanied by my comments in parentheses:
“RIGGED ELECTION!” (The election was not rigged. There is no evidence to support this.)
“We will soon be learning about the word ‘courage’, and saving our Country. I received hundreds of thousands of legal votes more, in all of the Swing States, than did my opponent. ALL Data taken after the vote says that it was impossible for me to lose, unless FIXED!” (Virtually every word of this is a lie.)
“No candidate has ever won both Florida and Ohio and lost. I won them both, by a lot! #SupremeCourt” (This is false and just plain stupid. John F. Kennedy beat Richard Nixon, and Nixon won Florida and Ohio.)
“#OVERTURN” (This is the current president of the United States of America openly calling for the results of our election to be overturned. That’s outrageous and ahistoric, and should be condemned as fundamentally anti-American.)
Those were all sent the morning after the country passed what’s called the safe harbor deadline. That means Congress must, by law, treat election results certified by the states as conclusive. A shorter version is this: Biden will be the next president, and that’s not going to change.
So why – why? why? why? – are the majority of Republicans continuing to entertain the lunatic squawking of a soon-to-be-one-term president who is psychologically incapable of accepting defeat?
On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Sen. Roy Blunt and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, during a meeting of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, all voted against a standard and symbolic resolution that would have affirmed Biden as president-elect.
Sen. Ted Cruz threw up his hand this week and offered to argue a ludicrous Pennsylvania election case before the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court, of course, rejected the case, because it was patently absurd.
Cruz is smart and had to know that would happen. Why does he, and others such as Sen. Lindsey Graham, debase himself over and over again at the altar of a man so clearly destined to be condemned by history?
The time for lame excuses (“We just need to give Trump room to work through this loss”) and tacit approval of frivolous lawsuits (“The president has every right to pursue all legal avenues”) is over.
Everyone – Republicans, Democrats, pundits, preachers, citizens, editorial boards, shop clerks, CEOs – needs to stand up and call this colossally stupid coup-porn what it is: Dangerous, idiotic nonsense.
Trump is not “frustrated” or “venting.” He is a whiny, sore loser willing to burn our democracy to the ground.
The lawsuits being filed aren’t patriotic attempts to protect the sanctity of our elections. They are baseless, error-filled, legally laughable attempts to waste time and pimp a narrative likely to ensure a sizable chunk of the population never accepts the result of this election.
The people testifying at bizarro-world hearings held by Trump attorney and COVID-19 superspreader Rudy Giuliani are not “patriotic but misinformed souls.” They’re people being willfully stupid, and they deserve every bit of ridicule they get as their unhinged, conspiracy filled ramblings become viral sensations.
We don’t stop this craziness from happening again by downplaying or excusing it all. We stop it by calling it out and making clear that such lunatic fringe behavior is socially unacceptable.
But that’s going to require people currently renting apartments in Crazytown to break their leases and cross back over to Saneville.
We need Republicans to acknowledge reality and douse the fires Trump continues to set.
We need to call the election denialism being ginned up exactly what it is: Unacceptable, by any measure.
Rex Huppke is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Readers can email him at rhuppke@tribune.com or follow him on Twitter at @RexHuppke.
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