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As their final act nears, the House January 6 hearings have evolved from documenting a stain on history to warning of a violent and tyrannical future that awaits if Donald Trump is allowed to again unleash America’s pent-up extremism.
In the latest episode of its limited season television event, the House select committee on Tuesday traced Trump’s links to and inspiration for far right-wing groups that came to Washington to help his mob smash its way into Congress in early 2021. These were the forces that heeded the ex-President’s call to “fight like Hell” to thwart President Joe Biden’s election, including the Oath Keepers militia and the Proud Boys he once told to “stand back, and stand by” on national TV.
“What else is he going to do if he gets elected again?” former Oath Keepers spokesman Jason Van Tatenhove asked during testimony in which he warned that the ex-President would “whip up a civil war among his followers, using lies and deceit” if he launches another campaign for the White House in 2024.
The scenario he raises is hardly hypothetical since Trump and his true believers never halted his assault on democracy. The former President is escalating his lies about non-existent voter fraud in 2020. He’s salivating about another presidential campaign he would use as a new platform for his misinformation. Countless Republican candidates are running in the midterm elections on his lies about a stolen presidential election.
Doubts Trump sowed about election integrity have triggered recent showdowns over certifying results in New Mexico and Pennsylvania and a barrage of state laws that make it harder to vote and easier to interfere in results. And the Trump wing of the Republican Party is still marching toward authoritarianism. For instance, the Conservative Political Action Conference has invited Hungarian strongman Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who rolled back judicial independence, press freedom and democracy, to a Texas conference next month at which Trump is also slated to speak.
And in a stunning coda to Tuesday’s hearing, committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, said that Trump had placed a call to a witness not yet seen in the hearings, in a possible case of attempted tampering that has been referred to the Justice Department.
This continuing effort to undermine American institutions and the rule of law is showing that Trump’s threat to democracy didn’t end in 2021. Whatever impact the committee has on the ex-President’s future political prospects, and whether or not he ends up facing criminal charges, there’s a sense that while documenting Trump’s past transgressions, the committee is also racing to keep up with his new ones.
The subtext of Tuesday’s hearing was an effort to expose a seam of far right-wing extremism that exists below the surface of American political life through questions about the militia-style training and aspirations of the Oath Keepers. In retrospect, Trump’s frequent equivocations about such radicals and White supremacist groups and his violence-laced rhetoric at rallies come across as the gradual legitimation of the use of violence to promote a political end. His incitement reached its apex on January 6, 2021.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/13/politics/jan-6-hearing-future-trump-tyranny/index.html
In the latest episode of its limited season television event, the House select committee on Tuesday traced Trump’s links to and inspiration for far right-wing groups that came to Washington to help his mob smash its way into Congress in early 2021. These were the forces that heeded the ex-President’s call to “fight like Hell” to thwart President Joe Biden’s election, including the Oath Keepers militia and the Proud Boys he once told to “stand back, and stand by” on national TV.
“What else is he going to do if he gets elected again?” former Oath Keepers spokesman Jason Van Tatenhove asked during testimony in which he warned that the ex-President would “whip up a civil war among his followers, using lies and deceit” if he launches another campaign for the White House in 2024.
The scenario he raises is hardly hypothetical since Trump and his true believers never halted his assault on democracy. The former President is escalating his lies about non-existent voter fraud in 2020. He’s salivating about another presidential campaign he would use as a new platform for his misinformation. Countless Republican candidates are running in the midterm elections on his lies about a stolen presidential election.
Doubts Trump sowed about election integrity have triggered recent showdowns over certifying results in New Mexico and Pennsylvania and a barrage of state laws that make it harder to vote and easier to interfere in results. And the Trump wing of the Republican Party is still marching toward authoritarianism. For instance, the Conservative Political Action Conference has invited Hungarian strongman Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who rolled back judicial independence, press freedom and democracy, to a Texas conference next month at which Trump is also slated to speak.
And in a stunning coda to Tuesday’s hearing, committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, said that Trump had placed a call to a witness not yet seen in the hearings, in a possible case of attempted tampering that has been referred to the Justice Department.
This continuing effort to undermine American institutions and the rule of law is showing that Trump’s threat to democracy didn’t end in 2021. Whatever impact the committee has on the ex-President’s future political prospects, and whether or not he ends up facing criminal charges, there’s a sense that while documenting Trump’s past transgressions, the committee is also racing to keep up with his new ones.
The subtext of Tuesday’s hearing was an effort to expose a seam of far right-wing extremism that exists below the surface of American political life through questions about the militia-style training and aspirations of the Oath Keepers. In retrospect, Trump’s frequent equivocations about such radicals and White supremacist groups and his violence-laced rhetoric at rallies come across as the gradual legitimation of the use of violence to promote a political end. His incitement reached its apex on January 6, 2021.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/13/politics/jan-6-hearing-future-trump-tyranny/index.html
