On
November 22, 2020, I wrote in a blog post here:
There is the possibility that Trump is not just deeply neurotic but either
has long been or has recently become psychotic. In that event, his egomaniacal delusion could well lead him
to summon violent resistance to his removal. While such resistance would have very little chance of being
successful, however unsuccessful it might be it would have enormously
detrimental effects on America’s economy, institutions and prestige. But I think it’s more likely that Trump will be dissuaded from taking such
a risk.
About the same time I wrote elsewhere (in a comment on a
Youtube post):
He [Trump] is desperate to avoid prosecution
and incarceration, the former inevitable and the latter highly likely if and
when he ceases to be President. Therefore,
he will do whatever he dares to do in order to retain the Presidency. Fortunately he’s not very daring, but
unfortunately he doesn’t understand the system well enough to know what’s
possible and what’s not possible.
The first of these quoted comments of mine was
partly wrong. Trump is psychotic but was
not dissuaded from summoning violent resistance to his removal. The second was spot on. Trump was safe in the White House during the
fighting on Capitol Hill, and even though his minions succeeded in stalling the
counting of electoral votes for a time there was never a chance the outcome
would be a second term for Trump. In
November I failed to focus on the exact form of violent resistance Trump would
summon. I underestimated Trump’s cowardice,
his lack of understanding of the U.S. military and the depth of his followers’
delusion, ignorance and depravity.
Whatever secret overtures were made to the
Pentagon on his behalf, the senior officers made their unwillingness to
cooperate clear in a series of statements culminating in December, followed at
the beginning of January by all the living former Secretaries of Defense. We may not know for years exactly what sort
of back-channel suggestions prompted the generals’ and Secretaries’ statements,
but Trump had another arrow in his quiver.
Trump did summon violent resistance. He thought his ranting, bloodthirsty fans
could stop Congress from completing the final formal step of the 2020 Presidential
election – and they did, for about four hours.
His agent and unsuccessful lawyer, having failed to win any judicial
trial for his master, told the large and unruly crowd (expressly summoned to DC
by Trump for a day that he promised would “be wild”) that their cause now depended
on “trial by combat.” Then Trump instructed
them to march on the Capitol, where he knew Congress was sitting to count the
electoral votes and certify the winner.
He repeated his claim that the election had been “rigged,” urged his
supporters to be strong, told them “we’ll never take our country back by being
weak,” and promised to march with them.
There is no way the tumult Trump set in motion
could have advanced his cause unless the mob succeeded in keeping Congress from
fulfilling its Constitutional responsibility.
The mob did exactly that for several hours and with a little more
coherent planning and leadership it could well have slaughtered Congressional leaders
and dispersed the Congress itself.
Perhaps Trump’s plan was to invoke the Insurrection Act at that point,
ostensibly to enable Congress to reconvene but actually (with the connivance of
his recent political appointees to the DOD, who may have been responsible for
keeping the National Guard out of DC during the coup attempt) to prevent it. That none of this would have extended his term
of office is far too subtle a point for Trump to worry about in his desperation. If he could prevent the completion of the
final step of the election then something else might turn up. Such is the reasoning of desperation. And that Congress would evade his minions and
reconvene, in Silver Spring or Philadelphia, was beyond his political imagination.
Nothing
exemplifies Trump’s character better than his egging the mob on and promising
to march along with them, then scuttling right back to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
to watch events unfold on TV. He summoned
and stirred up his forces and sent them to fight for him while staying in a
safe place and maintaining “deniability” – albeit of a scarcely plausible kind. “Why, goodness me, I never dreamed those
folks would do anything the least bit violent,” he will be heard to whine for all
the years he lives. Alternately he will
insist that they were “good people” and legitimately aggrieved, but if any of
the rebels* is counting on receiving a pardon he will be sadly disappointed.
At
his rallies Trump used to urge his followers to rough dissidents up and promise
to pay for their defense if they were prosecuted as a result. But when one was arrested and charged with
assault, he got not a penny for his legal expenses nor even a letter of
sympathy from Trump. Trump will be saving
the pardons for himself, his family and those who can do him a good turn – like
tax-dodging billionaires, drug lords and other potentates
of foreign countries. In his mind, those
who fought Congress for him but lost will be nothing but fools, losers and,
worse, an embarrassment to him.
Trump
also lacks sufficient political understanding to know that rebellion must either
succeed and crown the rebels with prosperity or fail and bring them down in
ruin. He who dares to strike the king gambles
all and must dare greatly. In his
cheating huckster fashion he simply reckons that he can deny involvement in the
failed rebellion. His last Presidential
act will be to pardon himself (perhaps just slipping the sealed document into his coat pocket against a rainy day), but this will not prevent the searching
investigation in which all the resources of the offended government will be deployed. [Post-scriptum: When I wrote this, Republican Congressional leaders were still denouncing the insurrection and blaming Trump for it. As a Goldwater Republican I could not even imagine that soon nearly all of them would fall in to defend Trump in every dishonest way they could.]
* And murderers.
From the 1890s encyclopedia my grandmother gave me, under Riot: “There
must be at least three offending actors.
The wrongdoers must be engaged in some private purpose and not in any attempt
to overthrow or subvert the government, which is treason. … No distinction is
made between the relative degrees of violence on the part of the rioters [still
less of insurrectionists]; all the participants are responsible for all that
takes place.”
