America, Trump and January 6

Chido Nwangwu recalls the role played by then United States President Donald Trump in the January 6, 2021 co-ordinated violent attack on the Congressional building at the Capitol in Washington DC.

Qualify or disqualify the man, the United States presidential election in November 2024 will be, to a large extent, about former President Donald Trump’s candidacy. There are issues facing him regarding the American Constitution’s “insurrection clause.” It is under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

Trump, the most talked about politician in the country, is still contending with the roles and instigations he, allegedly, engaged in on January 6, 2021.

Significantly, the Supreme Courts of two States have ruled differently on the issues.

First, the Colorado Supreme Court on December 19, 2023, banned former Trump, a Republican, from the state’s 2024 ballot.

It ruled that ”President Trump did not merely incite the insurrection…. Even when the siege on the Capitol was fully underway, he continued to support it by repeatedly demanding that Vice President [Mike] Pence refuse to perform his constitutional duty and by calling Senators to persuade them to stop the counting of electoral votes. These actions constituted overt, voluntary, and direct participation in the insurrection.”

Second, the Michigan Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected an appeal from a group of voters in the state who challenged allowing Trump to remain on the Republican presidential primary ballot. The primary is scheduled for February  27, 2024.

Let’s get the background to this issue.

On January 6, 2021, an evidently coordinated mob of supporters of President Donald Trump and their allied confederacy of extremists and xenophobes set upon and violently attacked the United States Capitol. That is, the congressional building in Washington, D.C.

It was a sad and disgraceful day. I watched the events unfold live on tv. It was almost too much to take in as true. But it was true.

Like many of you, I was wondering: what is this happening? Is this the great America or a Third World event superimposed on the capital of the American congressional institution?

On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump’s name, Trump brand and Trump legacy were instantly reduced to the level of an insurrectionist.

The man, Trump, immediately became legislated into history as the first president of America who levied war of destruction on the institutions of democracy in America.

Americans including those who supported him all these years could not believe their eyes when the instinctively petty and chaotic Trump openly and viciously instigated his mob to walk to the Congress and “show strength”.  It was a direct and naked message for confrontation.

It was an open invitation to violate the operations of the legislative arm of the American government through his own mob! Trump has, falsely, been claiming that the election of November 2020 which he was factually and mathematically defeated by Joe Biden was ”stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats”!

Trump’s mob and their insurrection had led to the deaths of several persons, including Capitol  Police officers. 

Consequently, one of the daughters of the arch-conservative Republican Dick Cheney (former vice president), Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney will be remembered well by history for her reasons to impeach Trump as President of United States on Wednesday, January 13, 2021:

“On January 6, 2021 a violent mob attacked the United States Capitol to obstruct the process of our democracy and stop the counting of presidential electoral votes. This insurrection caused injury, death and destruction in the most sacred space in our Republic…. The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President. The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not.”

She concluded, specifically: “There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution. I will vote to impeach the President.”

And, she did!

After realizing that history and decency and patriotism had left him while he chose to be Trump’s shameless apologist and water carrier, who later became and was impeached a few months ago as U.S House Speaker (at the time he was Minority Leader) Kevin McCarthy, R-California, managed to say that Trump “bears responsibility” for the insurrection.

McCarthy returned to the position of being a footstool for Mr. Trump.

I still believe, like millions of Americans that Mr. Trump has, through a toxic combination of recklessness, lack of self-restraint, self-glorification, an over-bearing instinct to lie, and petty vindictiveness reduced his own name and legacy to the lowest levels of Presidents in American and world history of democratic governments.

Remarkably, after one year, most of those thorny issues are being sorted while some will linger.

I ask, reasonably: What next for Mr. Trump?

What next for American democracy?

Soon, time will tell.

-Dr Nwangwu established the first African-owned, U.S-based newspaper published on the Internet USAfricaonline.com.

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