After the compelling case presented by U.S. House Impeachment Trial Managers over the past two days, even those Donald Trump voters who accept Joe Biden’s victory as legitimate – including Republican Senators who for purely political reasons plan to acquit Trump of the impeachment charges no matter the evidence presented – often repeat the Trump mantra that the nation must heed the voices of the 74 million Trump voters and continue to cater to their opinions. But I must ask: why are the opinions of 74 million Trump voters so much more important and deserve so much more consideration than those of the 81 million who voted for Biden? The people who rallied for Trump and stormed the U.S. Capitol building on January 6 have such an outsized sense of entitlement that they could not accept that Biden won by over 7 million votes then, and many still do not accept it even now. Why should we continue to cater to them when they will not even accept the truth?
Biden won the election by the exact same Electoral College margin as Trump won the presidency in 2016 – and the popular vote was not even close, as Biden’s 7 million popular vote margin exceeded Hillary Clinton’s 2016 margin by 4 million votes. Current Trump supporters are so insulated within their own self-indulgent information streams and social circles that they continue to support a malignant narcissist who was so desperate to cling to power that he did something that no President of the United States has ever done before: called for a mob to march on the U.S. Capitol to stop lawmakers’ certification of a free and valid presidential election, violently if necessary.
White House aides told a New York Magazine reporter that Trump was “excited,” even delighted at the violence he saw playing out on TV. His only concern or expression of “disgust” was “over how ‘low class’ his supporters looked.” That is what Trump thinks of his most ardent supporters: low class. And yet they continue to adore him anyway as they cling to an abusive false god. And even while lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence were in danger and hiding for their lives, Trump and his cronies were still trying to call freshman Senator Tuberville to confirm that he was still going to do his part to stop the certification process permanently.
Most of the people present at Trump’s rally on January 6 were peaceful, of course. But the inciters were still Trump supporters, and a good number of the supposedly otherwise peaceful folks adopted the mob mentality of those leaders with violent intent and followed right along – leaked cell phone data indicates that 40 percent of White House Ellipse attendees marched to the U.S. Capitol. Even if they were not the ones breaking the Capitol building windows, beating Capitol and D.C. Metropolitan police officers, nor hunting down Vice President Pence and lawmakers with violent intent, they helped push against the barricades and lines of police officers and followed those who broke into the Capitol to wander the halls. By the hundreds, even thousands to hear them brag about it on social media during and immediately after the insurrection.
When Trump won the presidency in 2016, Trump critics were told by Trump supporters to “deal with it or leave.” They did not leave – and instead marched peacefully in pink hats on January 21, 2017, went home, and “dealt with it” by mobilizing politically, and won back the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018. They also elected a record number of women to offices up and down the ballot, while the number of Republican women in office decreased. They mobilized some more after that and won back the U.S. Senate and the White House in 2020. None of those marching in 2017 were neo-Nazis, nor did they march elbow to elbow with them, nor befriend them on Facebook. None of them stormed the U.S. Capitol hunting then Vice President Biden, nor then House Speaker Paul Ryan, to prevent Trump from taking office. They did not erect gallows on the Capitol lawn. They marched peacefully by the millions and then went home to win future elections.
It is clear that many Trump supporters are angry, or at least quite unhappy. Others express regret about the insurrection and violence but still insist that impeachment is “divisive,” “futile,” and/or “wasteful” (as if violent insurrection is not?) and that we should all just “move on” and listen to the opinions – based on lies the President told – of 74 million Trump voters. What – are Biden voters supposed to treat Trump supporters who continue to defend the man who incited an insurrection with the kid gloves that few Trump supporters have treated Trump critics for four years? Many Trump supporters did not care about anyone else’s opinions in 2017 – then and even now, all they want to do is “own the libs,” to the point where some of them attempted to violently overthrow an election out of devotion to a cult of personality. If they were willing to toss away our entire federal republic through violent insurrection just because their candidate lost the election, then they never really loved the United States of America – they just love Trump. Sorry, but no – Trump supporters do not now get to play victims after over four years of calling everyone else “snowflakes.”
People need to stop defending Trump and excusing the very real damage he has done to our country. History certainly will not, and that is the perspective that I most often take – how will history most likely view all of this after passions fade and time passes? History will vilify Trump, as well as his supporters and enablers whose complicity is even now plain for all to see.
https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/2020
https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-2020-election-results
https://www.politico.com/2020-election/results/president/2
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/01/capitol-riot-senior-trump-official-calls-him-a-fascist.html3
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/11/tuberville-pences-evacuation-trump-impeachment-4685724
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/05/opinion/capitol-attack-cellphone-data.html5
https://fortune.com/2017/01/23/womens-march-crowd-estimates/
Hi Cathy. I love your blog and am going to try to follow you . I’m still not on Facebook. But I’ll figure something out. Bonnie