There was a time, early in his term, when it would be remarked by people in the media -- usually by someone who knew that Donald Trump was politically unqualified and mentally unfit for the Presidency, but couldn't bring himself or herself to say that Hillary Clinton was the better candidate -- when Trump would say something, and then, those media people would say, "Today is the day when Donald Trump 'became President.'"
Every time that happened, it was a loathsome thing to say, about a loathsome person.
Yesterday, January 6, 2021 -- as today's front page of the New York Daily News correctly says, echoing the words of President Franklin D. Roosevelt following the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy" -- may well be the day that Joe Biden became the 47th President of the United States.
Because, for what he did yesterday, and for what he allowed to happen, there is still time for the U.S. House of Representatives to impeach the 45th, Trump, again, and for the Senate to remove him, making Vice President Mike Pence the 46th, and briefest-serving, President.
That probably won't happen, leaving Biden to become the 46th President, and Trump will almost certainly get to serve out the last 315 hours of the term he never should have had. But he should be constitutionally removed for what he did yesterday.
(UPDATE: Congress did impeach him, but the trail didn't happen until after he was out of office. And the Cabinet, which could have invoked the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, Section 4, and removed Trump for Pence, did nothing.)
George W. Bush, a Republican and the 43rd President, would never have done this. Nor would his father, George H.W. Bush, a Republican and the 41st President. Nor would Ronald Reagan, the 40th President, a Republican, and the icon of "the conservative movement."
Even Richard Nixon, a Republican and the 37th President, as paranoid as he was, would have told his supporters to accept the results and move on, had he, instead of winning the 1972 election in a landslide, lost his bid for re-election -- or if he had lost the close election of 1968 that got him his first term.
We know this because that's exactly what he did the first time he ran, in 1960, losing a close race. And then had to do on January 6, 1961 what Pence did last night; what Biden did on January 6, 2017; what Dick Cheney did on January 6, 2009; what Al Gore, who should have been doing so in his own favor, did on January 6, 2001; what Dan Quayle did on January 6, 1993; what Walter Mondale did on January 6, 1981; what Nelson Rockefeller did on January 6, 1977; and what Hubert Humphrey, who should have been doing so in his own favor, did on January 6, 1969:
Take up one of his ceremonial roles as the Vice President of the United States, and stand before a joint session of Congress, and preside over the reading of the Electoral Votes that made someone else the official next President of the United States.
Had Nixon's supporters -- in the 1960 that we know, or in the 1968 or the 1972 that could have been -- tried something like what Trump's fans did anyway, he would have come forward and demanded that they stop.
No previous President, of any Party, no matter how bitter about himself, or the nominee of his Party, having lost the election, has ever done this. Donald Trump did this.
Anybody who still supported him yesterday morning, in spite of everything he had already done, and is not now saying, "Oh my God, this is too far, even for me, and I can't support him any further," you have lost the last of your right to complain when Democrats call you "deplorable" or worse.
This is deplorable. It is inexcusable. And it is un-American.
What's more, it was futile. In spite of being pushed back by the insurrectionary riot at the Capitol, and a lengthy objection to the Electoral Votes of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, overnight, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. of the State of Delaware was confirmed by Congress -- as he previously had been by the voters and by the Supreme Court of the United States -- as the rightly-elected, and, now, the officially elected, next President of the United States.
It finally happened overnight, with the certification of the Electoral Votes of the State of Vermont giving Biden the 270 Electoral Votes he needed, at 3:34 AM -- as the rock band Chicago sang in 1970, in a song about being awake with writer's block in the middle of the night -- "25 or 6 to 4."
You would think that Republicans would stop doing something once they realized that it wasn't working, if for no other reason than inefficiency. Well, they still cut taxes for the rich, claiming that it will create jobs, when it kills jobs every time it's tried.
That's a good reason to vote an incumbent President out of office. But Donald Trump needs to be put in prison, for actual crimes, which have gotten people killed.
During yesterday's proceedings -- in which the thugs did what no other enemy, not even the British troops who burned the building on August 24, 1814, managed to do, which was use violence to bring the flag of an enemy nation inside the Capitol itself -- 4 more Americans died, for reasons that had nothing to do with COVID-19. Although you can be sure that many of the participants will die from it. It might have been the ultimate "super-spreader event."
(UPDATE: A 5th death, due to the attack, was later confirmed. There is no way to know how many of those people contracted COVID, or how many died from it.)
Here is the death toll:
* 9/11 attack, 2001: Osama bin Laden killed 3,000 Americans.
* Korean War, 1950-53: Kim Il-Sung killed 37,000 Americans.
* War of the American Revolution and War of 1812: King George III, and his Parliament, killed 40,000 Americans.
* Vietnam War, 1959-75: Ho Chi Minh killed 59,000 Americans.
* World War I, 1917-18: Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany killed 116,000 Americans.
* World War II, Pacific Theater, 1941-45: Hideki Tojo killed 161,000 Americans.
* World War II, European Theater, 1941-45: Adolf Hitler killed 243,000 Americans.
* American Civil War: Jefferson Davis killed 365,000 Americans.
(UPDATE: As of August 2021, the number had risen to 630,000. By the end of 2023, to 1,165,000. There are 8 States with fewer people than that. It's more than all but 9 cities in the country: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Diego and Dallas. And it's more than all those other guys I mentioned, combined.)
Now, his revels will end. And he will face justice. For all that he has done. For all that he may have done. And for all that he has left.
315 hours in office. Tick tock, traitor.
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