Taking January 6, 2021 Nationwide

 “Mike Pence did have the right to change the outcome, and they now want to take that right away… Unfortunately, he didn’t exercise that power, he could have overturned the election!”

“We will treat them fairly. We will treat them fairly. And if it requires pardons, 

we will give them pardons, because they are being treated so unfairly.”

“These prosecutors are vicious, horrible people, they’re racists and they’re very sick, 

they’re mentally sick. They’re going after me without any protection of my rights by the Supreme Court, 

or most other courts. In reality, they’re not after me, they’re after you. And I just happen 

to be the person that’s in the way. That’s what they’re after, it’s been going on for years.”

“If these radical racist vicious prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal I hope we are going to have in this country 

the biggest protest we have ever had in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta, and elsewhere.”

Donald John Trump made his most impactful, seditious and impactful speech on January 29, 2022 at a rally in Texas in front of thousands of his supporters. As reflected in the above statements at that rally, Donald John Trump intended to seize power in January of 2021 in spite of the election and fully intends to try again. 

While still vainly clinging to his notion of massive voter fraud with no proof, he admitted that: 1. There was an election. 2. Mike Pence was somehow constitutionally empowered to overturn those election results, 3. That the criminal investigations against him, particularly in Fulton County Georgia (in which he asked the Republican Secretary of State to “find” 11,780 votes to reverse the election) and the tax evasion and bank fraud (from pre-presidency times) investigations in New York, were being mounted by horrible people, 4. That if reelected, he would pardon those “unfairly treated” persons who assaulted the Capitol on January 6th, and 5. If criminal liability were found, his followers should mount the biggest protests this nation has ever seen (presumably mirroring the January 6th attack) on a nationwide basis.

Simply put, Trump seems to have admitted that he mounted an attempted coup d’état and that he will do whatever it takes to regain power. Coming on the heels of his last major call to protest results he did not like – which clearly produced the January 6th attack – Trump’s latest threat to mount “protests” is less than a veiled threat; it is a call to arms from his most ardent followers. If such “protests” were in fact to occur on the scale he threatens, we have a phrase for what well might follow: civil war.

Does anyone take such threats seriously? I guess if you saw how Trump’s supporters reacted to his pre-assault speech on January 6th, you’d be a fool not to. “The district attorney for Fulton County, Georgia, asked the FBI on Sunday to assess security at her courthouse, in response to comments by former President Donald Trump taking aim at prosecutors investigating his business dealings and conduct after the 2020 election.

“‘Security concerns were escalated this weekend by the rhetoric of former President Trump at a public event in Conroe, Texas,’ wrote Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in a letter to the highest ranking FBI official in Atlanta.” CBSNews.com, February 1st. My question is whether the FBI even has the capacity to protect these courthouses and prosecutors if Trump’s threats pull enough people, al la January 6th… individuals he thinks so highly of that he would pardon them. These GOP purveyors of political violence are his “patriots.”

We see a do-nothing-to-stop-the-rising-political-violence Republican Party so terrified of losing a contested primary to a Trump-riled base, that they have eschewed their constitutional oaths and openly admit to racist bias. Even in the simple act of filling a Supreme Court vacancy: Notwithstanding that both Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump vowed to appoint a woman to the Supreme Court and did (Reagan: Sandra Day O’Connor, Trump: Amy Coney Barrett), Republican after Republican has assaulted Biden’s pledge to appoint a “Black” woman Supreme Court Justices as racist, drawing from a too limited pool and worthy of their strong opposition. While Ted “Cancun Vacation” Cruz made those points is not surprising, but that one of the few Republicans who voted to impeach Trump, Susan Collins (R, ME), mirrored those sentiments reflects how much one political party seems to have legitimized racism. 

The GOP went from begrudging acceptance of the election results: "It's important for candidates to remember we need to respect the results of our democratic process unless the court system demonstrates that some significant fraud occurred that would change the outcome," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY)… to outright voter suppression.

The GOP to purge Democrat-leaning voters from having a meaningful voice, a particular focus against minority communities, does not seem to bother either the GOP or its leadership. In late January, McConnell shrugged off whether this voter suppression effort would alienate the general electorate: "I think I can pretty confidently say, we won't lose any elections over that issue, anywhere in the country… People are concerned about a wholly different set of concerns. Inflation, an out-of-control border, Afghanistan withdrawal, the controversy over covid. I mean, the thought that a single Senate race in America would be decided over that issue strikes me as being wildly out of touch with what the American people are interested in."

For those Republicans for whom the constitutional oath is meaningful, their words seem to fall on deaf GOP ears. On January 31st, one of the two Republicans on the House January 6th investigating committed, Liz Cheney (R, WY), tweeted: "Trump uses language he knows caused the Jan. 6 violence; suggests he'd pardon the Jan. 6 defendants, some of whom have been charged with seditious conspiracy; threatens prosecutors; and admits he was attempting to overturn the election… He'd do it all again if given the chance."  Red alert, America, red alert. Will someone please wake up U.S. Attorney General, Merrick Brian Garland?!

I’m Peter Dekom, and this bastion of democracy, the United States of America, is sinking fast.