Yesterday should shock and anger every American.
Yesterday’s siege of the United States Capitol by supporters of President Trump looking to turn over the results of the 2020 election should shock and anger every American. |
Mr. Trump sparked these assaults. He has railed for months against the verdict rendered by voters in November. He summoned his supporters to gather in Washington on this day, and encouraged them to march on the Capitol. He told them that the election was being stolen. He told them to fight. He told them he might join them and, even as they stormed the building, he declined for long hours to tell them to stop, to condemn their actions, to raise a finger in defense of the Constitution that he swore to preserve and protect. When he finally spoke, late in the day, he affirmed the protesters’ anger, telling them again that the election was stolen, but asking them to go home anyway. It was the performance of a man unwilling to fulfill his duties as president or to confront the consequences of his own behavior. |
Columnist Bret Stephens went further, calling for the president to be removed from office. “To allow Trump to serve out his term, however brief it may be, puts the nation’s safety at risk, leaves our reputation as a democracy in tatters and evades the inescapable truth that the assault on Congress was an act of violent sedition aided and abetted by a lawless, immoral and terrifying president,” he wrote. |
As grim as yesterday’s events were, they were also predictable — the result of years of conspiracy theorizing and dangerous propaganda spouted by the far-right and Donald Trump himself across the internet and in right-wing media. |
Charlie Warzel, a writer at large for Opinion, has been following this movement since Donald Trump rode down that escalator at Trump Tower. He writes that what we saw yesterday is “the crash of a universe of toxic conspiracies against the rocks of human reality.” |
“For years now, professional grifters, trolls, true believers and political opportunists have sowed conspiratorial lies, creating intricate and dangerous alternate realities. We are now witnessing the reaping,” he writes. |
Violence is one outcome. So is the shattering of a shared American reality, which is the glue that holds a country together and makes democracy possible. |
And, Charlie warns, “It is likely to get worse.” |
Here’s what we’re focusing on today: |
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