Bucks County Courier Times
Guest Opinion: Trump’s comments should be a warning to us all
Dick Newbert – February 12, 2022
“They are being treated so unfairly.” — Donald Trump (Jan. 29, 2022)
As the 2022 midterm elections approach, Donald Trump continues to focus on his big lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Perpetuating allegations of election fraud, Trump has taken a page from “Mein Kampf’s” rulebook: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong.
Tragically for America, despite a lack of any evidence whatsoever to support his claims and numerous audited recounts reaffirming Joe Biden’s victory, some Republicans continue to blindly believe Trump’s fiction.
Months before the election, the former president began the drumbeat the only way he could lose in 2020 was if there was election fraud. In the wake of his loss, Trump’s efforts to overturn the election have been delegitimized by all of the nation’s intelligence and cybersecurity agencies and even Attorney General Barr, reaching a unanimous conclusion there is no evidence of “systemic or broad-based fraud” that would change the result of the election.
Trump’s rhetoric culminated on Jan. 6, 2021, inflaming hundreds of fanatical supporters, urging them to march on the Capitol. What resulted was a violent assault on the Capitol with the clear intent to influence Congress’ responsible counting of the electoral college’s ballots and on a fundamental institution of our democracy.
While his supporters ran wild throughout the Capitol building, the defeated president relished the mayhem from the security of The White House; despite pleas from leading Republicans and even his daughter to stop the insurrection. Only after several hours did Trump reluctantly speak, concluding his brief remarks with a message to the rioters, “We love you. You’re very special.”
Trump has hinted he might run in 2024 and; “If I run and if I win, we will treat those people from January 6 fairly. We will treat them fairly. And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons. Because they are being treated so unfairly.”
Donald Trump’s willingness to pardon people whose actions were a direct threat to our democracy should scare the pants off of every American, particularly those who have taken an oath to “support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic”.
Republican Liz Cheney’s admonition must be taken seriously, “He crossed lines no American president has ever crossed before. When a president refuses to tell the mob to stop, when he refuses to defend any of the coordinate branches of government, he cannot be trusted, [is] unfit for future office [and] clearly can never be anywhere near the Oval Office ever again.”
Dick Newbert lives in Langhorne.