Trump is still a threat

Donald Trump is cancer in this country.

Not only because of the way he behaved in it and in front of it, but also because of the way he changed it radically.

On Thursday evening, the House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021 uprising held the first of what will be a series of public hearings.

The hearing was methodical and, at times, sensational.

He underlined and reinforced the alarming central thesis:

Trump, as President of the United States, attacked the democratic process from the United States a incite a riot in the Capitol, by the way.

Add any adjectives (cheeky, shocking, outrageous, unprecedented), they are all insufficient to capture the enormity of what he did.

a president with an autocratic fetishone who took office with the welcome help of Russia’s autocratic ruler, almost hindering the government of the most powerful country on the planet.

However, with all of this, a poll released in February by the Pew Research Center found that less Americans believed Trump was responsible for the January 6 riots compared to those who believed soon after.

Nearly 6 out of 10 Republicans believed it did not no responsibility in the riots, up from 46% the year before, and in June 2021, 66% of Republicans said Trump “definitely” or “probably” won the 2020 election.

The commission’s hearing may dent those numbers, but if history is our guide, its cult will remain. unperturbed and intact.

This is Trump’s legacy: the alteration of our political reality.

As it became clear during Thursday’s hearing, more people told Trump that he had lost the election and that there was no widespread fraud.

It looks like he wasn’t working with a hoax when he tried to steal the election; I was furious at his own lie about that choice.

Lying was a vital skill for Trump.

But, before going into politics, he used it mainly as a tool for inflate your resources and his ego and to sell gold-plated aspirations to social climbers for new money.

His entire brand was packing garish renditions of people’s glamor.

In that world, he regularly circumvented the rules.

But when he got into politics, he found rules in some cases even more malleable than those concerning finance.

Many of the president’s limitations were customs and traditions.

There were rules that no one had pushed to enforce due to previous presidents they have adapted to them.

In some ways, the only thing limiting Trump as president was the reluctance of other officials, many of whom he could appoint or replace at will, to bend the rules.

It was like a pirate landing among an indigenous population.

Instead of appreciating the elegance of the culture and the history of its rituals, he focused on it weaknessesby designing ways to exploit it and, if necessary, destroy it.

Donald Trump did not create the modern American right, but he came at a time when he was thirsty for white nationalism unrepentant, when she was terrified of the white substitute and when she opened her arms ready to embrace the pretense.

He quickly realized that these impulses, which the Republican establishment had told their base to repress and only whispered about, were the things that the base he wanted to hear screamingthings the base wanted to animate.

Now, millions of Americans have fallen into the lie and follow on liar.

This means that our politics still exists in Trump’s shadow.

Republican politicians, fearful of challenging him and fearful of the crowd he controls, respect the rules for him and repeat his lies.

The hermetically sealed and reality-resistant conservative media echo chamber ensures that Trump’s propaganda is repeated until accepted without scrutiny.

Democrats also exist in Trump’s shadow.

A big part of the reason why Joe Biden he was selected as a Democratic candidate not because he had the most exciting set of policies, but because the Democrats desperately wanted beat Trump and they saw Biden as the safest bet to do so.

Now that he’s been elected, many factions in his winning coalition feel they are being held hostage by the electorate.

Any criticism of Biden, even mild and legitimate, must be tempered so as not to give ammunition to the Threat Mar-a-Lago who seems ready to attempt another race for the White House.

If it does, this country could very well collapse.

And I make this statement without any hyperbolic intent.

In fact, I’m not sure this country can outlive him by taking the lead from the margins.

The political system has proved too compromised by Trump’s influence to hold Trump accountable in a way that ends this nightmare.

Now, the legal system is all we have left and Trump was harder to pinch than sun-oiled skin.

Now we have to wait to see if the commission has what it takes, not to change voters’ minds, which increasingly seem like a lost cause, but to change the minds – or cheer up – of Justice Department prosecutors.

Trump changed America, but we can still stop him from destroying it.

c.2022 The New York Times Company