As former President Donald Trump prepares a legal defense for his second impeachment trial, it’s worth asking one straightforward, if lengthy, question. It is a query that will be the focus of the Senate trial and one that also will morally implicate his fawning ally in the Senate, Josh Hawley.
Namely, when Trump and Hawley:
- Spent two months brainwashing their fans into believing that our democratically decided presidential election was actually rigged
- Then Trump beckoned their fans to descend to D.C. during a global pandemic
- And he told the maskless mob that he would lead them to the Capitol so they could “show strength” and “fight like hell” to stop the steal
- And Hawley cheered them on as he went to go vote to overturn the votes of millions …
… well, what the hell did they think would happen?
Politicians frequently use overly heated language, but before an election, there’s little ambiguity that saying, “Stop Nancy Pelosi!” or “Fight the GOP’s agenda!” means to crush them with campaigning and then at the ballot box. Those statements incite no violence. Later, no serious person had a problem with Team Trump having its day in court, and even though Trump’s incessant tantrums on Twitter were pathetic, no one argued they were very consequential.
But then Trump corralled conspiracy theorists, such as attorneys Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell, to concoct even more psychotic embellishments to boost the big lie. More than 80 lawsuits claiming the election was illegitimate were thrown out, plenty by Trump-appointed judges; yet Trump still sold millions on the big lie and said they would stop the steal.
As for Hawley, by becoming the first senator in 15 years to contest Biden’s win at the final step that would render his victory official, he gave deluded denizens a lifeline to keep the faith.
And so the Trump fans took Trump seriously and literally. They did what they were told and came to D.C. Then they went to the Capitol to stop the steal. Despite intelligence agencies warning of active plans for violence, and despite these very pages begging Republicans to stop fanning the flames with violent rhetoric given the likelihood that Jan. 6 would turn into a bloodbath, they persisted.
After all of that, did they really expect that an armed mob would go up to the steps of the Capitol and just stand there? They were sent to stop the steal. At that point, there was only one way to do it: by terrorizing members of Congress into voting to overturn the election.
Much of Trump’s trial will rightly focus on his actions during the storming, namely if Mike Pence was finally the one to authorize the National Guard to step in because Trump refused to do so. If true, that would constitute a breathtaking dereliction of duty. But the article of impeachment charges him with incitement of insurrection.
Did, as Axios has reported, Trump really premeditate the stolen election lie in October for the very likely case that he would lose the election? And, if he did tell his former chief of staff Reince Priebus, did he tell Hawley, one of his most servile sycophants in the Senate? If the answers to both of those are yes, then that establishes that both knowingly abetted a story they knew was likely false. From there, it’s just a matter of debating the semantics of when their story began counting as a flat-out lie.
Trump lied that the election was fraudulent, and Hawley legitimized it. They gambled they could cheer on a crowd instructed to stop the steal for political gain, and now five people are dead.
