Seven questions
What happened last week with the assault on Washington's Capitol raises a number of questions that are worth stopping to consider:
The first is whether Donald Trump is in his right mind and I have serious doubts, the same doubts that Colin Powell, Republican General and former Secretary of State with Bush Jr, recently expressed to Christiane Amanpour during a recent interview on CNN. She has always lied compulsively and seems to believe her own lies. Do you remember when on the very day of her inauguration she refused to recognise what the photographs of the Washington Mall showed and insisted that more people had attended than the inauguration of Barack Obama? His behaviour has been erratic and fickle, saying one thing and his opposite and appointing and dismissing collaborators with the same speed. A neurologist described to me not long ago his character as that of a narcissist with psychopathic features and it is possible that he is really convinced that he has been robbed of the election although all the enquiries that have been made have shown the opposite. That is why Twitter and Facebook have denied him access to their platforms in recent days, for fear that he might use them to incite violence.
The second question is whether he wanted his supporters to take over the Capitol and I think not. I suppose he inflamed his supporters with his usual conspiracy theories, election fraud and vote theft and then sent them to the Capitol with the intention of having them demonstrate en masse outside his door with great shouting and flag-waving in order to intimidate legislators, especially Republicans, while they received the state's voting records already reviewed by the Electoral College and were preparing to appoint Joe Biden as president. And he especially wanted to intimidate his vice president whom he considered an ungrateful traitor because he "pulled him out of nowhere" and did not heed his demand to reject the results of the people's will. Pence preferred to respect the Constitution. I don't think it occurred to Trump that his supporters were going to enter the Capitol by force. And even less that he gave them instructions to do so. Like the sorcerer's apprentice, Trump set in motion forces that later escaped his control.
The third doubt is whether Trump wanted to stage a coup d'état and surely that was his intention, as what he intended by sending the rabble to the Capitol was to prevent the popular will, expressed at the polls, from driving him out of office on 20 January. Today coups d'état do not involve a military man with a sword and moustache who is against democracy. Today they are carried out from within power, invoking democracy and then curtailing it from within. This is what Maduro is doing in Venezuela, Orban in Hungary, Erdogan in Turkey and many others. Trump has denied legitimacy to the elections, refused to accept their results and wanted, as his admired Putin has done, to hold on to power on the edge of legality. This is a coup d'etat and those who tried to do this by occupying the Capitol considered themselves as "patriots" ready to save the country from corrupt politicians who had seized it with bad arts. The world is upside down.
The fourth question relates to how it is possible that a "March to Save America" scheduled in plenty of time for January 6, which had brought people from all corners of the country to the Federal Capital and which Trump first inflamed and then sent to the Capitol, did not find any police barrier preventing it from reaching its destination. I think this is more serious than the fact that there was not enough security inside the same building, because an assault was unlikely while the demonstration was a known fact. Some contrast this with the extreme harshness with which security forces broke up last year's Black Lives Matter demonstrations protesting the deaths of African Americans at the hands of the police. In addition, five people were killed and many injured on the Capitol. There are very serious intelligence and security failures that will have to be investigated, clarified and rectified, apart from the purging of responsibilities that should not be reduced solely to the vandals who assaulted the Capitol.
Will Trump try to forgive himself before leaving the presidency? There is no precedent for such a thing and I don't know whether from a legal point of view it would be possible or not. If it comes to it I can imagine hundreds of lawyers and constitutionalists debating the case in the US and making money on the way. Trump is capable of anything. From a purely common sense perspective, I think that one cannot pardon oneself because that would imply being above the law, as is the case with the Pope in the Vatican, and that is not possible in a democracy. That's why I imagine that on 20 January Donald Trump will go to his residence in Florida where he will have to spend more time responding to all sorts of legal complaints than playing golf.
The sixth doubt has to do with the current calls for his removal from office which are asking the Vice President with the majority of the government to apply the 25th Amendment to him, which is designed for cases of incapacity that prevent him from continuing to govern. If he fails to do so, Nancy Pelosi, leader of the House of Representatives, has already said she will initiate the impeachment procedure, the same one she tried last December, and which would have the advantage of ending his political career forever. But I believe that he himself has already taken care of dynamiting it, I don't think there is material time for an impeachment process, and besides I don't think it is good to make a martyr out of Trump for his followers at this point. I also believe that it is something that would further divide a country that is already in a state of great division. That's why I understand the caution with which Biden has expressed himself on this issue, without getting wet, and letting Congress make whatever decision it deems appropriate. I think it's better not to add fuel to the fire and to keep Trump under surveillance for the remaining ten days in the White House to prevent him from doing any more damage.
The seventh question has to do with his legacy. After what has happened now, it is clear that Donald Trump's political career is over, whatever his vague feelings about running in the 2024 elections that Biden has already said he will not run for. But he leaves behind him 74 million voters who are very angry and convinced they have been robbed, eight senators and 121 congressmen who were against Biden's appointment in the joint session of both houses on the 6th and 45% of GOP voters who still believe in good faith that there has been massive fraud. All these people object to Biden's legitimacy to become president, and this will be a major setback even though the Democrats have managed to secure the Senate after winning the last two seats in Georgia. This is a time for healing, for joining forces to tackle major problems caused by the virus, economic inequalities, unemployment or racial injustices, and that requires building bridges and not digging ditches. Trump leaves a poisoned legacy that will not make his successor's task any easier. It's a good thing he's not going to Biden's inauguration, however anomalous it may be. The bad thing is that his shadow won't disappear with him down the drain of history, which is what this man deserves.