Trump's Banana Dream
It seemed impossible, but it has happened, the United States has also entered the list of countries susceptible to an attempted coup d'état. Any attempt to hijack national sovereignty can be described as such, which is exactly what occurred at the Washington Capitol on January 6.
The hordes that first occupied the steps of the immense building and then stormed the halls and offices of the Senate and House of Representatives met with scarcely any resistance; Capitol Hill was so far easily accessible, based precisely on the respect that all the American people were supposed to profess for the building that symbolises democracy par excellence. It will certainly not be the same thereafter.
The perspective has changed radically since then. The insurrection of the thousands of Trumpist demonstrators was the culmination of the constant calls for such an uprising by the person who embodies the highest authority of the state. It is impossible for a Spanish observer not to recall, in view of such images, the similarities between what occurred in Washington and similar events in Chavista-Madurist Venezuela, Daniel Ortega's neo-Somocist Nicaragua, or, without going much further, Puigdemont's or Torra's Catalonia. And even with the Madrid of 2012 and 2013 with the attempts to "occupy the Congress" and the Madrid Assembly, spurred on at that time by leaders who delegitimized the institutions from the Puerta del Sol and who today sit in the Council of Ministers.
In Spain, the attempted coup d'état has given rise to a curious legal innovation, that of describing this supposed delirium as "dreaming". It remains to be seen how these events will be resolved in the United States and whether the instigator of this self-coup will still be allowed to complete his remaining two-week term in the White House. On the same day, January 6, the roles were changed. President-elect Joe Biden addressed the nation as the true head of state to denounce the biggest assault on democracy suffered by the nation that is the emblem of world freedoms. Watching him, I was also reminded of Philip VI's speech on 3 October 2017, for which he is now required to apologise.
Trump, on the other hand, continued in his frenzy of protest. His call for the demonstrators to retreat and return home was spiced up again with the same mantra that he has been spreading even before the elections of November 3: "The elections were stolen from us". In other words, more than as a president, he officiated as a mere leader of an insurrectional party. His claim could not be backed up with any evidence, but rather his desperate and threatening attempts to subvert the results himself in order to snatch victory from his democratic opponent have been discovered.
The innumerable litany of his attacks on the US democratic system over four years, with this banana epilogue of stirring up the assault and occupation of Congress, should be enough to prevent him from ending up at the helm of the country even for the two weeks remaining until January 20. There are institutional mechanisms that facilitate this, particularly the 25th amendment, which provides for his dismissal for inability to perform his duties.
His immunity will in any event end one second after Biden is sworn in as the 46th president of the United States. However, what happened on the Capitol should not go unpunished, nor should it be considered a dream in the manner of those condemned by the Catalan process. By his actions, Trump has dealt a brutal blow to the prestige of the only major country in the world that had never suffered a coup d’état and has attempted to place an explosive charge on the pillars on which the solid system of American democracy rests. These are crimes and their instigator should pay for them in a reputable country.
On the other hand, it should be noted that Trumpism has permeated. Since extremism is so common, it has many features of Chavism, in that it disregards facts and truth and ignores the rules of a true democracy, as well as putting up all kinds of obstacles to prevent the alternation of power. The fact that lies can ultimately be accepted as unquestionable truth, as shown by surveys of no less than 80 percent of Trump voters who are convinced that the elections have indeed been stolen from him, is a disturbing sign that democracy could be very badly wounded. And if that wave comes from the United States it will undoubtedly flood the entire planet.
The task facing the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris duo is therefore more than huge: to reconcile a seriously fractured country and thereby rebuild and extend this spirit of coexistence to the building of international relations.