Stop blaming Trump for the Capitol riots – democracy won

Less than two years before the next presidential election and two years after he resisted leaving office, Donald Trump continues to disrupt US politics, writes Mary Dejevsky

The so-called January 6 coup continues to provoke much soul-searching (Reuters)

It is hard not to feel a degree of perverse satisfaction at the political goings-on across the Atlantic. The theatre of the absurd seems to have transferred itself almost effortlessly from Westminster to Washington DC.

Until the new Republican majority in the US House of Representatives manages to elect a speaker, the whole legislative process is frozen. The Democrats, who narrowly lost control of the House while retaining control of the Senate, understandably find it hard to suppress their glee.

Less than two years before the next presidential election and two years after he resisted leaving office, Donald Trump continues to disrupt US politics. He could yet destroy his adopted party. He could also return.

Which is partly why, a full two years on – and despite his elected successor being securely ensconced – the so-called January 6 coup continues to provoke so much soul-searching. It is also why Trump’s establishment adversaries have invested so much effort in trying to discredit him once and for all.

Like spurned elites everywhere, self-styled decent Americans simply cannot understand why he is still able to cling to public life. They despair of their political process and the ease with which, in their view, it was open to subversion by a narcissistic crook. And that despair has, if anything, grown stronger as the memory of the events themselves recedes.

Reinforced by the constant replays of disorder in the citadel of US power, what happened on 6 January 2021 is becoming fixed in US history as a rogue president’s attempt to seize power, which caused US democracy to teeter on the brink.

The seriousness with which so many Americans treat their politics is in many ways enviable. We may well be too cynical on this side of the Atlantic. But the evolving mythology of January 6 in Washington vastly exceeds the reality. There was no real threat to democracy in the United States.

Trump did not believe the result of the November election – many a politician will share that feeling. He searched high and low for proof of error or manipulation; he tried to browbeat officials with some of the same techniques he had doubtless used in business. He called on his supporters to protest on the day that the results were to be made official. But none of his attempted interventions succeeded.

Officials at federal and state level stood their ground. His vice-president forsook him, as did senior Republicans. He was, as the defeated Al Gore was called in 2000, a “sore loser”. He was no threat to US democracy. US democracy was in fact triumphantly vindicated. It showed itself bigger than the man.

Yes, a motley crowd of his supporters invaded the Capitol – and there were, tragically, deaths – but whose fault was that invasion? Law enforcers had been warned of protests that day, it emerged, but almost no additional precautions were taken.

A system that surrounds its presidents and politicians with some of the strictest security in the world was unable to see off what was, initially at least, more of a carnivalesque rabble than a treasonous threat.

The Capitol was indeed in some physical danger, as were some of those inside – but US democracy was not. The invaders were ejected and arrested; the new president was declared and inaugurated on time. He took office unchallenged, and has exercised executive power ever since.

The integrity of the political process was maintained; democracy prevailed. So why do so many believe otherwise – or, at least, that Trump was, and remains, a mortal threat to US democracy, which itself is a very delicate flower?

One reason is the widespread respect for the Capitol as sacrosanct, which is part and parcel of the seriousness of US attitudes to politics – and that sanctity was violated.

But the main reason, surely, is that it suits Trump’s enemies to hype the menace they claim he presents: as a threat to law and order and a threat to the state. They want him removed from politics for good, and not just from politics but from public life generally. Most of all, though, they want to stop him from running for president in 2024.

To this end, they have essentially continued the campaign they started after he won the 2016 election, which goes far beyond politics as commonly defined, repeatedly crossing over into the judicial arena. Having failed to end Trump’s political career with his electoral defeat, they aim to cast him as a traitor and a criminal. In other words, not as another politician, but as something entirely alien to the system.

The problem here is that, despite applying something of the same dogged persistence to their task as Trump applied to his efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat, proof has been elusive.

Much of what Trump had hoped to achieve during his presidency was effectively sabotaged by what became known as the “Russiagate” allegations, supported in part by a “dodgy dossier” compiled by former MI6 agent Christopher Steele. But an investigation conducted by special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence to support claims of “collusion” with Russia – either that Trump had been helped to power by the Russians or that he was in the Kremlin’s pocket politically.

In many other respects, the US political system dealt admirably with Trump’s unconventional ways. The judiciary, the Congress and the US public all did their bit. Checks and balances worked. Trump was twice impeached, but then acquitted – a justification, it could be argued, of impeachment as a process that serves to keep accusations against a president, in the first instance, in the political domain where they belong.

After Trump left office, his Democratic opponents launched two processes that had the potential to cross over from politics into the judicial realm. One was the January 6 Committee, which presented its final report on 23 December; the other consisted of legal moves to publish Trump’s tax records from the time of his presidential nomination to the end of his presidency.

The January 6 Committee found that Trump had failed to call on the protesters to disperse, but nothing that suggested a premeditated coup plot to take power by force. As for the tax returns, published a week later, these reveal some foreign accounts, and – for a wealthy American – a lamentable lack of charitable donations.

Otherwise, it appears, there was nothing incriminating, given that any hint of illegality would have been all over the US media within minutes. Here was another dog that did not bark.

So now we are back with the politics – and a good thing, too. The Republican Party, as seen from its representatives’ difficulties in electing a House speaker, seems at risk of fragmenting by the day. Trump is a part of the reason, but only a part.

The scene is now set for preliminary skirmishes between Trump and other potential candidates – chief among them the re-elected Florida governor, Ron DeSantis – for the party’s presidential nomination.

In the coming weeks, and perhaps months, Trump will have to gauge the extent of his grassroots support, even as the party weighs up the likely political cost of a divisive contest for the nomination and, indeed, Trump’s prospects of ever being a winner again.

This is US politics as normal. In 2016, Trump was elected president in a free and fair election. Four years later, he was voted out. He resisted, but could not subvert the process. Joe Biden entered the White House unchallenged.

Rather than wallowing in despair, US voters should be proud of the quality and resilience of their democracy – and get out to vote in 2024, to make sure it stays that way.