Republican voters in Orland Park, Tinley Park, Palos Heights, Homer Glen, Lemont and other communities faced a choice when they awoke Friday morning.
After Thursday night’s opening hearing by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol, they could continue to support former President Donald Trump or they could support law enforcement, but they could no longer do both.
That point was among the clear take-aways of Thursday’s testimony by U.S. Capitol police Officer Caroline Edwards. She told how she was severely injured amid the chaos, how she slipped in human blood and she and other brave law enforcement officials risked their lives as violent intruders stormed our nation’s seat of government.
“Never in my wildest dreams did I think as a police officer, as a law enforcement officer that I would find myself in the middle of a battle,” Edwards said. “I am not combat-trained. That day it was just hours of hand-to-hand combat.”
Trump told a mob to come to Washington, D.C. that day. Then he told the mob to fight. Then the mob attacked police officers.
Trump encouraged people to assault police officers because he refused to admit he lost the 2020 presidential election. There was no evidence of widespread voting fraud, former Attorney General Bill Barr told the committee. Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, testified that she agreed with Barr that there was no fraud.
The committee presented evidence and testimony that people close to Trump told him repeatedly that he lost the election. Yet Trump refused to concede defeat. Instead, he promoted a seditious conspiracy that sought to illegally overturn the will of the American people.
“Democracy remains in danger,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chairman of the panel. “Jan. 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup, a brazen attempt, as one rioter put it shortly after Jan. 6, to overthrow the government. The violence was no accident.”
Trump defenders avoid facing the dilemma that they can support Trump or police, but not both. They dodge the question by talking about inflation, high gas prices and civil unrest following the 2020 death of George Floyd, who was murdered by a police officer.
Police officers and their supporters ought to follow the lead of Patrick Yoes, president of the National Fraternal Order of Police, who issued a statement as the violence unfolded on Jan. 6, 2021.
“We also call on President Trump to forcefully urge these demonstrators to stop their unlawful activity, to stand down, and to disperse,” Yoes said that day. “The actions of some of these demonstrators are endangering our elected officials, Congressional staff, ordinary citizens, and the law enforcement officers on the scene.”
“We urge everyone involved to reject the use of violence and to obey the orders of law enforcement officers to ensure that these events are brought to a swift and peaceable end,” Yoes said.
Yet, Trump made no attempt to stop the violence that day, committee members said Thursday. He did not call for the National Guard to be deployed. He made no effort to contact military or intelligence officials. For hours Trump ignored pleas from Republican lawmakers and others to call for an end to the violence.
How does a political organization that refuses to condemn Trump’s disregard for the rule of law purport to be the party of law and order?
If we as a nation hope to continue with our nearly 250-year experiment as a constitutional republic, we need to collectively affirm our commitment to the rule of law. There must be a reckoning for the violent assault on the Capitol.
The select committee will show the violence was part of a scheme to prevent Congress from affirming that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Trump wanted Vice President Mike Pence to reject certified results from Georgia, Arizona and other states where the vote tallies were relatively close.
“Hang Mike Pence,” Trump supporters chanted after it became apparent that Pence would not go along with the plan.
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Trump had the legal right to challenge results, and his supporters pursued more than 60 state and federal lawsuits. Despite exhausting all legal options, Trump still refused to accept that he lost the election.
Rather, Trump embraced a phony legal theory that state delegates to the Electoral College could be challenged with alternate slates of electors. Many Republican members of Congress went along with this plan and voted to not certify results from Arizona and other states.
The theory held that if enough Electoral College votes were called into question, state legislatures might somehow be empowered to determine the outcome of a presidential election instead of people who actually cast votes.
Criminals escaping consequences threaten our cherished freedoms.
“Democracy remains in danger,” Thompson said.
Some refuse to admit they must choose between supporting Trump or police officers. They tell themselves Antifa was responsible for the attack, or invest some other excuse that also has no basis in fact.
“President Trump summoned a violent mob,” said Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the panel’s vice chair who took the lead for much of the hearing. “When a president fails to take the steps necessary to preserve our union — or worse, causes a constitutional crisis — we’re in a moment of maximum danger for our republic.”
Our democracy remains in peril because too many prefer to embrace fiction rather than fact. They refuse to watch videos and other evidence that show life-threatening assaults on police officers.
If you profess to support law enforcement, you must condemn Trump for encouraging people to commit violence against police officers.
Ted Slowik is a columnist with the Daily Southtown.