What Was Trump Going to Do If the Mob Succeeded?

As Trump’s second trial begins, this is the only question that matters.

What if, as we have seen in the endlessly replayed videos posted by the Congress-crashing crowd of Trump supporters for the past four weeks, they had succeeded in hanging Mike Pence from the noose they had erected on the grounds of the Capitol? What if, as another video showed, they had shot Nancy Pelosi in the head? What if they had marched Mitch McConnell and the other leaders of the two main government parties out of congressional chambers with their hands zip-tied behind their backs to face public disgrace and scorn in front of the raucous crowd on January 6th, 2021?

What if the crowd had really been well organized, sufficiently militarized and actually had succeeded in taking over the Capitol to the extent that the President of the United States was going to have to decide what to do about it?

What was Trump going to do?

The answer to that question is as painful as it is obvious.

It is the only question Senators should be asking themselves as the evidence is brought forward in Trump’s impeachment trial that began today on the Senate floor.

They should not be asking themselves whether the trial is Constitutional. For one thing, the presidency is an office. It’s not a man or a woman. Consequently, an act perpetrated against the Constitution by any sitting president exists in perpetuity, applicable to the occupant committing the offense in perpetuity. For another, ex-presidents enjoy the title of “president” for the remainder of their natural lives. Former office holders are paid six figure salaries indefinitely by a grateful nation for service to the nation. This is paid for by the People to individuals who take on the awesome responsibility of running the country.

The presidency offers great power and great responsibility. Consequently, acts perpetrated that run counter to the protection and defense of the Constitution by any man or woman while in that office is impeachable in perpetuity. To decide otherwise is to allow for a grave and ominous hole in our system of checks and balances that may be exploited by a more politically brilliant and equally devious mind in the future, to the detriment or possibly even the disintegration of our democracy.

What was Trump going to do?

“I alone can fix it,” Trump exclaimed, according to Yoni Applebaum on the Politics page of The Atlantic on July 21st, 2016. This, he assured a crowd gathered to hear his words, was the only way to overcome the “poverty and violence at home,” and the “war and destruction abroad.” Not We, the People, but I, Your Leader.

“He’s now president for life, president for life. And he’s great,” Trump reportedly told Kevin Liptak at CNN on Saturday March 3rd, 2018, after China’s Communist party removed term limits to allow President Xi Jinping to continue in his role, indefinitely. “I think it’s great,” Trump said. “Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”

“The only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged,” Trump told a crowd of his supporters in Wisconsin as the DNC convention was getting under way on Monday, August 17th, 2020, according to an article published by Fox 13 News online the following day. The article added that Trump’s remark raised “anew with no evidence the specter of significant voting fraud,” in the 2020 presidential election.

“We’re going to win four more years in the White House,” Trump reportedly told a crowd in Nevada on Saturday, September 12th, 2020, according to Connor Perrett of Business Insider. “And then after that, we’ll negotiate, right? Because we’re probably — based on the way we were treated — we are probably entitled to another four after that.”

The 22nd Amendment to the Constitution prohibits anyone serving more than two terms as president.

“Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election,” Trump tweeted on Dec. 20th, 2020 according to Steve Holland, Jeff Mason and Jonathan Landay of US News, Jan. 6th, 2021. “Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”

On January 6th, 2021, as a crowd he was supposed to walk to the Capitol building with, descended on the halls of Congress, breaking windows and maiming or killing people in its wake, President (for life) Trump retreated to his situation room to watch the mayhem unfold.

Would the crowd have breached the Capitol had he been there standing before them, cautioning them to protest peacefully?

If the breach began before his speech ended, as some have contended, and he didn’t head to the Capitol, as he told the crowd he would that day, did he have knowledge of the deadly intentions of some of his supporters prior to the events that unfolded?

Why wasn’t the national guard prepared to defend the Capitol that day? Why wasn’t Trump on the phone calling everyone he could to put the wheels in motion to rally all local and federal law enforcement to the scene?

President Donald J. Trump only tweeted an hour after the Capitol riot began that protestors should “remain peaceful.” Clearly, he understood that that ship had already sailed. Now President Biden had been on television calling the events “not a protest” but “insurrection,” and calling on Trump to demand “an end to this siege.”

“I know you’re hurt,” Trump recorded on a video hours later. “We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election,” he added. “But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order.”

Now? After the damage to democracy itself had been done? Preserve and protect if and only when I deem it appropriate or in my best interest?

“Great patriots,” Trump tweeted of the crowd later, who were simply reacting to an election that had been “viciously stripped away” from him.

These were the final “tweeted” words of an aspiring totalitarian ruler bent on destroying our system of government and gaining supreme power and control of the country. These were the words of a man in grave dereliction of his duty to the Constitution and to the People he was elected to represent.

What would Trump have done?

If the Senators reviewing this evidence have any interest in preserving our democracy, the answer to this question must be that he would have taken the oath under false pretenses if given the chance.

The answer must be emphatic. It must be to convict. We must convict the ex-president Donald John Trump of inciting the violent insurrection on January 6th, 2021, strip him of his salary and render him unfit to hold office in this country ever again.

The scarier question is, what will the next “Trump” do if we do not?