"A Shadow Ex-President" & His "Cult-like Movement"

From Brett Samuels' 1-31-22 THE HILL article entitled "Psaki: Trump Raising Jan. 6 Pardons, Overturning Election a Reminder He's Unfit":

White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Monday said former President Trump's comments over the weekend in which he floated pardons for Capitol rioters and complained that the 2020 election was not "overturned" were a reminder of how unfit Trump is for office.

"He defended the actions of his supporters, who stormed the Capitol and brutally attacked the law enforcement officers protecting it. I think it’s important to shout that out and call that out," Psaki said at a press briefing when asked about Trump's comments and potential reforms to the Electoral Count Act.

"He even attacked his own vice president for not, in his words, having overturned the election," Psaki continued. "And it’s just a reminder of how unfit he is for office. And it’s telling that even some of his closest allies have rejected those remarks as inappropriate in the days since."

Trump at a rally in Texas on Saturday said if he ran for reelection and won in 2024, he would treat those convicted of crimes connected to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots "fairly," adding, "If it requires pardons, we will give them pardons, because they are being treated so unfairly."

Hundreds of people have been arrested and sentenced in connection with the Capitol riots, when a pro-Trump mob violently overwhelmed law enforcement and stormed the complex in a bid to stop the certification of Joe Biden's electoral victory.

On Sunday night, amid talk in Congress of reforming the Electoral Count Act, Trump argued that former Vice President Mike Pence should have unilaterally "changed the outcome" of last November's election, his clearest admission to date that he wanted the results completely thrown out so he could remain in power.

To read Samuels' entire article, click HERE.

From Will Bunch's 1-30-22 PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER column entitled "At Texas Rally, Trump All But Promised a Racially Charged Civil War If He’s Indicted":

For a nation that’s awakened every morning for nearly two years to a Groundhog Day of pandemic and paranoia, the scenes from Donald Trump’s latest comeback rally on Saturday at a fairground in the East Texas flatlands of Conroe could certainly numb the American mind with an overwhelming sense of déjà vu.

The mile-long line of Trump fanatics, braving the January prairie chill to see the twice-impeached ex-president and passing rows of vendors, including the occasional Confederate flag. Then the viral clips of the true believers — the woman in her Trump 2024 hat expounding that the “Joe Biden” currently in the White House is fake and that the real one was assassinated at Gitmo in March 2019, another woman peddling a book containing all of Trump’s tweets before he was banned from Twitter, and the guy peddling doses of the quack COVID-19 cure ivermectin while lashing out at anyone wearing a mask for trying to "save Grandma" [...].

[T]he man who’d occupied the White House little more than one year ago delivered one of the most incendiary and most dangerous speeches in America’s 246-year history. It included an appeal for all-out mayhem in the streets to thwart the U.S. justice system and prevent Trump from going to jail, as the vise tightens from overlapping criminal probes in multiple jurisdictions. And it also featured a stunning campaign promise — that Trump would look to abuse the power of the presidency to pardon those involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

It’s impossible for me to understate or downplay the importance of this moment, and I hope that my colleagues in the media — who too often over the last year have craved or even pretended about a return to the politics of “normal,” when we are nowhere near normal — will wake up and see this. Of course, Biden’s presidency deserves our full scrutiny, with praise for what’s gone right (an economic boom) and criticism for what’s gone wrong (broken promises on climate and student debt). But while Biden is seeking to restore democratic norms, a shadow ex-president — unpunished so far for his role in an attempted coup on Jan. 6 — is rebuilding a cult-like movement in the heartland of America, with all the personal grievance and appeals to Brownshirts-style violence that marked the lowest moments of the 20th century. On the 89th anniversary of the date (Jan. 30, 1933) that Adolf Hitler — rehabilitated after his attempted coup — assumed power in Germany, are we repeating the past’s mistakes of complacency and underestimation?

To read Bunch's entire article, click HERE.