The blame for the attack on the Capitol is Donald Trump, according to the New York Times
How and why the New York Times criticizes Donald Trump about the assault on Capitol Hill
President Trump and his Republican activists in Congress incited a violent attack Wednesday against the government and nation they claim to love. This cannot be tolerated – reads the editorial in the NYT .
Trump's seditious rhetoric prompted crowds of thousands to storm the United States Capitol, some breaking into the floors of the House and Senate, where the nation's elected representatives had gathered to fulfill their constitutional duty of count the electoral votes and confirm the election of Joe Biden as president.
No wonder some carried the Confederate flag as they attacked the seat of the US government and forced the debate in Congress to be suspended. They shattered windows and smashed doors, clashing with overwhelmed security forces as they shouted their support for Trump and their challenge to the legitimate 2020 election results. One woman was killed. The leaders of the nation have been sent to seek refuge.
Explosives have been found on the Capitol and in several locations around Washington. The pro-Trump protests have also closed state buildings across the country.
Trump unleashed these assaults. He has been railing against the verdict given by voters in November for months. He summoned his supporters to gather in Washington on this day and encouraged them to march to the Capitol. He told them the elections were stolen. He told them to fight. He told them he could join them and, even though they stormed the building, he refused for long hours to tell them to stop, to condemn their actions, to lift a finger in defense of the Constitution he had sworn in. to preserve and protect. When he finally spoke at the end of the day, he asserted the protesters' anger, telling them again that the elections had been stolen, but asking them to go home anyway. It was the performance of a man unwilling to fulfill his duties as president or to confront the consequences of his own behavior.
The president must be held accountable – through impeachment proceedings or prosecution – and the same goes for his supporters who carried out the violence. In time, there should be an investigation into the Capitol police's failure to prepare for an attack announced and planned in public.
This is not just an attack on the 2020 election results. It is a precedent – an authorization for an opposition similar to the results of future elections. It must be clearly rejected, and placed beyond the limits of permitted conduct.
The leaders of the Republican Party also bear some responsibility for the attack on the Capitol.
Many in the GOP participated in the vigorous retailing of election lies. They tried to undermine public confidence in democracy by questioning the legitimacy of Biden's victory without providing any evidence of their claims. Their statements have led some of those who trust them to conclude that violence was necessary.
Few have been as outspoken as Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer, who suggested early Wednesday: “Let's have a trial by combat! But even as extremists boiled around the Capitol, fighting against security barriers, Republicans in the House and Senate were destroying democracy from within. "
Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, invoked the 1877 commission that resolved the controversial 1876 presidential election as a model for what he called a reasonable doubt about the 2020 election. There is no factual basis for such doubts about the vote. of 2020, but Mr. Cruz's choice of analogy is historically resonant. In the 1876 election, White Democrats used widespread political violence to prevent blacks from voting and then demanded an end to Reconstruction as the price for the survival of a compromised Republic – ushering in an era of racial terror and cementing exclusion. of southern blacks from participatory democracy.
The modern Republican Party, in its systematic efforts to suppress the vote, and in its refusal to recognize the legitimacy of the elections it loses, similarly seeks to maintain its political power on the basis of exclusion. Wednesday's insurrection is evidence of an alarming willingness to pursue this goal with violence.
It is clear that some Republican leaders are beginning to fear the consequences of enabling Trump. Before the attack began, Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, decreed the efforts of his Republican colleagues to overturn the election results. But his eloquence was the very definition of a gesture that was too little and too late. Who sows the wind, reap the storm.
Other politicians have had firmer convictions. Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney tweeted: "What happened today at the US Capitol was an insurrection, incited by the US president."
The Constitution requires Congress to count and announce the results of a presidential election on January 6 of the following year. Even if the crowd has been able to block this process, they will not be able to prevent it, nor the inauguration of Biden in two weeks.
But the attack is a reminder of the fragility of self-government.
January 6, 2021 will be a dark day. The question is whether, even at the end of Mr. Trump's term, America is at the beginning of a descent into an even more dark and divided age or the end of an age. The danger is real, but the answer is not preordained. Republican politicians have the power, and the responsibility, to chart a different path by ending their rhetorical assaults on American democracy and rising up in defense of the nation they have sworn to serve.
(extract from the foreign press review by Epr Comunicazione)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/la-colpa-attacco-al-campidoglio-e-di-donald-trump-secondo-il-new-york-times/ on Fri, 08 Jan 2021 11:59:38 +0000.