If Trump did the wrong thing on Jan. 6, 2021, why would fellow Republicans support him?
It’s impossible to support Donald Trump for president if you really think he violated the Constitution and tried to overturn the will of the voters on Jan 6, 2021 right?
Right?
Sadly, no.
At the Republican presidential debate this past week, a majority of the Republicans on stage said they would support Trump if he is the eventual Republican nominee.
But many of these same Repbulicans also said former Vice President Mike Pence did the right thing by certifying election results that Joe Biden was the winner.
We all remember what happened on Jan. 6: a violent mob, under delusions of a stolen election fanned by Trump, stormed the Capitol and attacked police officers. Meanwhile, Trump pressured Pence to pursue a dubious (illegal) legal theory to abuse his power as president of the Senate to give the election to Trump.
“(Trump) asked me to put him over the Constitution,” Pence said on Wednesday. “I had no right to overturn the election.”
Yet Pence was among those who raised their hand and committed to voting for Trump if he is the GOP nominee for president.
Pence was the most egregious example, but he wasn’t the only one. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina said Pence “absolutely” did the right thing, before launching a filibuster about the “weaponization” of the Department of Justice.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis tried avoiding the answer before finally admitting Pence did the right thing and then blah blah blah something about “the future.”
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley also agreed Pence did the right thing, as did former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and some guy from North Dakota who may or may not be the governor (does anyone know for sure what really happens up there?).
But then, with the exception of Hutchinson and Christie, they all said they’d support Trump if he were the nominee, which is crazy.
Actually, the question is would they support Trump if he’s the nominee and convicted of one or more of the many crimes for which he’s been indicted. But conviction shouldn’t matter. Indictments shouldn’t even matter. Jan. 6 alone should be disqualifying.
Essentially what these candidates were saying was that Trump tried wrongly overturning an election and in doing so violated his oath of office in an effort to seize power, but most would still vote for him.
Talk about a lack of good judgment.
Businessman and overperforming gadfly Vivek Ramaswamy didn’t concede that Pence did the right thing and eagerly shot up his hand to say he’d support Trump (he even said he’d pardon Trump, which is really something if you think about it). He’s not a hypocrite, just a sycophantic fanboy (if Trump had been at the debate, Ramaswamy might have thrown his boxers toward Trump’s lectern and asked that he sign his chest).
God Bless Hutchinson, who argued over boos how on many fronts Trump was unfit for office (14th Amendment, morally, violating Republican National Committee rules), and Christie, who said: “Someone’s got to stop normalizing this conduct.”
Christie spent years sucking up to Trump, but he is at least doing the right thing now (even if it is just a political strategy, which it seems to be). It’s never too late to do the right thing.
DeSantis is right that Republicans need to focus on the future if they want to be successful. However, that doesn’t mean minimizing or burying what Trump did on Jan. 6 for political convenience.
Follow Matt on Twitter @FlemingWords