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To the editor:
Anyone remember the protests following the 2016 presidential election and how supporters of Trump declared themselves the side that doesn't protest when they lose elections at that time?
It is not a tu quoque fallacy or whataboutism for me to point out that the Trump Train "America First" Nationalist movement failed miserably to prove to us that.
The reason it isn't a tu quoque or a whataboutism on my part is because the protests and riots in 2016 following Trump's win were random and spontaneous. Such protests were not coordinated efforts to try to stop Donald Trump from being POTUS. Jan. 6, 2021, was a premeditated plot to try to stop Joe Biden from being POTUS and install the loser of a democratically held free and fair election to hold office.
Then-President Trump, unlike then-President Obama and then-presidential candidate Clinton, solicited Justice Department officials by attempting to fire an acting attorney general and replace him with one who will send a letter to swing states that there is fraud and demanding they decertify their election results. Trump solicited fake electors to commit perjury by sending slates of electors to the national archives. Trump commited election interference by soliciting a Secretary of State to magically find him the exact number of votes to win.
Given Trump's history of pressuring government officials like he did to the Ukraine president to investigate his political rivals and withholding military aid from him that led to his first impeachment, this behavior on the part of Trump is predictable. Trump was a wannabe dictator and drafted an executive order that would declare martial law and seize voting machines and met with his allies such as Rudy Giuliani, Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Sydney Powell and others about this matter. When all this failed, he summoned his supporters via Twitter an hour later to come to the capitol specifically and how it will be wild. All of this is the definition of seditious conspiracy.
He directed them to go to capitol. That is evidence Trump's use of the words "fight like hell" are not metaphoric, but literal and was an act inciting an insurrection. It was premeditated, because similarly to soliciting fake electors to commit perjury, Trump would not tell anyone in his administration about having a rally and ordering participants to march to the capitol, but wanted to long in advance before his Dec. 19 tweet. He just only told people not part of his administration and directed them to keep it secret.
The Big Lie has ramifications in 2022. State legislatures are passing draconian voter suppression laws that make it harder to vote. GOP candidates for Secretary of State are running on a platform that they would not have certified the 2020 presidential election had they been in office then.
Yes, there was foreign interference in our election in 2016 committed by Russia, and the Mueller Report did not rule out coordination with the Trump campaign and Russia at the time, but still to this day, the majority of Clinton 2016 voters agree Trump won fair and square in 2016. The majority of Trump 2020 voters won't say the same about Biden winning fair and square in 2020. We are the side that accepts election results.
Bipartisanship ends when autocracy begins. We need to keep our democratic majority in the U.S. House, and expand our U.S. Senate Majority by a net gain of at least two senate seats so we can do away with the filibuster and pass the Supporting Our Democracy Act, which will strengthen our checks and balances, prevent foreign interference in our elections, ensure transparency and accountability against a future unruly POTUS and pass the John R. Lewis Freedom to Vote Act which will expand access to the ballot and ban voter suppression, ban election subversion, ban partisan gerrymandering and ban dark money. We need to bring Donald Trump and all Jan. 6 perpetrators to justice.
Solomon J. Baker
Mifflintown