Republicans are eager to forget — and minimize — what happened after the 2020 election, but Donald Trump isn’t allowing the topic to fade
Republican leaders have insisted that it’s time for the country to move on — and that Democrats’ only motivation in pushing for a commission to investigate what happened on January 6 is to score political points.
Here’s the problem with that let’s-move-on message: Trump has zero interest in moving on from the 2020 election.
Here’s the key bit:
“Many Republicans want to move on from the Jan. 6 attack. But how is that possible when the former president won’t move on from the Nov. 3 election and continues to push the same incendiary lies that resulted in 61 failed lawsuits before Jan. 6, led to an insurrection and could lead to yet more violence?”
Yes! That!
Over the weekend, Trump reemerged on the campaign trail in North Carolina with a speech that looked primarily backward. He called the 2020 election the “crime of the century.” He compared it to an election held in a third-world country. “What happened to this country in that last election is a disgrace,” he said.
And it’s not just this most recent speech where Trump has shown his obsession with the past. Here’s just a sampling of his statements in recent weeks:
- “Great patriots led by State Senator Doug Mastriano, Senator Cris Dush, and State Representative Rob Kauffman went to Maricopa County, Arizona, to learn the best practices for conducting a full Forensic Audit of the 2020 General Election. Now the Pennsylvania Senate needs to act.”
- “North Carolina produced a big victory for us, without a fraudulent outcome—missing ballots, illegal voting, dead people voting, and all of the other Democrat tricks.”
- “Our Country needs [Arizona] Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who has done little so far on Voter Integrity and the 2020 Presidential Election Scam, to step it up—but patriotic Republicans in the State Senate are making up for unelectable RINOs.”
Everybody know this Winston Churchill aphorism: “Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.” And yes, that applies to the current attempted erasure of the severity of what happened on January 6 by Republicans. But twist that aphorism slightly and you get an even more accurate — and damning — picture: Those who try to ignore history have to be held accountable when it repeats itself.
Again, Comstock writes eloquently on the effects of this purposeful forgetting by her party:
“The harm is that the lies have metastasized and could threaten public safety again. The U.S. Capitol Police report that threats against members of Congress have increased 107 percent this year.”
That’s it. Exactly.