What the nation and world witnessed this past Tuesday as Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee made fools of themselves, especially Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt, should reduce the votes Republicans get in the mid-terms to zero.
It won’t, of course. It’s actually stunning when you think about it that at least a third of the country still approve of Trump’s presidency and will, therefore, vote Republican in November.
What that means is, they not only support tariffs, trade wars with our neighbors, the war in Iran, Trump’s corruptness, his smallness. They support his efforts to replace our democracy with his own totalitarian autocracy.
That is the enigma of the year, that a third of Americans don’t believe in democracy. They live under an amazing Constitution that protects their personal and political freedoms, yet support Trump’s absolute grab for power that, if successful, would make us a nation governed by a man rather than by law.
In giving allegiance to him over the Constitution they are engaging in an act of voluntary servitude.
That was, of course, the message Senate Republicans on the Judiciary Committee were sending to the nation this past Tuesday. Trump over country. Trump over the Constitution. Trump over democracy.
So they attacked the prosecutor who on behalf of all Americans investigated and brought charges against Trump for his attack on the country.
They never questioned Jack Smith’s evidence. They questioned the fact that he gathered evidence and then actually charged Trump with the crimes he committed in plain sight.
Their priority was obvious. Protect and defend Trump rather than protecting and defending the Constitution, and that is what a third of our population continues to support. It is truly astonishing.
The only good thing about what happened on Tuesday is that it pointed to something I have been saying in these blogs over and again.
Truth is stronger than falsehood, good is stronger than evil, and at the end of the day evil always undoes itself.
That was on full display Tuesday when Eric Schmitt revealed how shallow and incompetent he and his staff were in confusing the Atlanta Hawks pro-basketball team with the Iowa Hawkeyes college basketball team.
Based on that foolish and incompetent mix-up, Senator Schmitt accused Jack Smith of attending a Hawks game and meeting with Fawny Willis, the Atlanta DA who also brought charges against Trump, while he was in Atlanta when in fact he was in Maryland on the date in question watching Caitlin Clark help the Iowa Hawkeyes beat the University of Maryland.
As stupid and foolish as Schmitt made himself look, what we saw in his behavior was about a lot more than him. It was about the degree to which Republicans in the Senate (and House) are complicit in Trump’s attack on our democracy.
And it’s about that third of adult Americans who still support Trump and the Republicans who stand with him.
I’m not sure how the rest of us should act toward these people any longer. What they are doing is not about holding a political opinion as is their right to do.
It is, instead, about supporting an attack on our country, supporting an attack on our democratic institutions, supporting an attack on our way of life. In short, it is about supporting the January 6 insurrection Trump set in motion in 2021.
It doesn’t matter if they don’t believe that is what they are doing. It is what they are doing.
It is not an opinion that Donald Trump is an anti-democratic autocrat who is friends with the leaders of China, Russia, and North Korea instead of the leaders of Canada, Mexico, or the leaders of our NATO allies. It is an established fact, and that is what a third of all Americans support.
This is the underlying reason for our political divisions today. Our divisions are not about the differences between Republicans ad Democrats. They are about the difference between those of us who believe in our constitutional form of government and those among us who don’t.
The simple truth is, no adult American today can support Donald Trump and at the same time support American democracy.
And it is on that basis that all of us will be casting our votes in November, whether we realize it or not.
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