The whole world witnessed the insurrection in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, that sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election. So why did it take two and a half years to finally indict Trump on Aug. 1 for trying to steal the votes?
Federal prosecutor Jack Smith never lacked evidence. Trump’s fingers were all over the attempt to reverse the election.
Secret Service agents close to Trump tried to take Vice President Mike Pence to Andrews Air Force Base to stop the counting of electoral votes. Gen. Charles Flynn, the brother of Trump’s first national security advisor Michael Flynn, delayed sending troops to the capitol for 187 minutes.
Trump made calls to state officials demanding changes in the vote totals.
Key to Trump’s conspiracy was attempting to steal Black votes in Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia. Election workers were threatened and harassed by pro-Trump mobs.
Accompanying all of the Trump indictments is the burning hatred of tens of millions in the working class who know the danger that Trump represents. This is particularly so in Asian, Black, Indigenous, and Latinx Communities.
For many, it was as if the segregationist former Alabama governor and presidential candidate George Wallace had made it to the White House.
Trump isn’t being indicted for his bigotry and encouragement of racist violence. He’s not being prosecuted for keeping immigrant children in cages and denying them health care.
No mention is made of Trump’s continuing occupation and bombing of Syria. Or his other war crimes, like the assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was on a diplomatic peace-making mission when he was murdered in Baghdad by a U.S. drone.
Both Iran and Iraq have asked for Trump’s extradition for the murders of General Soleimani, Commander Muhandis, and five others.
The wealthy scorn democracy
Nobody should think that Trump’s behavior is out of the ordinary for the super-rich. Many big capitalists support Trump, including hedge fund operators as well as oil and gas frackers.
That’s how he got to the White House in the first place. Many of the 756 U.S. billionaires are just as greedy, crude, and bigoted as Trump.
The “old money” in Philadelphia made the fascist Frank Rizzo Philly’s mayor. Their police bombed the MOVE house on May 13, 1985, killing 13 Black people, including six children.
None of the U.S. billionaires refused Trump’s tax cuts. That includes former New York Mayor and current Trump critic Michael Bloomberg, whose $94 billion stash is almost 40 times larger than Trump’s.
Bloomberg spent $250 million to buy three elections as the Big Apple’s mayor. That’s as corrupt as anything Trump did.
The New York Times attacks Trump. Yet the newspaper endorsed Rudolph Giuliani (the “No. 1 unindicted co-conspirator” in the latest Trump indictment) for reelection as New York City mayor in 1997.
Giuliani should have been jailed decades ago for presiding over a trigger-happy police force whose cops fired 41 bullets at Amadou Diallo, killing the African immigrant. As Trump’s top accomplice, Giuliani bragged that he kicked 640,000 New Yorkers off public assistance.
The wealthy and powerful scorn democracy. They find it repulsive that the vote of a homeless person ― or any poor and working people ― should count as much as theirs.
Oil billionaire H.L. Hunt wanted a social order in which the wealthiest individuals could cast the most votes. Hunt even wrote a novel entitled “Alpaca” describing this monstrosity.
Utah Senator Mike Lee says the United States isn’t and shouldn’t be a democracy. Reactionary columnist David Harsanyi wants to “weed out ignorant Americans from the electorate.”
Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Robert Bartley justified George W. Bush going to the White House despite winning 543,895 fewer votes than Al Gore. Bartley did so because many of the Democratic votes were cast by “union households” and “Blacks.”
Did Bartley think Black voters were worth three-fifths as much as white voters? That’s how the U.S. Constitution specified how Black people should be counted in the census.
The day after this racist rant was published in the Wall Street Journal, five U.S. Supreme Court justices selected Bush as president on Dec. 12, 2000.
Trump’s attempted coup d’état
The real reason for the latest indictment of Trump is the same one that prevented him from declaring martial law on June 1, 2020. That was a week after George Floyd was murdered, and demonstrations demanding Black Lives Matter! were sweeping the United States.
Trump wanted to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act ― which was enacted to suppress rebellions of enslaved Africans ― and send troops to shoot protesters across the country. The rub is that the U.S. Army is 20% Black and almost 18% Latinx.
The Pentagon brass feared that GIs would refuse to follow orders to attack the people demanding justice. Trump’s consolation prize was having demonstrators attacked with pepper spray and tear gas in Lafayette Park across from the White House.
Seven months later, Trump was planning to remain in the White House no matter what. He fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper, appointed Christopher Miller as Esper’s replacement, and promoted three other officials after losing the election. Wasn’t this clear evidence of an attempted coup?
White House Deputy Counsel Patrick Philbin remarked to Jeffrey Clark that there would be “riots in every major city in the United States” if Trump insisted on staying in office.
Clark — whom Trump wanted to make Attorney General — responded, “Well, that’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.”
It’s one thing for Kenosha, Wisconsin, police to welcome fascist vigilantes like Kyle Rittenhouse. It’s another matter when the Joint Chiefs of Staff is asked to stage a coup d’état to keep Trump in office.
Sections of the ruling class, particularly among their legal and political apparatus, consider Trump to be dangerous. This isn’t because he’s making phony anti-war remarks about the conflict between Ukraine and the Russian Federation. (Trump wants to concentrate instead on attacking China.)
It’s because Trump might incite tens of millions of poor and working people to revolt.
Nobody should put their trust in the capitalist “rule of law.” The “rule of law” sent the anti-slavery martyrs of Harpers Ferry to the gallows.
Only the power of the people can stop all the Trumps and overturn the capitalist system, liberating working and oppressed peoples.
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