Last night I said President-elect Biden should admonish President Trump to tell his followers to stand down or be held personally responsible for any further violence they perpetrate in his name. Here in part is what I said:
Order his Proud Boys to stand back, disband, and abort any plan to storm any state capitol. He should warn that, if Trump fails to do so, and violence ensues as feared, the Biden administration will regard him and his Proud Boys as even more treasonous than the Lincoln administration regarded Jefferson Davis and his Confederate secessionists. And that they will all be prosecuted accordingly.
(“WTF: Trump-Led Insurrection Against US Expanding to All 50 State Capitols…?” January 12, The iPINIONS Journal, 2021)
Biden did not do his part, but Trump got the message anyway. For here in part is what he said in an address he delivered from the Oval Office just moments ago:
In light of reports of more demonstrations, I urge that there must be NO violence, NO lawbreaking and NO vandalism of any kind. That is not what I stand for, and it is not what America stands for. I call on ALL Americans to help ease tensions and calm tempers. Thank You.
(ABC News, January 13, 2021)
Well, okay, perhaps getting impeached again this afternoon had something to do with it. And yes, it looked like a hostage tape, and he’s probably already yelling at his White-House minders for making him deliver those “presidential words.” But, the schadenfreude aside, the manifest impotence of this wannabe dictator is what makes his statement so effective.
Yet the irony is not lost on me that he is leaving Capitol Hill, the citadel of democracy, looking more like a slapdash military base in Iraq than the seat of the greatest legislative body in the history of the world. And, thanks to Trump, more US troops are now patrolling the streets of the Washington, D.C., than all of Iraq and Afghanistan combined.
Now the capital of the free world looks like a garrisoned, Baghdad-style Green Zone. If that isn’t giving in to the terrorists, I don’t know what is.
And so, for Osama bin Laden, Vladimir V. Putin…and Donald J. Trump, mission accomplished…?
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