Thursday 7 January 2021

Trump descends into madness

If you weren't shaken by the scenes on Capitol Hill in Washington last night, you are probably unshockable. I never thought I would see armed protestors storm the US senate and certainly not during the confirmation of a presidential election. Trump encouraged it and incited it while sitting inside The White House watching the events on TV but saying nothing to calm tempers. It was total madness. We watched America teetering on the edge of anarchy.

His own cabinet are reportedly discussing removing him from office this morning using the 25th amendment:

Trump consistently pedalled conspiracy theories, denigrated the American electoral process and claimed he only lost because the Democrats somehow rigged the election against him. We are living through utterly unprecedented times, there is no doubt about it.

This apparent insurrection, provoked by Trump, comes after multiple (62 I believe) legal challenges all of which failed when heard by courts across the USA, right up to the State Supreme Courts.

Trump couldn't bring himself, even at this final moment to admit he lost the election that was free and fair.   I think he is clearly out of his mind - as was always obvious from before he even thought about running for office. 

He has deliberately whipped up the mob and directed their fury at the US democratic system no less. Trump seems to think Vice President Pence has the power to block Biden's confirmation as president. He genuinely does not understand the American constitution. The man who swore to uphold and defend the constitution doesn't actually understand it! 

Although he was finally persuaded to come out and urge protesters to go home he still referred to the election as fraudulent, being 'stolen' and claiming everybody knew he won by a 'landslide'.

He seems to be under the impression his election defeat was the result of a vast conspiracy involving thousands of people in dozens of US states, Republican and Democrat, working together to deprive him of what was rightfully his. And the FBI and other law enforcement agencies knew nothing about it. 

The damage to the Republican party will be incalculable. I know Biden, Harris and the Democrats regard Trump and Johnson as being out of the same mould. They are both populist tigers which their respective parties thought they could subvert for their own use. The current Republican and Conservative parties saw in them a means to win or hold on to power. The nation's democratic health became a side issue.

Senior GOP figures who rode on the back of Trump's insanity for four years are culpable. I don't blame Trump, he needs psychiatric help and has done for twenty of thirty years, but I do blame the figures who helped him and worked for him.  The same applies to the Tories and Johnson.

Trump fired a lot of people over the four years, but I have no sympathy for them because they must have known what kind of a man he was but they still accepted a job, even if in some cases it didn't last very long. Many of them stood in front of cameras and defended the nutjob after one or other of his frequent crazy outbursts.

There are a lot of people in this country who may come to regret supporting Trump. Farage, Banks, Gove, Ress-Mogg to begin with but also men like Daniel Hannan who may regret this tweet from last November:

I read somewhere that Trump is on course to tell 30,000 lies during his presidency, a figure which should shock but somehow doesn't. This morning I understand Twitter and Instagram have suspended his account.  Amazingly, he has 88 million followers, what does that tell us about the USA? Or this country?

Neil O'Brien Tory MP for Oadby, without a trace of irony, tweeted about a population "radicalised by an ecosystem of shock jocks, social media cranks and conspiracy theories" as if we in Britain don't exist in the same world. Note the reply and look at the pictures. Are we so different?


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