J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo
A video clip is displayed of former President Donald Trump at a hearing of the House select committee investigating the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol, June 9, 2022.
After the first round of hearings of the January 6th Committee, the most important takeaway is that the committee has built an ironclad case for Trump’s indictment. We’ve now seen irrefutable proof that Trump knew that his demands on Mike Pence were illegal.
All of this should increase the likelihood that Attorney General Merrick Garland will prosecute Trump. In that context, the report late last week that the committee was resisting requests from the Justice Department for transcripts of witness interviews was bizarre.
It’s understandable that the committee needs to complete its own work. But since the whole point of the committee’s work is to demonstrate that Trump broke the law and savaged the Constitution, a standoff over separation of powers would be self-defeating to say the least. After negotiations, the committee now plans to begin sharing transcripts in July.
The other takeaway is the contrast between Republicans in the executive branch advising Trump and most Republicans in Congress. The hacks and opportunists whom Trump hired were far from constitutional choirboys. But eventually, nearly all were so appalled by Trump’s narcissistic lunacy that all but a very few like John Eastman resisted it.
The Republican Congress, meanwhile, with very few heroic exceptions like Liz Cheney, defended Trump, and still does. In the minds of the framers of the Constitution, Congress was to be the branch closest to the people. And that’s the problem. GOP representatives with little regard for Trump fear offending MAGA voters.
What to do when the poison infects not just corrupt leaders but the body politic? Not merely outright neofascist thugs like the Proud Boys, but their respectable apologists?
There’s a bitterly ironic poem by Bertolt Brecht called “The Solution.” In 1953, though living in Communist East Berlin, Brecht had little patience for party bureaucrats. Some functionary had expressed disappointment that the people were displaying insufficient enthusiasm for the party program. Brecht acidly suggested in his poem that perhaps the government should dissolve the people and elect a new one.
But the irony is on Brecht—and on us. We don’t get to fire the people. We need to earn back broad popular support for constitutional democracy.
That in turn will require not just exposing the crimes of Donald Trump, but demonstrating that government is on the side of the people and not mega-corporations. If we are lucky enough to avert outright fascism, it will be a long road back.
