Editor:
Donald Trump has been following the advocacy of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda who is famous for this statement “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Trump has told over 30,534lies or misleading statements according to the Washington Post’s Fact Checkers as of January 19. It is incredible that this man has survived impeachment and avoided removal. He managed this because of the enablers of his own party who have allowed themselves to be bullied by the biggest bully to ever occupy the oval office.
The biggest Trump lie has been that the election was rigged and stolen from him. He made this charge in advance of his 2016 defeat of Hillary Clinton, just in case he lost and of course when he ran against Biden he told the same outrageous lie that the election was rigged. He does this apparently because he can’t stand to be a loser. This time he did lose and so continued with the story line that the election was rigged and stolen. His Attorney General, William Barr found no election fraud and his Cybersecurity chief, Chris Krebs stated it was a cyber-safe election. Krebs was fired and Barr went to the doghouse and soon resigned.
Recently Trump called the Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger and asked him to find 11,779 votes to change the election results. This was illegal election interference, but no doubt Trump would deem it a ‘perfect call’ like the one he was first impeached for.
The catastrophic result of this lying to maintain that the election was stolen from him came about on January 6 when Donald Trump encouraged a mob to an insurrectional assault on the Capitol while his vice-president, Michael Pence was presiding over the electoral college vote validation with a joint session of the Congress which is held after each election on January 6.
People were killed, offices vandalized as this mob broke through windows and doors. It was a tragic day for American democracy, but in the aftermath of this assault on the peoples’ house the Congress did come together to finish that which they started, the certification of the Electoral College election results by tallying the votes for and certifying that Biden and Harris were the winners.
This is where the unbelievable happened after this assault based on the Trump lie. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri along with four other senators Cindy Hyde-Smith, John Neely Kennedy, Roger Marshall and Tommy Tuberville who had promised to challenge the election results did so even after this horrible assault on the Capitol. At least several other Senators who had signed on to back this election objection bailed out including Kelley Loeffler the Georgia Senator who recently lost her election.
In the House of Representatives, 121 Republicans voted in favor of the objection to Arizona’s election. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana voting with their caucus. The House rejected the challenge to Arizona’s electoral votes, 303-121.
It is difficult to understand what these Senators and Congressman thought they had to gain politically at such a historic moment by continuing to promote the lie on a day when the lie caused so much damage to our nation. Nonetheless, they commenced to make fools of themselves and hopefully jeopardized their political careers.
What worked for the Nazis has worked for Trump. Tell the lie often enough and people will believe you. This is the really scary part that so many people can become true believers. In a very recent YouGov America poll, one in five voters including 45% of Republicans approve of the storming of the Capitol building. Ninety-six percent of Democrats believe that Trump was to blame for the insurrection whereas only 28 percent of Republicans thought Trump responsible.
Is it Fox News and other conservative media that is brain washing Republicans or what is it? Do people believe only what they want to and that which they don’t want to believe is ‘Fake News.’ It is pretty disgusting that the lie is still working. For the sake of us all we need to start agreeing with and promoting facts whether it be about politics or Covid-19. I wish I had the answer about how to do this, but we do need to come together and avoid the ugly scenes of January 6 based on a lie. Lies as well as elections have consequences.
Lee Miller