The threat of violent right-wing extremism has been growing exponentially during the past four years under Donald Trump and his Republican enablers, and unfortunately last week's attack on the Capitol isn't even close to the last of it. The FBI is now warning of a "huge uprising" at state capitols in the coming days, along with the potential for more attacks in Washington in the days surrounding the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.
Directly responsible for this acute and ongoing threat are Donald Trump and all the Republican lawmakers who helped fan the flames of his fraudulent claims about the election. With the exception of a handful of GOP lawmakers who originally planned to oppose certification and then backed away following the siege, to date, not a single Republican has stepped forward to express regret for their role in inciting the violence. Instead, GOP lawmakers are spewing a gusher of disingenuous and plainly hypocritical calls for unity after four years of stoking Trump-style division.
But as truth teller and former Trump National Security Council member Fiona Hill notes in a Politico essay about Trump's coup, all Trump's supporters still believe the "Big Lie" that Trump won the election because neither Trump nor his GOP conspirators have told them otherwise.
"Unless the Big Lie is thoroughly refuted, we can expect more attempts to subvert the constitutional order from Trump’s supporters," writes Hill, who has been studying authoritarian regimes for three decades. "If we are to restore democratic norms and make sure this does not happen again, these congressional Republicans will have to take personal responsibility for their actions in support of Trump’s coup attempt. They must tell the truth to their constituents about the election and what the president tried to do."
Hill is exactly right. Only the people who perpetrated and precipitated this catastrophe can clean it up—Trump and his Republican conspirators. On Jan. 20, Trump will leave office but those GOP lawmakers will remain. So if they want the unity that so many of them are conveniently calling for now that they will be relegated to the minority, they can start by telling the truth: Joe Biden won the election and Trump bamboozled all his fanatics.