Three years ago Saturday, the uniquely American conceit that “it can’t happen here” was debunked once and for all: A sitting American president refused to accept his legitimate electoral defeat, using toxic lies and incitement to violence in an attempt to overturn a valid election so he could remain in power.
Nothing like the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, had ever happened before. In the more than two centuries of the nation’s existence, no foreign assailant had ever managed to so grievously undermine America’s confidence in its democratic institutions as its own president, his congressional enablers and his thousands of violent followers did on that terrible day.
And yet, the ensuing 36 months have in some ways confronted the nation with even more disturbing realities about itself in the current political era — beginning with the surreal fact that Donald Trump remains a politically viable presidential candidate going into the 2024 election cycle, despite his unprecedented (and continuing) betrayal of our constitutional democracy.
So brazen has been the revisionism of Trump’s supporters regarding Jan. 6 that it’s important to review even the most basic, uncontroverted facts.
Trump had spent the preceding months softening the ground with his baseless but persistent big lie that the November 2020 presidential election had been stolen from him. There was never a molecule of evidence to suggest significant election fraud.