donald trump capitol building

Inside Trump’s Final Days: Aides Struggle to Contain an Angry, Isolated President

One White House official suggested Trump’s final act as president could be a preemptive pardon for family members and for himself just before Biden is sworn in.

Washington: “We are going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue,” President Donald Trump exhorted his screaming supporters before they marched on the US Capitol last week, saying he’d go with them. He did not – and what unfolded was a deadly breach of the citadel of American democracy that has left Trump’s world crumbling in the final days of his presidency.

Trump had wanted to join the thousands of hardcore followers who assembled at Capitol Hill on January 6. He told aides in the days leading up to the rally that he planned to accompany them to demonstrate his ire at Congress as it moved to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s November election victory.

But the Secret Service kept warning him that agents could not guarantee his safety if he went ahead, according to two people familiar with the matter. Trump relented and instead hunkered down at the White House to watch television images of the mob rioting he is accused of triggering.

The storming of the US Capitol left five people dead, including a police officer, and threatened the lives of Vice President Mike Pence and members of Congress, deeply wounding what remained of Trump’s presidency ahead of Biden’s swearing-in on January 20.

Trump’s fiery, grievance-filled speech from the Ellipse park on the southern outskirts of the White House was a central focus of this week’s hastily arranged proceedings in the House of Representatives that led to his impeachment on a charge of inciting insurrection.

Also read: Modi, Trump and Democracy in the Age of ‘Alternative Reality’

With Wednesday’s vote, Trump became the first president in US history to be impeached twice, as 10 of his fellow Republicans joined Democrats in denouncing him. But it appears unlikely to lead to his ouster before his term ends since there are no plans to convene a vote in the Republican-led Senate, which alone has the power to remove him.

Even so, the House’s unprecedented rebuke capped a week that has been perilously unstable even for a presidency where chaos has long reigned.

Trump’s last days in the White House have been marked by rage and turmoil, multiple sources said. He watched some of the impeachment debate on TV and grew angry at the Republican defections, a source familiar with the situation said.

Trump has suffered a sudden rupture with his vice president, the departure of disgusted senior advisers, his abandonment by a small but growing number of Republican lawmakers, the loss of his cherished Twitter megaphone, and a rush by corporations and others to distance themselves from him and his businesses.

Reuters spoke to more than a dozen Trump administration officials with a window into the closing act of his presidency. They described a shrinking circle of loyal aides who are struggling to contain an increasingly fretful, angry and isolated president – one seemingly still clinging to unfounded claims of election fraud – and to keep the White House functioning until Biden assumes power.

“Everybody feels like they’re doing the best job they can to hold it all together until Biden takes over,” one Trump adviser told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

The White House declined to comment for this story. The Secret Service declined to comment about Trump’s purported desire to travel to the Capitol on January 6.

Focus on pardons

Even as Trump has spent time venting to aides and confidantes, one tangible issue he has been focused on is how to apply his power to pardon before his term ends, three White House sources said.

The biggest question is whether he will issue an unprecedented pardon to himself, in addition to family members, before leaving office.

While Trump has not publicly signalled his intention to take a step that some legal analysts say could be unlawful, one White House official told Reuters: “I’ve been expecting that.”

The chances of Trump making such a contentious move may have multiplied due to the uproar over his January 6 speech in which he repeatedly urged his supporters to “fight” for him. Some legal experts say this could open him up to lawsuits or even criminal charges.

US President Donald Trump boards Marine One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland to return to the White House, after visiting the US-Mexico border wall in Harlingen, Texas, January 12, 2021. Photo: Reuters/Carlos Barria/File Photo

Addressing the crowd, Trump suggested several times that he would join in their march to the Capitol and appealed at least six times to Pence to “do the right thing” and refuse to certify Biden’s victory in the formal counting of the electoral vote in Congress that day. Trump and his surrogates had built up a false narrative that Pence, whose role in the certification process was mostly ceremonial, could somehow throw the election to his boss.

Trump’s speech followed an exasperated conversation with his vice president, a longtime loyalist, earlier on January 6 when Trump called Pence “a pussy” for not being willing to overturn the vote, a source briefed on the matter said. The exchange was reported earlier by The New York Times.

On the day of the rally, Trump once again expressed his desire to accompany his supporters to the Capitol. The Secret Service told Trump he couldn’t go with the crowd – though presidents do have the power to overrule their security details.

“They waved him off that day,” a source familiar with the situation said of the Secret Service. “They said it would be way too dangerous.”

So when throngs of flag-waving followers drifted away from the speech site toward the Capitol, Trump retreated to the walled confines of the White House, where aides said he watched the ransacking of the landmark building on television with rapt attention.

Among the mob that battled police, shattered windows and invaded legislative chambers were individuals who waved Confederate flags and wore clothing carrying insignias and slogans espousing conspiracy theories and white supremacist beliefs.

It would be hours before Trump appeared in a video on social media in response to entreaties to say something to rein in his supporters. When he did, he told them he loved them and to “go home” while repeating his baseless claims of a rigged election.

Some of Trump’s own aides were left stunned by his conduct.

“When people are storming the Capitol, you walk to the press room and do a press conference and call on them to stop, instead of cutting a video eight hours later,” said a long-time Trump adviser.

Smashing guardrails

The riot of January 6 followed a two-month campaign by Trump to delegitimise the November election with false claims of fraud. It began when what he had vowed would be a landslide victory over Biden turned into a defeat once all mail-in ballots, which skewed heavily Democratic, were counted.

Trump’s focus on claims of voter fraud, egged on by personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, consumed most of his days. Two days after the election, said a source familiar with the meeting, daughter Ivanka Trump was in a meeting with senior White House staff and said words to the effect that, “We accomplished so much and we had a great run.” A representative for Ivanka Trump declined to comment.

But no one in Trump’s orbit could convince him to explicitly acknowledge defeat and use his remaining weeks in office to hold events to tout accomplishments that he and his aides are proud of.

Advisers felt Trump could make himself a force in the Republican Party for years to come, a kingmaker, and possibly even win a second term in 2024.

His political future could now be in jeopardy as a result of the Capitol violence. If convicted by the Senate in a trial that would occur after he has left the White House, Trump could be banned from holding federal office again.

Also read: Trump Is Gone but Trumpism Is Rampant: The Globalisation of Populism

Trump watched Wednesday’s rapid-fire impeachment proceedings on television from the White House, sources said, stepping away briefly to hand out National Medal of Arts awards to country music artists Toby Keith and Ricky Skaggs.

Even before the riot, Trump’s mood had been darkening as dozens of court cases filed by his legal team and surrogates failed to overturn the voting results in key swing states, people familiar with the matter said.

Aides who would enjoy dropping by the Oval Office to check on Trump found themselves avoiding him lest he give them an assignment related to voter fraud that they knew was impossible, three sources said.

His mood has only worsened since the January 6 storming of the Capitol. He has fumed in private about the decision by Twitter, his favourite means of communication with his followers, to permanently suspend his account on the grounds that it was concerned he could incite further mayhem, two people familiar with the matter said.

With Trump scrambling to find an alternative platform, his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner helped head off an attempt by other aides to get him signed up on fringe, far-right social media sites, believing they were not the best format for the president, said an administration official. A representative for Kushner declined comment.

Pence and Trump did not speak for days after the Capitol riot. The vice president had to be spirited to safety in the Capitol basement after rioters, some chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” penetrated the building.

Current and former White House officials say they were aghast at how Trump treated Pence, who has been a steady and loyal lieutenant. They were stung by the president’s criticism and false insistence that the vice president could intervene to overturn the Electoral College results. Trump also never called Pence to check on him during his ordeal, an aide said.

On Monday, the two men met alone in the Oval Office, likely following efforts and appeals by Ivanka Trump and Kushner, according to one White House official. The two men walked out of the meeting in good spirits, chuckling together about something. “The body language was good,” the official said.

The next day, Pence wrote to Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that he would not exercise the 25th Amendment of the US Constitution to remove the president from office for incapacitation, despite pressure from Democrats.

Staff exodus

Other aides have not been as forgiving.

Deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger, a leading aide on Trump’s China policy, quickly quit in what two sources said was an act of protest against the president’s response to the rioting. Pottinger did not respond to requests for comment. He was followed by at least five other senior foreign policy aides. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos also resigned in protest.

Some other Trump officials say they have gritted their teeth and stayed put despite anger over Trump’s perceived role in the violence.

National security adviser Robert O’Brien and White House counsel Pat Cipollone were among those convinced to remain by others, including lawmakers, former government officials and corporate executives, four sources familiar with the matter said. The White House declined comment.

Some who remain in the administration have seized the opportunity to push through significant policy shifts before leaving office, several administration sources said.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, for instance, has pressed ahead with controversial international moves, sometimes, according to two people familiar with the matter, without coordinating fully with the White House.

The timing of one decision caught some National Security Council officials by surprise, the sources said: Pompeo’s scrapping of longtime curbs on US government interactions with Taiwan officials, which angered China. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.

Other Pompeo actions over the past week have included returning Communist-ruled Cuba to the US list of state sponsors of terrorism, and designating Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi movement a terrorist organisation.

While mostly disengaged from policymaking, Trump on Tuesday, at his aides’ behest, paid a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border wall near Alamo, Texas. Erecting a barrier across the border was a signature promise of his winning 2016 campaign platform. Only portions got built.

Decisions on a final round of presidential pardons are expected to occupy much of Trump’s few remaining days in office. He has stirred controversy in recent weeks by pardoning allies convicted in the investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, security contractors convicted of killing Iraqi civilians, and Kushner’s father, Charles, a real estate developer sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty in 2004 to tax evasion and other crimes.

Trump and his family have potential legal exposure of their own, including investigations in New York over tax and business dealings.

One White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, suggested Trump’s final act as president could be a preemptive pardon for family members and for himself just before Biden is sworn in. Presidential pardons apply only to federal crimes, not violations of state law.

A self-pardon would be an extraordinary use of power never before tried by a US president, and constitutional lawyers say there is no definitive answer on whether it can be done lawfully.

One thing Trump’s staff don’t expect: a resignation. “I would be floored if that were to happen,” another White House official said.

(Reuters)

Modi, Trump and Democracy in the Age of ‘Alternative Reality’

Compared to the dictators of the past, today’s democratically elected leaders have far more dangerous sinews at their disposal than ever before.

US President Donald Trump’s open incitement to his followers to lay siege to Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021 – the day Congress was to put its final stamp of approval on Joe Biden’s victory as the 46th President-Elect of the United States – was widely condemned as an act of treason and sedition.

This act, however, was seen as a ‘failed revolution’ by those who besieged the Capitol to wrest control of a ‘stolen election’. The more than 70 million Americans who voted for Trump probably believed the ‘alternative fact’ that Trump actually won the election.

The origins of this belief system go back to the day Trump was sworn in as the 45th president on January 20, 2017. When media persons questioned the ‘photoshopped images’ of massive crowds attending the swearing-in ceremony, his senior adviser Kellyanne Conway famously declared that the administration had presented “alternative facts“. Though a New York Times reporter tried to reason with her and maintain that facts are independent of individual predilections, Trump and his team stuck to projecting their own facts as an ‘alternative reality’ for his followers. With Trump leading the attack on CNN and others as ‘fake news’, his followers quickly understood which TV channels to avoid. Fox News became the only media outlet to trust.

A similar exercise was underway in India in 2014 when the then president of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Amit Shah, selected ex-banker Amit Malviya to head the party’s IT cell and sanctioned a huge budget to influence and control the minds of millions of Modi’s followers. Malviya has a team of about 150 well-paid employees who are then helped by over 20,000 party workers whose job is to merely transmit on all digital platforms any message or meme created by the IT cell to ensure that it goes viral. The ruling party also has several TV channels to propagate its messages, whether lies, half-truths or factoids.

With the help of new digital apps, the creation of an ‘alternative reality’ became the common tool of mind-control in both democracies. It is not merely the availability of such apps that made the difference – Facebook launched in 2004, Twitter in 2006, WhatsApp released in August 2010 – but it is their exploitation by certain ruthless leaders for control over their followers that has led to a disruption of the social and political order that we witness in Trump’s America today.

Also read: Trump Is Gone but Trumpism Is Rampant: The Globalisation of Populism

To understand the new phenomenon better, we have to go back to the state of democracy in both countries prior to the present leaders, while these tools were all available. For instance, the tenure of President Barack Obama and of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh did not witness any such cult following of either leader in their countries. Both countries exhibited an unquestioned multi-party consensus on the nature of the state and its political system.

An explosion caused by a police munition is seen while supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump gather in front of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, U.S., January 6, 2021. Photo: Reuters/Leah Millis/File Photo

No Republican in the US nor any opposition leader in India pushed the boundaries of democracy nor expressed any fundamental discontent with it. Constitutional bodies such as the legislature, judiciary and the Election Commission of India enjoyed the implicit trust of the people, despite their drawbacks. The election process and the sanctity of vote still remained intact.

With the coming of Trump and Modi, there was a new definition and narrative of power. Democracy to them was a means to an end – their self-aggrandisement. Both asserted themselves over and above their constitutional roles. They projected themselves as the embodiment of the ‘General Will’, though their victory margins hardly justified such claims. Trump actually lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton and won only because of Electoral College votes, while Modi secured 37% of the total votes polled in 2019.

Today, the ‘alternative reality’ that envelopes millions of followers of Trump and Modi has led to a breakdown of the constitutional consensus that shaped the politics of the two countries. Citizens no longer regard the ‘other’ as equal citizens with a right to participate and demand an equal share of the resources of the state. The notion of the ‘other’ differs in the two countries; while in the US it refers to African-Americans, Mexicans and other migrants, in India, it refers to the Muslims, Dalits and migrant workers or landless labourers.

The physical reality of their presence itself has become hazy and problematic. So much so that our lordships in the highest court ask incredulously from the government counsel, ‘Have any migrant workers died due to hunger and thirst during the lockdown?’ And further, they ask the government, ‘Are there any ‘Khalistanis’ among the protesting farmers?’ Couldn’t they simply ask the registrar of the court to do a fact-check from all state governments in the first case?

Also read: How Can America Heal From the Trump Era? Lessons From Germany’s Transformation After Nazi Rule

In the second instance, can’t the state arrest the so-called ‘Khalistanis’ and bring them to justice if they had enough evidence? Just labelling some people as ‘terrorists’, ‘Khalistanis’, ‘Maoists’, ‘Urban Naxals’, ‘tukde-tukde gang’, ‘Gupkar gang’ and anti-national’ seems a sufficient and adequate ground for arrest and penalty, with or without trial. And, sadly, judges seem to go along with it. Are they under the same influence of the pervasive alternative reality that envelopes the followers of a cult leader?

Both Trump and Modi project the image of an alpha male. Both treat their political opponents as enemies of the state and attack them using all the agencies of government. Both promote ethnic-nationalism, one, of the White-supremacist kind, the other of the majoritarian Hindutva brand. Both target minorities and immigrants for the ills of their country. Both play on the fears of the majority that they would be overtaken by minorities and migrants. Both rely on lies and misrepresentation of facts or ignore them if they are inconvenient.

It must, however, be said to the credit of Modi that he is not as crude as Trump and has not yet shown any open impatience with electoral democracy. But the unquestioned obedience of millions striking their plates with spoons and lighting lamps at his instruction during the lockdown has clearly demonstrated the mystique of his power over ordinary Indians. Indira Gandhi at the height of her power never tested the loyalty of citizens like this. After all, she never had the technology that is available to the rulers now.

Whatever their individual traits, Modi and Trump’s huge success in mobilising a massive follower base is entirely due to the sophisticated use of digital tools such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter by a team of dedicated staff. While Trump tweeted more regularly (37 times a day in the last few months in office), Modi confines himself to an occasional tweet and conforms to the official protocol. The heavy lifting is done by the BJP’s IT cell.

Supporters of the BJP in Patiala. Photo: PTI

Truth be said, our reality has changed with the creation of ‘alternative realities’ – a bubble in which we live that may have nothing to do with the physical reality, the immediate here and now. Never before did we have technological platforms and apps that provide such a personalised menu of likes or dislikes, preferences, hopes and aspirations, fears and concerns, as we have today. Technology now offers an individual universe that may be at variance or contrary to existing reality. This customised universe is at once fragmenting as well as unifying for it links one up with millions of others in an online world who share one’s belief system. With this, you actually cohabit a different universe shared only with your online friends.

Also read: The Past, Present and Future of India’s Capitol Hill Moment

It is also fragmenting in the sense that it isolates you from your immediate physical space and society. This disrupts your public and physical commons – such as your specific geography, history, heritage, culture and shared past and present. In short, fragmentation highlights differences and minimises the effect of commonalities and an agreed view of the world. And democracy is all about an agreed and shared view of the social and political world.

The critical value of democracy is that it celebrates differences and diversity of thought, belief and action. It enables people to live together with all their varied belief systems. Democracies permit multiple parties offering promises of hope with diverse programs of action. Some even offer a different vision of society based on an ancient golden past, seeking voters’ trust. Will that kind of democracy survive?

How does ‘alternative reality’ affect democracy? Or how do democracies cope with citizens living in an ‘alternative reality’, stuck in an echo chamber believing in their own truth guided by a cult leader? Democracy has often been threatened by demagogues believing in their own lies. And now we have millions of followers who believe their lies, ready to carry out their bidding.

An obverse question is whether the events in the real world affect those living in an alternative reality. The answer is no. A case in point is the protest sit-in by lakhs of farmers on the Delhi-Haryana border that has simply failed to puncture the balloon of ‘alternative reality’.

Such issues add urgency and intensity to repair a broken world with multiple realities polarised by unbridgeable fault lines. Whatever happened to empirical evidence, objective reality and a clear sense of right and wrong? Are they all mirages of the mind that need verification and affirmation from Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp messages? Is reality such an impermanent bubble that one can no longer hold on to it on the bedrock of conviction? If lies and nonsense are dressed up as statistics, do they gain credibility? How many falsehoods can a fact-check check? And fact-checking could soon become an act of treason.

Compared to the dictators of the past, today’s democratically elected leaders have far more dangerous sinews at their disposal than ever before. George Orwell never anticipated Mark Zuckerberg and the latter has enabled the creation of a totalitarian monster beyond the wildest imagination of the former.

Ravi Joshi was formerly in the Cabinet Secretariat.

Trump Is Gone but Trumpism Is Rampant: The Globalisation of Populism

The new contemporary term for what Europe experienced a century ago holds sway over a significant population in the US, but also in many countries around the world.

One must concede that the institutional strengths of the American democratic system have for now got the better of an attempted right-wing coup. Or, if you like, ‘Coup Klux Klan’ as the Times of India put the matter imaginatively.

Those institutional strengths, in passing, may not include how America’s law-enforcement personnel often treat black American citizens – much like how our own police treat some of our marginalised communities. Although it also remains a fact that a George Floyd occurrence could cause a veritable revolution to happen that India, by and large, is still a stranger to.

Yet, ‘banana republics’ of the world may be for now excused if they say ‘physician, heal thyself.’

Historians fielded by media channels like CNN have of course pointed out how the insurrection of January 6 issues from a long history of racial divide, ever since male black Americans were accorded the right to vote in 1873. Just to recall, eleven Southern states had refused to accept Abraham Lincoln as president and seceded from the Union, leading to the civil war.

Indeed, in 1878, the elections in North Carolina were actually overturned by force by the Klan and other white supremacists, and the whole Reconstruction era was characterised by dour supremacist strategists to deny franchise to black Americans through diverse ploys (including abominable episodes of lynchings), of ‘voter suppression’.

In that context, Vladimir Putin may be excused for having remarked on a flawed American electoral system, and sundry commentators too for having pointed fingers at how the American state has often supported insurrections of the January 6 kind, recent examples being Venezuela and Bolivia. Not to forget the infamous support given to the mafia-style right-wing revolt led in 1991 by a thug-like Boris Yeltsin in Russia.

Protesters wave American and Confederate flags before they stormed the US Capitol Building in Washington, US January 6, 2021. Photo: Reuters/Shannon Stapleton/File Photo

Trumpism retains a vast constituency

It should not be forgotten that some 75 million Americans voted for Donald Trump. He may in the bitter and violent end have been duly ousted, but Trumpism continues to retain a vast constituency.

Even as Trumpism (if you like, a new contemporary term for what Europe experienced a century ago) afflicts at least half a dozen modern states worldwide today.

So, how do we understand Trumpism of our time?

First, in economic terms, I am with those analysts who see the rise of Trumpism as, foremost, an underling push-back worldwide against the economic thesis of ‘globalisation.’

If the globalising slogan of 1848 – ‘workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains’ – had sought to reorient the productive forces and material yield of the world to meet the just requirements and deserts of the labouring who were the producers of wealth, the second call to globalisation that was unleashed with the Washington Consensus of 1990 could have been interpreted to read ‘exploiters of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your profits.’

The unprecedented flow of moneys across national boundaries (hot money) that followed that consensus among the endowed (monopolised by the G-7 coterie) had the direct consequence of relegating the ‘real’ economies of the world to subsidiary status. The fall-out the ‘reform’ came to be an unconscionable centralisation of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, chiefly through the quick – money turn-overs in stock markets, to the exclusion of such long-term investments as lift the living standards of the vast masses. (Not that Trumpist populism was to carry any bonanzas for those on whose behalf the existing economic elite were to be challenged.)

Also Read: The Trump Coup D’Etat and Insurrection Was Long in the Making, And Will Continue

The new global economic elite came to ground its clout in a corresponding cultural supremacy that was perceived to cause a top-down schism between a new global Ivy League and a new colonised hoi polloi. This new clout of international finance capital began to be read back into a new politics of identities on either side of the phenomenon.

This was clearly not a phenomenon that a global working class, shattered by a rampant digital technology, could combat anymore with success through classic forms of resistance.

Failing any global mobilisation from the Left, a familiar old and parochial nationalism of the deprived underdog stepped in from the Right to combat the global ‘reform’ that was seen to cannibalise the conservative Right itself.

Those who understood this also understood that the dominant systemic arrangements of the world, including among states that were designated ‘democracies,’ had come to be closed archives of power that catered almost exclusively to the marauding needs of global capital.

Trumpism thus came to be a sort of revolt from below, but one that could no longer be organised on accepted principles of constitutionalism.

Donald Trump. Photo: Reuters/Rick Wilking

The task required a new paradigm of leadership and a new paradigm of mass organisation.

The new leader of this epistemic shift had to designate for himself a justification and a status that drew upon sources of legitimation that would conflict with what democratic rule books prescribed.

That, in turn, required a reorientation of identities, both on behalf of those who came to lead the push-back and those who were to be made to follow the lead.

A new paradigm

Elections now were to be won by first creating an extra-constitutional paradigm of selective citizen entitlement grounded in an appeal to the victimhood of identities, be it of race, religion, region, or linguistic orientation.

Appeal came to be made to new cultural majorities to the effect that elite minorities had them in thrall, and that endowed ‘enemies’ were everywhere who dictated the rights and wrongs of citizenship and of ‘values’ that must inform ‘legitimate’ power-structures.

In America, for example, Evangelist white Christians, suburban white housewives, non-collegiate white males who belonged to a depressed blue working class came to be organised in a new political contract – as populations who had been ripped off by a politics of multi-racialism that ‘appeased’ the black American and the immigrant ‘outsider.’

This new indigenism, of course, shut its ears to such historical facts as, for example, that only the ‘native American Indians’ could justly claim the status of originary inhabitants of the land, and that American capitalism was largely a yield first of black slave labour before any other forces of production could come into play.

Not surprisingly, the new leader in Washington understood that he had to recast himself as Washington’s enemy. And, in order to overcome the systemic verities of Washington, he had to recast himself as a new Loius XIV and declare, in effect, “L’est c’est moi (I am the state).”

The construction of a new cultist leadership enjoined that the state be subsumed into the person of the leader.

And the new cultist leader had a new political agenda to forge and propagate:

The truth of all things was now to be seen as identical with the pronouncements of the leader; entrenched channels of information, most of all the ‘liberal’ media, was to be reconstructed as purveyor of ‘fake news’; ‘liberal’ elites were to be rubbished as ‘enemies’ of the extra-parliamentary ‘majority’ which actually constituted the ‘nation’; those who manned the institutions of the ‘pseudo’ and ‘complicit’ democratic state were to understand that their legitimation could come only from their loyalty to the cult-leader; new loyalists were to be put in places of authority; a code of dog-whistles was to be assiduously framed – one to which the new ‘majority’ would respond on the instant, requiring neither deliberation nor justification, nor systemic sanction; bands of vigilantes (who could call themselves ‘Proud Boys’) were to be cultivated who could be trusted to use voluntary muscle as and when required to quell the voices of opposition; sections of the population were to be declared interlopers without locus in the republic. Laws and pardons were to apply selectively to different segments of the populace, some to be hounded eternally, others never to be touched (ring a bell?).

Also Read: Inside Donald Trump and Barr’s Last-Minute Killing Spree

Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the American Presidential election of 2020 was thus propagated not as a repudiation of the democratic process but of an elite conspiracy to rob the ‘real’ people of their ownership of the nation. The slogan that Trump gave as the culminating dog-whistle – ‘let us take back our country’ – was thus not to be seen as a seditious calling, but an invocation to a return to a lost authenticity of possession, one notified by the Confederate flags that were in evidence at the site of the violent insurrection on Capitol Hill. That an Indian tricolor was also carried by some insurrectionists, of course, carries food for thought for Indian citizens who may be as anxious about the new turn of events here as there. One is left to imagine that such a display may, after all, have issued from the slogan ‘Ab ki baar Trump sarkar’.

A screengrab from the viral video. Photo: Twitter@aletweetsnews

The siege of that symbol of the American republic was thus the final putsch by a violent rogue right-wing against a pusillanimous progenitor – constitutional right-wing, as much as against a democratic elite which was perceived to have usurped America from those who had the first right to it – a sort of a renewed burning of the Reichstag.

One need not here belabour the quite obvious parallels of this package and agenda in other states of the world today, but no close watcher may have any difficulty in deciphering the contents and the modus operandi.

Post the assault on the Capitol, Narendra Modi has cryptically remarked that ‘unlawful protests’ cannot subvert democracy, but one does not quite know whether, for example, the assault on the Babri mosque in 1992 would in his view qualify as an ‘unlawful protest’, or what his view might be of the uninhibited vigilante assaults that have interminably accompanied his tenure in the highest office, that – as in the case of the Capitol event – took the life of a law-enforcement officer in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

What seems certain is that lawful farmers’ protests of the kind now in evidence may be all too necessary to shore up a democratic order whose moral and procedural verities have come to be massively degraded.

As stated at the outset, the mechanics of the constitutional right-wing stood fast in the end. Trump’s more institutional and legal attempts at overturning the people’s verdict were rebuffed in court after court by judges, some of whom he had appointed in the belief that they would stand him in good stead in his hour of need. Nor did America’s reputed media outlets, barring of course their own ‘godi media’ (captive media) like the Fox News channel outlets, succumb, or electoral officials, including officials of his own Republican Party give in to his shamelessly proferred instructions to falsify the count. Also to note, that despite consequences to their own electoral prospects in the coming years, unflinchingly critical, even damning voices have come to be raised by scions of Trump’s own party against his incitement to violence and insurrection.

It is sadly not at all certain that in the other parts of the world where Trumpism reigns, such a concerted push-back from the systemic branches of the state may be forthcoming, were matters to come to a parallel pass.

Also Read: The Past, Present and Future of India’s Capitol Hill Moment

Trump’s exit from office nonetheless gives little hope that this will spell the end of Trumpism. Our analysis suggests that its ideological roots and resentments are far too deep, and no business-as-usual politics from the centre-right, however more decently democratic, may be sufficient guarantee against its return. This is true as much of Trumpism in other countries as of Trumpism in the now not-so United States of America.

If the distorted assumptions of what used to be the tenets of liberal democracy are to be salvaged from their innate vulnerability to right-wing lurches – first of a constitutional/democratic sort, and then of the Trumpian variety, the answer can come only from an open-eyed critique of those fancy assumptions from a reasoned politics of the centre-left, and mass movements whose genius, as of the current farmer’s movement in India, sentiently rejects the enticements, and fake proclamations of right-wing false prophets.

But so great now is the usurpation of the tools and assets of the so-called democratic world in the hands of the right-wing that battling it from the Left is far more arduous a task than a David-Goliath paradigm.

The push-back against Trumpism everywhere must come from a new, all-encompassing covenant of civic citizenship which can successfully expose the false constructions of a presumed ‘real nationalism’ and, through relentless analysis, propagation, and mass mobilisation show it up for what it is – a new fascism of our time.

The Past, Present and Future of India’s Capitol Hill Moment

It is impossible not to draw parallels between the ideology and political strategy of Donald Trump and Narendra Modi, and the latter has expertly used mob-driven events to his advantage.

What happened on January 6 is unprecedented in the history of the United States. The Capitol – meeting place of the US Congress and the seat of the legislative branch of the federal government – came under direct attack from a violent mob. The police failed miserably in doing their job and the mob stormed the building, temporarily disrupting the process of certifying Joe Biden’s electoral college victory. Some called the attack an attempted ‘coup’ or ‘insurrection’, others termed it a ‘terror’ attack. Nonetheless, the event invoked a sense of horror and surprise for people across the world and proved to be a huge embarrassment for a country that prides itself in being the world’s oldest and arguably most mature democracy.

For Indians, the astonishing part wasn’t what happened but that it happened in the US. That an unruly mob, uncontrolled by the police, ended up breaching a legislative building is something that we can comprehend because unfortunately, India has witnessed many mob-driven events which were much worse in terms of loss of life and property damage.

Looking at the events that led to the storming of the Capitol Hill, one can easily draw parallels between the functioning, ideology and strategic execution of Donald Trump and Narendra Modi or the BJP.

Consider the parallels.

1. The storming of the Capitol began when the defeated president in a speech to a large group of his supporters said that he was ‘robbed’ of the election. He asked them to march to the building where Biden’s win was to be certified and exhorted them to ‘fight’.

It will be hard to count the number of times senior leaders of the BJP gave similar calls to their supporters. Starting from the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992 to the Gujarat riots of 2002, to last year’s Delhi riots, speeches made by BJP leaders L.K. Advani, Narendra Modi and Kapil Mishra played as much of a role in the rioting, murder and destruction which followed as Trump’s words did on January 6.

Narendra Modi and L.K. Advani. Photo: Facebook/Narendra Modi

2. After Trump’s speech, his supporters, many of whom were armed and dressed in military attire, stormed the building where federal law-enforcement agencies (controlled by Trump) failed to establish a security cordon. The protesters quickly overwhelmed the police.

A much worse version of police inaction was recorded in Gujarat (during Modi’s tenure as chief minister) during the 2002 riots, when for three days, mobs incited by Sangh parivar leaders essentially had a free run to kill and rape hundreds of Muslims. The Delhi police – who report to Union home minister and Modi’s trusted Man Friday Amit Shah – behaved similarly during the Delhi riots of February 2020, where instead of acting against the rioters, they were accused of participating in the riots and coordinating with the rioters in assaulting victims.

3. Trump made a public statement to his supporters who attacked the Capitol, in which he asked them to ‘go home’, but added that he ‘loves them‘. His comments were described by some as adding fuel to fire. He has not yet apologised for not being able to gauge the situation and acting in pure and evil self-interest.

Much worse than Trump, BJP leaders have a history of letting rioters have a free pass and not apologising for their missteps. After the 2002 Gujarat riots, Advani said, ‘the issue of an apology does not arise. But it is sure that riots are a sad issue’. When asked about his alleged complicity in the riots, Modi claimed that he would never apologise, but said he should be hanged if there is “even a grain of truth in the allegations”.

Also Read: The Trump Coup D’Etat and Insurrection Was Long in the Making, And Will Continue

As one speculates in horror what such a siege might do to India and its constituents, one should remember that a similar attempt was made on the Indian parliament 55 years ago.

On November 7, 1966, during Indira Gandhi’s regime, a crowd of around 125,000 descended on Central Delhi demanding a nationwide ban on cow slaughter. The mob, composed of saffron-robed sadhus, was armed with swords, trishuls and spears. The sadhus began by laying siege to the surrounding areas of Connaught Place, attacking electrical substations, hospitals, cinema halls, and other establishments.

After reaching Parliament Street, Jana Sangh MP Swami Rameshwaranand made an inflammatory speech, as a result of which the mob went ballistic and attacked the Parliament’s security cordon. A policeman was killed in the melee but before the mob could enter the building, the police opened fire, killing seven sadhus. The defeated mob then turned around to vandalise the Connaught place area even more, along with attacking the houses of the Congress president and a Union minister.

Parliament House. Photo: Reuters

Fourteen years later, the Jana Sangh would evolve into the Bharatiya Janata Party, which in 1996 formed the government at the Centre for the first time. It continued to flourish and became the single largest party under Narendra Modi.

The politics of the BJP and especially Modi, is of having no regrets, contrition or repentance. Amongst his supporters, this has worked like a charm. Modi is yet to lose an election, having succeeded in five. One can only imagine what might ensue when he finally does lose one.

Jaspreet Oberoi is a freelance writer. He tweets at @iJasOberoi.

Republicans Mum as Democrats Push for Second Trump Impeachment

Impeachment would trigger an unprecedented second trial in the Republican-controlled Senate, which cleared him during his first trial over allegations that he threatened US national security.

Washington: Democratic-led efforts to impeach US President Donald Trump for a historic second time gained momentum over the weekend, although it looked far from certain whether enough Republicans would back the move with just days left in his term.

Democratic members of the House of Representatives will introduce articles of impeachment on Monday after Trump encouraged his supporters to storm the US Capitol on Wednesday, Representative Ted Lieu said on Twitter.

The California Democrat, who helped draft the charges, said the articles had drawn 190 co-sponsors by Saturday night. As of Saturday afternoon, no Republicans had signed on, Lieu’s spokeswoman said.

“We have videos of the speech where (Trump) incites the mob. We have videos of the mob violently attacking the Capitol. This isn’t a close call,” Lieu tweeted Saturday night.

Trump initially praised his supporters at the Capitol but later condemned their violence in a video. The decision to call for calm came at the urging of senior aides, some arguing he could face removal from office or legal liability, sources told Reuters.

Impeachment by the Democratic-led House, equivalent to an indictment, would trigger an unprecedented second trial in the Republican-controlled Senate, which cleared him during his first trial over allegations that he threatened US national security.

Two previous presidents were impeached but were also acquitted in the Senate. Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 over the Watergate scandal when it became clear he would be removed.

Also read: It’s a Little Late for Mike Pence to Pose as a Brave Dissenter to Donald Trump

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has also asked members to draft legislation aimed at invoking the Constitution’s 25th Amendment, which allows for stripping the powers from a president unable to fulfil the duties of the office.

The intensifying effort to oust Trump has drawn scattered support from Republicans, whose party has been divided by the president’s actions. Democrats have pressed Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment, but he has opposed the idea, an adviser said.

CNN reported late Saturday that the vice president had not ruled out invoking the 25th Amendment, citing a source close to him, but that some in Pence’s team worried any effort to remove Trump could provoke the president to more rash behaviour that might put the country at risk.

A Pence spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment late on Saturday.

Scattered Republican support for removal

A small but growing number of Republican lawmakers have joined calls for Trump to step down, and several high-ranking administration officials have resigned in protest.

Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said Friday that Trump should resign immediately and suggested she would consider leaving the party if Republicans cannot part from him.

Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania told Fox News on Saturday that Trump had “committed impeachable offenses” but declined to commit to voting to remove him.

Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, a frequent Trump critic, told CBS News he would “definitely consider” impeachment because the president “disregarded his oath of office.”

But other key Trump allies, including Senator Lindsey Graham and House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, have urged Democrats to shelve any impeachment effort in the name of unity.

Also read: QAnon and the Storm of the US Capitol: The Offline Effect of Online Conspiracy Theories

“Impeaching President Donald Trump with 12 days remaining in his presidency would only serve to further divide the country,” said White House spokesman Judd Deere.

Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate majority leader, has suggested any trial would likely occur after Trump’s term ends, when Democrats will take control of the Senate thanks to victories in two Georgia runoff elections last week.

If found guilty after leaving office, Trump would still lose benefits enjoyed by ex-presidents, such as security and pension, and he would be barred from running for a second term.

But a Senate conviction requires a two-third majority, which would take at least 17 Republican votes.

Democratic President-elect Joe Biden has not taken a position on Trump’s impeachment, saying he will leave it to Congress to decide. Since losing the Nov. 3 election, Trump has falsely claimed he was the victim of widespread fraud.

(Reuters)

Watch | US: Trump Supporters Storm Capitol Building, Four Dead

Accusing Donald Trump of instigating the violence, many lawmakers have demanded the immediate removal of the outgoing president.

Thousands of Donald Trump supporters gathered at the US Capitol building whilst presidential election results were being certified. The rioters eventually breached the building, causing chaos and disruption. Accusing Donald Trump of instigating the violence, many lawmakers have demanded the immediate removal of the outgoing president.