The presence of police on every corner is the only memory that remains inside the Capitol four years after a mob encouraged by Donald Trump broke into the building. The marks on the walls have been repainted, the broken windows and doors have long since been replaced and there is no plaque to commemorate what happened. On the other hand, the same institution against which Trump encouraged the assault, this Monday certified his victory as the next president of the United States.
The bitterest pill has been for Kamala Harris, who has led the funeral of her presidential aspirations. The Democrat has presided over the Senate session – a function that goes with the position of vice president – and has formalized the return to power of the man whom she said was a “danger to democracy.” In the final stretch of the campaign he also called him “fascist.”
During the scarce 40 minutes that the joint session of the Senate and the House of Representatives lasted, Harris listened standing as the votes obtained in the Electoral College were recounted aloud. The 312 that Trump obtained and the 226 that left her at the gates of the presidency after one of the most turbulent campaigns in the history of the country.
“The votes for president of the United States are as follows: Donald J. Trump, from the state of Florida, has received 312 votes,” Harris announced from the platform, who was interrupted by the applause of the Republican caucus. At his side, Republican Mike Johnson, who has reissued in the extremes his position as speakerhe didn’t try to hide his smile. Once the interruption was over, he continued: “Kamala D. Harris, from California, has received 226 votes.” Democratic congressmen have also stood up. But the applause was not a celebration, but an attempt to support their former candidate.
A few more formalities have been read about the votes for vice president, the session has been concluded and on January 6 it has returned to what it had always been: a mere formal procedure. The vice president has stuck to her constitutional duties in the hope of giving a lesson in democratic principles, just as President Joe Biden did when he invited Trump to the White House after winning the elections. Something that the Republican did not do four years ago either.
The Democrat was not the first vice president to play a role as painful as certifying her own defeat. Before her, four other vice presidents who competed to reach the White House, such as Al Gore and Richard Nixon, had to preside over the session of the upper house. The other two vice presidents who certified their defeats were Joe Biden in 2017 and Mike Pence in 2021.
Trump’s then-vice president certified Joe Biden’s victory after the mob instigated by the Republican broke into the building and shouted that they wanted to hang him. Pence did not give in to pressure from Trump to prevent the formalization of the results. During the congressional committee that investigated the assault on the Capitol, a witness recounted how Trump had shown his support for chants of “Hang Mike Pence!” and said he “deserved it.”
Although Trump pressured Pence to prevent certification of the results, it was never in his power to do so. The distortion that the Republican made about the symbolic function of the president of the Senate during the formalization of the electoral result led to the reform of the Electoral Recount Law. Among other things, it was specified black on white that the role played by the vice president as president of the Senate is merely ministerial.
Despite Biden’s promise of a peaceful transition of power, it was Trump’s victory that guaranteed a calm day. The return to normality has been possible because the same candidate who raised the specter of violence, and whose followers had the motto of “fight, fight, fight”, he has achieved what he wanted.
The will to make constitutional values prevail on the part of the Democrats runs the risk of ending up legitimizing Trump’s whitewashing of the events of January 6, 2021. According to the Republican, it was a “day of love” and the assailants were mere “patriots”. The Republican wanted to rewrite the history of a day in which there were five deaths and 144 police officers injured as a peaceful protest.
Despite the amount of audiovisual material that exists about the assault on the Capitol, Trump has managed to impose his victim narrative. His return to the White House only predicts the consolidation of his version and impunity for the more than 600 detained for the assault. The president-elect has promised to forgive them on the first day of his term.
This Monday morning, hours before the session began, Trump shared on Truth Social a photo of the crowd that attended his rally at the Ellipse four years ago. The same event from which he harangued the masses to march towards the Capitol while the certification of the results of the elections that proclaimed Joe Biden won began. Among activists in favor of pardon for the January 6 attackers, the post has been shared as a sign that Trump will keep his promise.
Biden, who flew to New Orleans this Monday to meet with the families of the victims of the attack, published an article on Sunday night in the Washington Post where he remembered the fracture that the assault on the Capitol represented. “A relentless effort has been made to rewrite—even erase—the history of that day. To tell us that we didn’t see what we all saw with our own eyes. To dismiss concerns about it as some kind of partisan obsession. To justify it as a protest that simply got out of control. That is not what happened,” the president wrote in an attempt not to lose the battle of the story.
On January 20, Trump will be the one who steps on the steps of the Capitol with his own feet, where the assault on the country’s democracy that he himself instigated took place four years ago. Some of those convicted of the events of January 6, 2021 have asked the judges for permission to attend the event.
Source: www.eldiario.es
