A year after the assault on the Capitol: Trump's lies were enough (opinion)

Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as they attempt to storm the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 in Washington.

Editor's Note:

Carlos Alberto Montaner is a writer, journalist, and CNN contributor.

His columns are published in dozens of newspapers in Spain, the United States and Latin America.

Montaner is also vice president of the Liberal International.

The opinions expressed here are solely his.

(CNN Spanish) -

Exactly a year ago, hundreds of “Trumpistas” took the United States Capitol, instigated by then-President Donald Trump.

It was about someone who had lost the election to Joe Biden.

There was a mixed bag of protesters, including Jacob Chansley, the colorful gentleman who represented QAnon, disguised as a bison with the corresponding horns, who had all kinds of conspiracy theories against the Democrats.

(Jake Angeli, as the "shaman of QAnon" calls himself, was convicted and will serve 41 months in prison with good agreement).

• Biden Points to Trump on Capitol Attack Anniversary: ​​Can't Accept He Lost

They did so full of supposed patriotism, as they have said.

The key issue here is: there is no evidence that the elections were rigged or that there was fraud.

As it is, the 45th president of the United States is for me a vulgar coup plotter and should be condemned for it.

Trump defends himself: He has said that he did not threaten, speak or attempt any coup in January 2020.

Donald Trump made false claims that the US elections were 'rigged' and many Republicans backed this lying theory.

When the results showed that Joe Biden had won, Trump continued to lie, claiming again, without proof, that the Democrats had somehow disfigured the traces of the crime or simply did not exist.

But Trump - and this is my opinion - proved that it was enough for him to repeat his lie for them to believe it and others to say the same things that he denounced without evidence. What Trump said shortly before the 2016 election was confirmed: he could kill someone without suffering the consequences of the heinous crime.

Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago has a whole book written about the various kinds of lies politicians resort to. There are repulsive lies that are told, simply, to win votes and the "white" ones, that are pronounced to avoid a setback to a specific person. And even the "patriotic" lies, such as those John F. Kennedy told to spare his compatriots the pain of a nuclear war during the "Missile Crisis" with the USSR when he did not reveal the agreement that Washington withdraw the Jupiter missiles from Turkey, a concession for Moscow to withdraw its missiles from Cuba. Donald Trump does not appear in that book. Perhaps because at the time he was a tycoon and television presenter who helped the two great parties and had not decided on either.

What is certain is that it takes great skepticism or a huge dose of cynicism to participate in elections and believe in them only if you win.