From the assault on the blockade of the Capitol: two years of political crisis in the United States

Trump supporters, during the takeover of the Capitol, on January 6, 2021. The Washington Post (The Washington Post via Getty Im)

"Now we all look like homegrown terrorists."

Hope Hicks, an adviser to Donald Trump in the White House, complained bitterly on January 6, 2021 about the situation in which those who worked for the then president were left after the assault on the Capitol that day.

The message is one of the many revealed this week by the House of Representatives commission that has investigated what happened that day.

Just two years later, all observers of American politics once again have their eyes on the Capitol, where the legislature has started, once again, in a bumpy way —although not so much— due to the inability of the Republican majority to choose a president. of the Chamber, which blocks its operation.

This time there is no violence.

But there is division, factions, some anger and some Democrats enjoying the spectacle of their rivals' infighting on Capitol Hill with popcorn.

But there is a common thread that connects what happened two years ago with the current blockade: the dysfunction of a Republican Party with extremist tendencies and incapable of accepting the defeat in the 2020 presidential election won by Joe Biden.

The assault on the Capitol occurred as a result of Trump's refusal to recognize Biden's victory.

Among the emails now made public is one in which a senior White House official reveals that Trump even wanted to use "election rigged" as a trademark.

The commission papers have shown that the former president was well aware that he had lost, but that he was willing to use everything at his disposal to subvert the election result and that he pressured his vice president, Mike Pence, (whom the mob asked to hang up), so that he refused to certify that January 6 in the Capitol the victory of his rival.

Now, House Republicans blocking the election of Kevin McCarthy for Speaker of the House are election deniers, buying into and spreading that lie.

The Republican-majority candidate suffered humiliating defeats again this Thursday in successive votes despite offering new concessions to members of the most radical wing of the party that will weaken his position should he come to office.

overwhelming evidence

Actually, the result of the 2020 presidential election that Trump questions was not even adjusted.

Biden won by more than seven million popular votes and by 306 to 232 electoral votes.

The evidence of the former president's defeat is overwhelming and any attempt to challenge the outcome has been shown to be unfounded.

Trump's undemocratic behavior and his role as an instigator of January 6 (which led to his second

would have ended anyone's political career.

But, despite all the evidence, the former president has not only settled on his hoax, but with it he has convinced a majority of Republican voters.

Trump, in fact, consolidated himself as the leader of the Republican Party and his role was decisive like no other in the 2022 primaries. He fought, with a high degree of success, the Republican congressmen who had voted in favor of

In some cases, he came to support such extremist candidates that even the Democrats endorsed them in the Republican primaries... only to defeat them at the moment of truth (in a successful strategy for Biden's party).

And he launched a campaign tour of massive rallies across the country with an increasingly extremist and anti-democratic discourse.

Neither the sessions of the commission of investigation on January 6 nor the search by the FBI of his mansion in Mar-a-Lago (Florida) for the secret papers that he had illegally taken from the White House seemed to stop him.

Trump proclaimed that in the November 8 elections there would be a Republican “red wave” and began to prepare the ground for the triumphant announcement of his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election —which was later tarnished.

Biden, meanwhile, made the defense of democracy one of the axes of his campaign and decided to go head-to-head against Trump: “For a long time, we have been convinced that American democracy is guaranteed.

But it's not.

We have to defend it, ”he solemnly proclaimed last September in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776;

and in 1787, the United States Constitution.

“Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans [the acronym for Trump’s motto:

] represent extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”

The polls said that what worried voters was inflation, but Biden did not give up his efforts and called for mobilization: "Democracy itself is at stake," he said emphatically.

Post-election polls showed that the risks to democracy outweighed the election result, which ended up disappointing Trump and most Republicans (the main exception being Ron DeSantis, re-elected Florida governor). , which emerges as an alternative to Trump for the 2024 presidential elections).

In large part because of the rejection of extremist candidates, the Democrats retained control of the Senate and the Republicans won the House of Representatives by a much narrower margin than they had anticipated (222 to 213 seats), in the worst results in recent years. last 20 years of an opposition party in a presidential midterm election.

The minority prevails over the majority

The paradox is that this precarious majority, due in large part to the repudiation of the radical candidates, has ended up placing the ultra-conservatives in a position of strength.

His contest is essential for the election of McCarthy as speaker of the House of Representatives;

and from the minority they want to impose their conditions on the majority.

They don't even listen to Trump's calls to order anymore.

The rebels' votes have led to 11 consecutive defeats for McCarthy, something not seen since 1859. In the eleventh, one of the Republican ultras, Matt Gaetz, officially proposed Trump's candidacy as

He only got one vote and a few laughs.

The session was adjourned until noon this Friday.

Faced with the rebellion of the hard wing of the Republican Party, the House of Representatives still cannot begin to function in the new legislature.

The election of the

is the first essential step for the representatives to be sworn in and the Chamber to get going, but the ultra deputies have boycotted the election of McCarthy in eight consecutive votes in a spectacle not seen in the last 100 years.

Without effective leadership, Republicans are portraying division and chaos that calls into question their ability to manage their majority.

The wounds of January 6, meanwhile, continue without healing.

The commission that investigated the storming of the Capitol has recommended that Trump be prevented from running for president again and also voted unanimously to charge him with four crimes (incitement to insurrection, obstruction of an official congressional process, conspiracy to spread electoral falsehoods and attempt to defraud the United States).

Hundreds of participants in the assault have been tried and some (pending sentencing) have been found guilty of crimes involving tens of years in prison.

But the big open question is whether Trump will be prosecuted.

Adam Kinzinger, an outgoing Republican congressional representative, made it clear in an interview on CNN that he should stand trial: "If he's not guilty of any crime, then I frankly fear for the future of this country."

Follow all the international information on

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Keep reading

I'm already a subscriber