By David Horsey Seattle Times cartoonist
An aggressive, destructive horde of Trump supporters invaded the United States Capitol on Wednesday and temporarily halted the counting of certified electoral votes by Congress. It was an appalling act of insurrection that followed a rally in which President Donald Trump and other right-wing leaders urged the huge mob to march up Pennsylvania Avenue to make trouble.
Twitter locked Trump’s Twitter account because he used it to incite violence. It may be the one punishment that might really bother the tweet-addicted president, but it certainly will not cause him to feel shame for his fascistic insanity. It took a great deal of cajoling from his staff to get him to appear on TV to call off the rioters he unleashed, and he simply took the opportunity to repeat his utterly preposterous claim that a landslide victory in the presidential election was stolen from him by a vast conspiracy of evildoers.
It was that enormous lie that motivated the demonstrators to go berserk at the Capitol, but it is not only Trump who has kept the myth alive. A long list of Republican members of Congress has played along with this mendacity out of fear or ambition. That shameless crew includes GOP presidential aspirant Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri who, only minutes before the doors of the Capitol were breached, was photographed in front of the angry crowd raising his fist in encouragement. (According to the Kansas City Star, Hawley also sent out a fundraising appeal even as Congress was in lockdown and rioters were marauding through the Senate and House chambers.)
The invasion of the Capitol was the ultimate outrage of the Trump era and all of the cowardly and complicit lawmakers, such as Hawley, who have enabled the president’s madness share the blame for what has happened.