Frank Islam, US
NEVER in my five decades as an American have I been more saddened or concerned for my adopted country of the United States of America than on January 6, 2021. That was the day the President of the United States, who decisively lost his bid for re-election, orchestrated an insurrection by encouraging his supporters to attack the Capitol building, where a joint session of Congress was meeting to certify the victory of his successor. The attack on the hallowed halls of Congress in the Capitol was the culmination of a nine-week long campaign by Donald Trump against the American democracy, at the heart of which is the free and fair election process. Trump’s assault started just hours after he lost the election to former Vice President Joe Biden, who received 306 electoral votes. That is the same number of votes that Trump received in 2016 – which he called a landslide.
Trump began laying the ground work for the insurrection during his re-election campaign by repeatedly claiming that if he lost it would only be because of massive voter fraud across the nation. In the aftermath of the election, he went into overdrive with that narrative pursuing a multi-pronged strategy. First his motley band of lawyers, led by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, filed more than 60 cases to overturn the result. They failed in all but one. Second, Trump himself made phone calls to pressure elected officials in charge of elections in swing states to either not certify Biden’s victory or to find enough votes that would put him ahead of his opponent.
When those efforts failed, Trump asked his Vice President, Mike Pence to overturn the election by not certifying the results in key states when they were presented to Congress. That was a bridge too far for even the Vice President who resolutely stood by Trump during the four years of his troubled and troubling presidency. Empowering these groups — among them white nationalists, anti-immigrant groups, and anti-Semites — has been one of central missions of the Trump presidency. Through a steady stream of lies and misinformation, he has largely succeeded in mainstreaming the underbelly of the Republican Party.
The fact that 139 Republicans in the House of Representatives and eight in the Senate — out of the 252 GOP members in both chambers — signed on to overturn the electoral college result is an indication of the negative impact Trump has had on the Republican Party and the nation. The challenges for the next President are huge, but they are not insurmountable. As long as there is a plan, patience and persistence. The progress the U.S. has made in its nearly 250 years of existence has not been linear. Many of the landmark accomplishments in the political and social arena were accomplished in a zig zag manner during pivot points in the country’s history such as the Civil War, the Great Depression and after the killing of John F. Kennedy.
At times, two steps forward were followed by one step backward. For example, the Emancipation proclamation was followed by Jim Crow segregation, which reinforced racial segregation in southern states. I am confident that the United States will begin that zig-zag journey and make forward progress as soon as Joe Biden becomes the President of the United States on January 20. Until that time, Donald Trump must be held in check and his dictatorial tendencies and autocratic behaviour must be constrained. There have been calls for Trump’s resignation, impeachment and removal from office using the 25th amendment. How this plays out in the short term will be determined on the political and governmental playing field. After that, the essential thing in the long term is that Trump and his radical supporters must be held fully accountable for their un-American activities. The US needs to be built back better. It needs to become America again and not Trump-land. When it is democracy will win and so will freedom-loving people around the world.
—The writer is an Entrepreneur, Civic Leader, and Thought Leader based in Washington DC.
