The United States has a problem with elite impunity. And the anniversary of Jan. 6 makes it clear that that problem is worse than we can imagine. “Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike Pence.” Five years ago on this day, an angry mob of supporters of President Trump attacked the Capitol of the United States in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. “Stand tall. Hold the line.” “This is America.” This kind of assault on the United States Capitol had never really happened before. It was truly unprecedented. And it was instigated by Donald Trump, by the president of the United States, who rejected the idea that he could lose an election and thus decided to try to do everything he could to overturn it. Beginning, immediately after the election, with legal efforts extending to attempts to coerce swing-state legislatures into giving him votes or invalidating results and culminating in Jan. 6. Jan. 6 represents the president breaking his oath of office —— “Do you ever see these people?” in the most egregious way since, arguably, James Buchanan in 1860. Buchanan, president on the eve of the Civil War, he was the president just before Lincoln, and who sat by and did basically nothing as Southern states began to secede, seize federal armories and prepare for war. That is the level on which Donald Trump failed. And unlike Buchanan, who just sat and watched, decided he couldn’t do anything, Trump was actively instigating this assault on the seat of government, on the people’s elected representatives. You would think that after an attempt to overthrow the Constitution, since, had Jan. 6 been successful, American democracy would have entered some new phase, and it wouldn’t be particularly democratic — you would think that at least the guy responsible for it would be kept as far away from power as possible. And you would be wrong, obviously, because Donald Trump is once again the president of the United States. We are marking the fifth anniversary of Jan. 6, with the lead insurrectionist holding the office of the presidency, sitting in the Oval Office. So I’m recording this here where I live, Charlottesville, Va., but particularly in the location of the former Robert E. Lee statue. This used to be called Lee Park. It is no longer Lee Park, and the statue was removed a couple of years ago, following basically a half decade of public debate and discussion and discourse about what to do with this statue of the Confederate general, the statue placed here not after the Civil War, not even at the end of the 19th century, but in the 1920s, as a kind of a commemoration to Jim Crow and that ostensible dominance of white supremacy. And I wanted to record this video in this particular place, because it’s an illustration of a fact that I think it’s important to get your head around, which is that the United States is very bad at accountability. Robert E. Lee was general in chief of the Confederacy. He is responsible in the most direct way possible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. The Civil War remains the bloodiest conflict this nation has ever fought. And yet, Robert E. Lee died peacefully in his sleep in 1870. He had statues put up to him. And you can think of any number of minor or major figures over the course of American history, of the course of the 20th century, who committed crimes against the Republic, who escaped meaningful consequences for it, and even died as citizens in good standing. And so when we think of Jan. 6, when we think of Donald Trump, and we think of this moment and we think of these past five years. It’s not that surprising that this is where we’ve ended up. It’s not that surprising at all. If anything, it is what we probably should have expected, that absent great effort, absent real political will from across the political spectrum, Trump was going to walk away largely unscathed by his central role in trying to overthrow constitutional government in the United States. And as it turns out, having now won the presidency a second time, he can kind of try to finish the job using the actual organs of the state itself. Up here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh. the dance floor. 000. Right away. USA. USA. USA. USA. 3.3.33333.3.. You can point to examples of insurrections and attempted coups in state government. You can think of the Wilmington riot of 1898, for example. while there is no evidence of fraud? Oh, really? Well, I’m going to read you pages. I hope you don’t get bored listening to it, I promise. Don’t get bored listening to it. All those hundreds of thousands of people back there. Like a cleansing motion, right? But we don’t have that anymore. We don’t have a fair media anymore. It’s suppression. And you have to be very careful with that. And they’ve lost all credibility in this country. We will not be intimidated into accepting the hoaxes and the lies that we’ve been forced to believe. Over the past several weeks, we’ve amassed overwhelming evidence about a fake election. This is the presidential election. Last night was a little bit better because of the fact that we had a lot of eyes watching one specific state, but they cheated like hell anyway. You have one of the dumbest governors in the United States. And you know, when I endorsed him, I didn’t know this guy, at the request of David Perdue. He said: Friend of mine’s running for governor. What’s his name? And you know the rest. He was in fourth place. Fifth place, I don’t know. He was doing poorly, I endorsed him, he went like a rocket ship. Everyone. And then I had to beat Stacey Abrams with this guy, Brian Kemp. I had to beat Stacey Abrams, and I had to beat Oprah. Used to be a friend of mine, you know, I was on our last show, our last week. She picked the five outstanding people. I don’t think she thinks that anymore. Once I ran for president, I didn’t notice too many calls coming in from Oprah. Believe it or not, she used to like me. But I was one of the five outstanding people. And I had a campaign against Michelle Obama and Barack Hussein Obama against Stacey. And I had Brian Kemp. He weighs 130 pounds. He said he played offensive line and football. I’m trying to figure it out. I’m still trying to figure that. So that the other night I was as offensive lineman. I’m saying: Really, that must have been a very small team. But I look at that and I look at what’s happened, and he turned out to be a disaster. This stuff happens. You know, look, I’m not happy with the Supreme Court. They love to rule against me. I picked three people. I fought like hell for them. One in particular. I thought they all said, sure. Cut him loose. He’s killing us senators. You know, very loyal senators. They’re very loyal people. Sure, cut him loose. He’s killing us, sir. Cut him loose. I must have gotten half of the senators. I said, no, I can’t do that. It’s unfair to him and it’s unfair to the family. He didn’t do anything wrong. They’re made-up stories. They’re all made-up stories. He didn’t do anything wrong. Cut him loose, sir. I said no, I won’t do that. We got him through. But Congress was involved in certification of the Electoral College, and they believed that they could stop the certification that they could, in the words of the president, stop the steal. Nothing like it had ever happened in Washington on the federal scale. You would think that Jan. 6 changed everything, But somehow it didn’t really. No one of great consequence has really been held accountable for what, again, was a terrible transgression against American democracy. Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, died peacefully in his sleep in 1889, almost 25 years after Appomattox. And when Davis died, he was honored in the South, at least as something like a statesman. Again, tospeak of Lee, he was basically the subject of a kind of secular cult for the better part of a century. So much so that there are people in this area and in other parts of the country who are quite mad about the removal of Lee statues, Five presidents spoke at Richard Nixon’s funeral five.
