Christopher Pyne: Trump has scored a trifecta of historic defeats unseen for a century

It’s been 150 years since a US ­president spat the dummy and refused to attend their successor’s inauguration. It’s embarrassing and pathetic.

Outgoing President of the United States of America Donald Trump likes to see himself as a historic figure.

He’s compared himself to Abraham Lincoln and left the idea hanging that he might be the next president immortalised on Mount Rushmore, along with George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson.

There is no doubt that he has made history. He did it three times last week.

Last week, Mr Trump announced he would not attend the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden on ­January 20.

Mr Trump will be the first outgoing president to not attend his successor’s inauguration since president Andrew Johnson in 1869.

Mr Johnson was impeached and was an alcoholic. He became president when Lincoln was assassinated.

Mr Johnson refused to attend the inauguration of president Ulysses S. Grant.

It’s 150 years since another ­president had a similar dummy spit. It’s embarrassing and pathetic.

Last week, Mr Trump presided over the defeat of two Republican Senate candidates in the state of Georgia. As an aside, one of the two successful Democrat Senate candidates is Raphael Warnock, the first African American to be elected to the Senate from the South in US history.

It is a bigger defeat than most ­people fathom.

It gives the Democrats an equal number of senators as Republicans. That means Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will have a casting vote on all matters that come before the Senate.

It significantly strengthens the Biden presidency and makes it much harder for Republicans who want to   thwart Biden administration ­measures.

But it is also Mr Trump’s second history-making event of the week.

In 2016, the Republicans won ­control of the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate. After four years of Trumpism, they have lost them all.

That is the first time such an outcome has occurred since Republican president Benjamin Harrison was ­defeated in 1892.

While it’s beside the point, I ­predicted the Democrats would take all three in my column the week ­before the US election last November #justsaying!

But no US president in history has incited a riot that resulted in the storming of the US Capitol.

That historic act of record is all Mr Trump’s.

If anyone needed more evidence of the malignancy of the Trump presidency, they got it in spades last week.

If anyone needed more evidence of the malignancy of the Trump presidency, they got it in spades last week. Picture: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images/AFP

The behaviour of Mr Trump and his hangers-on since the election in ­November has resembled more a South American military junta than the leadership of the most powerful democracy in history.

Mr Trump has done everything he can to delegitimise the valid election of Mr Biden.

It is an understatement to say he is like an infant throwing his toys out of the cot.

The damage he has done to the ­alliance of nations that support democracy and liberty across the world is incalculable.

The winners from the storming of the US Capitol last week were the leaders of nations like Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. They will point to the destruction that Mr Trump has wrought as evidence that the West has lost its moral compass and that they are right to reject our way of governing and our way of life. All of this because of the narcissism of one man.

It is beyond belief that some ­Republican lawmakers have taken part in this farce. It is to the credit of former Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and outgoing Vice President Mike Pence that they drew the line under the Trump presidency and refused to take part.

There was never evidence of widespread voter fraud in the November election.

Even his own attorney-general and the Republican attorney-general in Georgia rejected the fantasies of Mr Trump, Rudy Giuliani and the flawed team of lawyers that gathered around him in the last few weeks of his ­presidency.

Make no mistake, Mr Trump ­created the cancerous environment of hatred that fired his supporters to ­attack the Capitol. By denying the election result he gave them a cause – that the election was stolen.

He urged them to keep up the fight. On the morning of the riot, he addressed their rally and urged them to march to the Capitol.

He only belatedly urged the rioters to desist from breaking the law and asked them to respect law enforcement efforts by the Capitol and Washington DC police.

The extent of how appalling his performance has been can be measured by his account on social media being locked by Facebook.

Your social media messages have got to be pretty bad for even Facebook to think you have gone too far.

The remedy for all this chaos is twofold. First, the Republicans and Democrats must work together over the next four years to restore faith in the American democracy project. Whether they like it or not. It is vital to our own interests here in Australia.

Second, the Republican Party must eschew Trumpism and banish Mr Trump from their ranks. That will be easier said than done.