Donald Trump should be punished but Democrats must curb their gloating to heal a divided nation

Every now and again democracies make terrible mistakes, and Donald Trump has turned out to be one of the worst. But Democrats need to get their priorities straight.

US President Donald Trump. Picture: AFP

Every now and again democracies make terrible mistakes, and Donald Trump has turned out to be one of the worst. From the outset of his political career, when he promoted a conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not a native-born American, Trump’s rhetoric and fabrication have marked him as being entirely outside the democratic mainstream. In 2016, having warned that there was a conspiracy to rig the election against him, he won the electoral college and his opponent conceded. It was never possible that, in the event of his own defeat, he would go so quietly.

And so January 6 happened. As Congress gathered to certify the election of the next president, Trump infamously told his supporters: “We’re going to the Capitol . . . to try and give [weak Republicans] the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.” Naturally his speech didn’t call for violence. But, as a rambling whole, it amounted to “wouldn’t it be terrible if something happened to the lying, cheating, treacherous fraudsters who are sitting in that building over there that I’ve asked you to march to”. Hours later, four protesters lay dead and a policeman died the next day.

This week, when asked whether he had incited the storming of Congress, Trump showed no contrition or regret. “People thought what I said was totally appropriate,” was his view. In fact, if there was one message he wanted to send out it was another veiled threat. If, as seemed likely, Congress now attempted his second impeachment, “to continue on this path, I think it’s causing tremendous danger to our country and it’s causing tremendous anger . . . I want no violence.”

Riot police push back a crowd of supporters of US President Donald Trump after they stormed the Capitol building on January 6. Picture: AFP

Is he right? Because there is a genuine dilemma here. In a few days Joe Biden will be president. However much it might grate, given that tens of millions of Americans voted for this tangerine narcissist, wouldn’t it be better to just draw a line under the Trump era? To let Biden get on with the healing? To avoid what one Republican called “the trauma of impeachment"? By all means prosecute the rioters themselves but let losing Trumps lie.

But wait - who sent that gaggle of neo-Nazis, conspiracists, eccentrics and desperately naive folk to, as one protester from Kentucky put it, “have a revolution"? Why should they be sanctioned and not him? And should he be allowed ever to hold federal office again? Finally, wasn’t the offence against American democracy and institutions so grievous that an example needs to be made of the man who incited it?

It seems that the best view on this came from the former two-term Republican governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger. In a bizarre but brilliant video (only in America could someone invoke the sword of Conan and expect to be taken seriously) Arnie talked about his own experience of living among people in Austria who had supported the Nazis. “Not all of them were rabid antisemites and Nazis,” he said. “Many just went along, step by step, down the road.” And, he added, President Trump sought to overturn the results of a fair election. He sought a coup by misleading people with lies. “My father and our neighbours were misled also with lies. I know where such lies lead.”

My message to my fellow Americans and friends around the world following this week's attack on the Capitol. pic.twitter.com/blOy35LWJ5

— Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) January 10, 2021

Arnie’s targets included Trump’s enablers: those Republicans who believed that the president was appalling but who concluded a Faustian pact with him to draw strength from his supporters. The most egregious of these is Ted Cruz, senator for Texas and a man who may have his eye on the White House in 2024. Cruz’s speech in Congress opposing certification of the election last week was a masterclass in cynicism. Having helped to persuade tens of millions of Americans that the election had been marred by widespread fraud, Cruz then based his argument for not certifying the result solely on this false belief, not on any facts about the election. Vladimir Putin could happily have given that speech.

If all Republicans were like Ted Cruz, then the game of impeaching Trump wouldn’t be worth the candle. But increasingly they’re not. Several leading Republicans have decided to support impeachment. Liz Cheney, congresswoman for Wyoming, said of Trump “that there has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the constitution”. John Katko, congressman for New York, argued that if Trump wasn’t held accountable for what he had done, then this itself would be “a direct threat to the future of our democracy”.

He’s right. But what about the anger? The lack of healing? As one Republican adviser put it, just because Republicans have backed Trump doesn’t mean they won’t back a different Republican in the future. The tens of millions who voted Trump-Pence last year were a coalition, not a bloc. If it’s necessary to punish Trump for his actions and prevent him from running for federal office again, then sections of his supporters can be conciliated if the politics are handled right. This won’t pacify the most violent of his supporters but then nothing will. Maybe the sight of Capitol Hill rioters going to jail over the next few months will calm them down.

This means, though, that Democrats and others must curb their enthusiasm for purging Trumpists and gloating at their downfall. No scores should be settled, no pleasure taken in the process of punishing. One liberal US columnist wrote this week that Republican “members of Congress, state legislators and attorneys- general, and the internet platforms, businesses, advertisers and political action committees that aid them, must be prosecuted, hit with civil litigation or defunded”.

No, be very careful with that. Do only what is necessary to show that last week’s events - like the Trump presidency - were a horrible blip.

Joe Biden himself has had relatively little to say about Donald Trump’s offences, making it clear that his priority is the country’s recovery from the pandemic. In that sense, as one observer said, he will be the anti-Trump president. That leaves Congress to deal immediately with the departing president. They will know that taking too much relish in revenge on the man whom Schwarzenegger described, rightly, as the worst president ever will only widen the divisions he leaves behind him - and make his successor’s job harder than it already is.

The Times