Essay About Insurrection on the Capitol

📌Category: Government, President of the United States, Social Issues, Terrorism, United States, Violence, World
📌Words: 1369
📌Pages: 5
📌Published: 19 June 2021

On January 6th, 2021, there was an attack on our democracy that was influenced by our former president Donald Trump, the attack on January 6th happened in Washington D.C. rallied by angry Trump supporters. Was this attack on our democracy Donald Trump’s fault? This attack on January 6th was indeed Trump's fault. Since the beginning of our democracy there have been things like this that have happened throughout American history, the idea of our democracy is dearly important to us. Have you ever heard of the saying “history repeats itself”? According to an article, “The first is from the Civil War and Reconstruction era. White ethnonationalist elites whipped up most white Southerners (but far from all) to enthusiastically embrace a white supremacist nationalist separatist ideology in the years leading up the 1860 election of Republican Abraham Lincoln. Refusing to accept the results, they not only tried to illegally secede from the Union - losers of an election seceding ipso facto destroying democracy - but even seized and attacked federal government installations throughout their South” (Frydenborg). During the Reconstruction era the idea of white supremacy was embraced throughout the south leading up to the 1860 election. The democrat that ran against Abraham Lincoln refused to accept the loss, this is a turn resulted in white supremacist raiding government buildings and going against their own democracy. This correlates to what supporters did to a government building on January 6th when former president Donald Trump refused to accept his loss during the election and repeatedly called votes fraudulent. Although, this is history repeating itself while in office Donald Trump created an environment throughout the nation that included a type of hatred which turned everyone against each other. Leading up to the 2020 election Donald Trump was not fulfilling his duty as the president but he had supporters of his brainwashed into thinking that he was, which is why when he lost the election there was a raid at the capitol. Not only that Trump was persuading his supporters with false claims made on social media and campaign rallies. For months Trump was persuading his supporters to think that Joe Biden was “stealing” the election with votes. According to an article, “January 6th in Washington was shocking but not surprising. For months, President Trump had been stoking his supporters with claims that the presidential election in November was rigged and victory stolen from him. He provided no evidence to back up his claim, but repeating it over and over again in his speeches and tweets provided his assertion with credibility, particularly with his avid adherents. There was no question that millions of his supporters believed his declaration was real and that the election and the presidency had been stolen. In addition, there was affirmation from right-wing commentators and websites'' (Levine). Trump was making false claims about winning the presidential election in November and was constantly telling his supporters he won the election without providing proof. He made these claims at campaign rallies and over social media. With him repeating it over and over it made his supporters believe that it was true, there were also articles about it too but those just added more fuel to the fire. Going deeper into the article the author explains how much he lost by and that he did not have any proof to back up his claims. Trump claimed that “the voting machines had been illegally set to help Biden'' but this was not true. Trump was focused on getting ahead in the election and making false claims instead of rebuilding the country in the last days he had and making sure that nothing awful would happen days leading up to inauguration day. After all of this it was clear that Biden won the election but this still did not stop the anger that Trump’s supporters had, they were ready to storm the capitol and harm officials in the building like there was no consequence. Trump supporters felt like there would be no consequence because in the last four years and during the election he has provided an environment that it is acceptable to harm our democracy. Officials should have seen this coming due the claims he made on social media and at campaign rallies. During the attack on the capitol, former vice president Pence was forced to take matters into his own hands and activated the national guard, Trump made it clear that the attack on the capitol was what he wanted.  During Trump’s impeachment trial, the House of Representatives made it clear that he is a threat to the  democracy. In the article it says, “"This president is guilty of inciting insurrection. He has to pay a price for that," Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in an interview with 60 Minutes, in which she described Mr. Trump as "deranged" and "dangerous." The impeachment resolution has more than 200 co-sponsors and needs only a simple majority to pass the Democratic-controlled House. More complicated is the picture in the Senate, which requires a two-thirds vote to convict the President after a trial. That chamber will be evenly split between the two parties starting next week when the Democrats' two newly elected senators from Georgia are sworn in. The fast-track impeachment of Mr. Trump - which would make him the first president to face the sanction twice - unfolds against the backdrop of a country still reeling from the attack on Congress in which at least five people died and dozens more were injured. Acting homeland security secretary Chad Wolf handed in his resignation Monday, continuing the administration's steady unravelling. He is the third of Mr. Trump's cabinet members to step down since the riot, after Elaine Chao at transportation and Betsy DeVos at education. The President conducted a two-month long campaign to invalidate Mr. Biden's democratic victory by exhorting his supporters to protest and putting pressure on election officials to overturn the results of Nov. 3. In one case, he threatened to have Georgia's top election official prosecuted if he didn't "find" more votes for Mr. Trump.

The push culminated last Wednesday, when the President called for his supporters to gather in Washington, then exhorted them to descend on the Capitol and "fight like hell" as Congress met to certify Mr. Biden's victor” (Morrow). This article proves that he is a threat to the democracy,  I said earlier how he has made false claims but I did not mention the threats he has made to some officials about finding votes for him. Trump was very desperate at the time and couldn’t handle a loss but leading up to the insurrection he would make remarks from time to time on social media and in campaign rallies. The one that stuck with his supporters was “fight like hell”, this happened to be the morning of January 6th, the supporters decided to take action because someone they support told them to fight. Trump basically gave his supporters the green light to raid the capitol. Furthermore, someone that worked with him in 2015 formerly known as the Republican House Speaker made some remarks on what happened on January 6th, the comments he made were not flattering.  According to an article it says, “ At another point, he writes, "I'll admit I wasn't prepared for what came after the election -- Trump refusing to accept the results and stoking the flames of conspiracy that turned into violence in the seat of our democracy, the building over which I once presided." He adds: "Watching it was scary, and sad. It should have been a wake-up call for a return to Republican sanity." Nodding to the divisions between the parties in Congress now, he writes, "Whatever they end up doing, or not doing, none of it will compare to one of the lowest points of American democracy that we lived through in January 2021." Mr. Trump, he goes on, "incited that bloody insurrection for nothing more than selfish reasons, perpetuated by the bullshit he'd been shoveling since he lost a fair election the previous November." Mr. Boehner writes, "He claimed voter fraud without any evidence, and repeated those claims, taking advantage of the trust placed in him by his supporters and ultimately betraying that trust" (Haberman). John Boehner made remarks on the insurrections on January 6th explaining that it was completely Donald Trump’s fault and he incited it. There are many pieces of evidence that point the fingers at Trump just based on his actions and this is what John Boehner explained. Overall, the evidence presented makes it clear that this was indeed Donald Trump’s fault, I believe he should be prosecuted because this was ultimately an attack on our democracy and his supporters meant to harm officials. This was unacceptable behaviour from a president considering he could have done many things to prevent such a tragic event and he was also treating the matter as a joke.

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