For just a couple of hours Thursday afternoon, at least some of your elected and appointed officials in nation’s capital were distracted from their daily descent into the mire of today’s politics of hate.
In the White House’s stately East Room, three Army families sat with dozens of dignitaries as President Joe Biden awarded our nation’s Medal of Honor to three courageous soldiers who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, two of whom died saving their fellow soldiers.
And those senators and representatives who cared enough to watch were reminded of sacrifices the best and bravest of Americans have been making in wars that were being fought in the name of our cherished democracy.
One wonders how many of those elected officials who paused to watch (and issued glib press releases to honor) realized that ever since the 2020 election, they have been aiding and abetting their cravenly unpatriotic Grand Old Party pals who are shamefully willing to destroy that same democracy. And they know they have been protecting some of their colleagues who plotted with the Jan. 6 rioters who captured the Capitol. Some helped actively; the rest, with their silence. Just so one defeated politician can avoid being labeled by history as the loser.
Yet that’s what Donald Trump absolutely was. As we were once warned by Washington’s most famous and powerful Republican. But you understandably may have forgotten just how vehement and spot-on his analysis once was. Because after he spoke, he pulled back into his shell and kept silent ever since.
“January 6 was a disgrace,” Senate’s Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a scathing Senate speech way back on Feb. 13. “American citizens attacked their own government. … Fellow Americans beat and bloodied our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They tried to hunt down the speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chanted about murdering the vice president. They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth because he was angry he lost an election. Former President Trump’s actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful— disgraceful—dereliction of duty.…
“There is no question – none – that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.”
But, McConnell didn’t vote to impeach Trump. And he single-handedly prevented the Senate from creating a bipartisan U.S. commission to probe how Trump and his GOP followers schemed to shatter our democracy by overthrowing the 2020 election. He and other Republican leaders have rewarded Trump with their silence ever since.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy once dared to say what he actually thought. “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters,” McCarthy said days after the Jan. 6 rioters invaded his House. “He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding… (and should) accept his share of responsibility.” But when Trump’s only response was fury, McCarthy was one of the first to catch the GOP’s political laryngitis pandemic on all things Trump.
Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., is the most famous Republican who has shown the patriotic courage to combat the efforts of Trump’s far right un-patriots to undermine America’s democracy. (Only Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., who isn’t seeking reelection, has been with her all the way.) After House Republicans booted her from her leadership job, she became vice chair of the House’s January 6 Select Committee probe of all that Trump did, helped by some congressional Republicans, to overturn our 2020 election that Trump’s Justice Department ruled was proper.
As Trump activists maneuver to end Cheney’s political career, she crusades to save our democracy. She just read excerpts of texts that their ex-House colleague, Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, got from House Republicans, Fox commentators and Donald Trump Jr. Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio admits he wrote the one forwarding a wrongheaded scheme to have Vice President Mike Pence refuse to accept some states’ elector slates – and accept alternate slates.
“January 6th was without precedent,” Cheney declared. “There has been no stronger case in our nation’s history for a congressional investigation into the actions of a former president. …And we will get to the objective truth to ensure that January 6th never happens again.”
As those incomparably heroic soldiers were so movingly honored in the East Room Thursday, I found myself thinking that our civilian world is not without its own heroes whose efforts, while of course far lesser, deserve our commendation and gratitude.
Now more than ever, in a Hollywood version of our Washington world, Liz Cheney deserves to somehow become the new, fitting finale for a cinematically updated edition of JFK’s Pulitzer-winning book, “Profiles in Courage.” It is a patriotic work in progress.
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