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January 6 Again

Joyce Vance Jan 6

Donald Trump is the President no one has ever said “no” to in a big way. Not Congress, not the Court, and certainly not the people around him in the executive branch. It didn’t happen even after January 6, 2021, which seems to have greenlit the fact-averse, law-free, and profoundly antidemocratic behavior that has come to characterize his second term in office.

As Virginia Senator Mark Warner pointed out in our Substack Live earlier today, Trump fires intelligence analysts who don’t tell him what he wants to hear. Stop and think about what that means for a minute. Could that account for the horrific 80 deaths preliminary numbers say occurred so we could arrest two people in Venezuela? What else?

Now, with the fifth anniversary of January 6 upon us, we live in a world where the president has pardoned the “patriots” convicted for planning an insurrection and storming the Capitol. Trump has made sure that no one faces accountability for January 6, least of all himself. He has nothing but praise for the people who overran the Capitol—they’re the good guys, the heroes. His people.

On the very first day of his second term, Trump granted pardons to some of the most dangerous among them, convicted felons like Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, beginning with these words: “This proclamation ends a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years and begins a process of national reconciliation.” In all, more than 1,500 people received pardons or commutations on Trump’s first day in office.

These facts are all well known, and if you’re here reading Civil Discourse, you undoubtedly condemn them. Still, no one has ever told Trump no. So he keeps pushing.

For those who are familiar with the romanticization of slavery and the “Old South” as a praiseworthy “lost cause,” warning bells should be going off. Recasting traitors from that era as heroes and purveyors of a traditional, desirable way of life we should return to is what permitted the Klan to rise and white supremacy to flourish. The reality is that Donald Trump took criminals and elevated them to hero status, preparing for a day when he might need them again, perhaps, and certainly ensuring everyone understood that he rewarded loyalty, even as he went on to punish “enemies” like New York’s Attorney General Tish James and others with prosecution. It is all in front of our eyes, but even now, too many people still can’t see it. Trump turned criminals into champions and permitted Christofascist white supremacist movements to take hold as a legitimate part of the American political landscape. A new Lost Cause.

Bill Martin, the director of the Valentine Museum in Richmond, Virginia, died over New Year’s weekend after being struck by a car. During his life, he worked to ensure people who visited his museum had an accurate view of life in the “Old South.” He kept a 1950s school history textbook on display at the Valentine. It was used for decades to teach Virginia fourth-graders, including Martin himself, “that slavery was benign and enslaved people were happy.”

As a museum curator, he “exploded the lies of the Southern ‘Lost Cause’ mythology.” That “provoked hate mail and even death threats.” Being a purveyor of the truth in a country that is perilously close to abandoning it has consequences. But Martin’s response was elegant and refreshing: he invited his critics to lunch. In 2024 when he was named “Richmonder of the Year,” he told StyleWeekly magazine, “You can’t do history and sit on the sidelines.”

You can’t do democracy from the sidelines either.

On December 31, the transcript and videotape of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s behind-closed-doors House Judiciary Committee testimony were released, likely in hopes that they would disappear into the gaping hole of a holiday news cycle. But as we head into the fifth anniversary of January 6, we can’t afford to let that happen. Myths permitted the people who turned traitor in the Civil War era to be resurrected as heroes. We can’t afford to have myths here, especially not with the president himself creating and perpetuating them.

Jack Smith patiently explained that he had assessed the evidence against Trump and indicted him based on it. He said he would do it again—to a president of either party—if the evidence were of the same caliber. Trump, who pardoned the people who overran the Capitol, called Smith a “thug,” a “failed prosecutor,” and a “bad man.” “He’s a sick man,” Trump said. “There’s something wrong with him, actually. I think Jack Smith is a sick man.”

Smith was asked repeatedly about political influence being brought to bear in his investigation. The people who live under Donald Trump’s thumb seemed to think Smith must have come under pressure from the President or the Attorney General to charge Trump. Not so, Smith responded—under oath. This slice of the testimony is demonstrative of the Justice Department Jack Smith worked for.

There’s no reason to bury Smith’s testimony on New Year’s Eve unless you’re running scared from it. Unless you remember how truly horrible January 6 and Trump’s role in it were. In my book, Giving Up Is Unforgivable, I recounted January 6 through the words of congressional Republicans like Senator Mitch McConnell, who said after Trump was acquitted following his impeachment, that his conduct on January 6 was “disgraceful” and said that he was “practically and morally responsible” for what took place. House minority leader Kevin McCarthy told key Republicans privately that Trump’s behavior on January 6 was “atrocious and totally wrong,” going so far as to accuse Trump of “inciting” the mob that went to the Capitol. Many other Republicans who had feared for their lives on January 6 joined in as well. But all of the outrage was short-lived.

The truth is appalling. The newly romanticized version from Trump, the story of heroes and winners, if it’s permitted to prevail, will make it impossible for us to emerge whole from this era. As difficult as the job of doing that already is, Americans will be unable to do it if fourth-grade history books teach that criminals were tourists visiting Congress to condemn the way an election was stolen from their hero, Donald Trump. Jack Smith’s testimony and the cases he built against Trump are a powerful means of refuting Trump’s myth. Jim Jordan miscalculated when he decided he could successfully take on the career prosecutor. He failed.

A lot of the outrage from House Republicans during Smith’s testimony focused on subpoenas he issued for their phone records. In the excerpt above, a Jim Jordan staffer asked Smith about why he subpoenaed Jordan’s phone records. The response: Mark Meadows, Trump’s Chief of Staff, told Smith he had never seen Jim Jordan scared of anything before, and the fear on January 6 “made it clear that what was going on at the Capitol could not be mistaken for anything other than what it was.”

Smith was subsequently asked, “To the extent members of Congress and senators are up in arms that this happened to them and are seeking accountability, who should be held accountable?” He responded, “I think who should be accountable for this is Donald Trump. These records exist because, in the case of the senators, Donald Trump directed his co-conspirators to call these people to further delay the proceedings. He chose to do that. If Donald Trump had chosen to call a number of Democratic senators, we would have gotten toll records for Democratic senators. So the responsibility for why these records were collected lies with Donald Trump.” Ouch.

Donald Trump doesn’t like facing the truth. He certainly doesn’t want to be held accountable for it. You can watch Jack Smith’s full testimony here. You can read it here. It’s worth your time, and it’s worth sharing.

More than 140 Republican members of Congress refused to accept Trump’s loss, even though federal judges, including many appointed by Trump and other Republicans, confirmed the result in rulings from more than 60 lawsuits. Some, like former Alabama Representative Mo Brooks, explicitly encouraged violence. Brooks told the crowd that day that “Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass. … Today is a time of choosing and tomorrow is a time of fighting.” It was reported that Brooks, along with Matt Gaetz of Florida, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Louie Gohmert of Texas, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, tried unsuccessfully to receive pardons before Trump left office.

As I wrote in my book, following January 6, there was no moment where Donald Trump was forced to face the truth of what he had done to the country. He has never publicly apologized or even acknowledged he was wrong. There was no moment like the surrender at Appomattox or the withholding of restoration of citizenship for a time for Trump, as there was for leaders following the Civil War.

That’s no way to fix a democracy and keep it whole.

So, we will go through this same painful exercise every year on the anniversary of January 6, remembering and reciting the facts, until we get it right. The people who mobbed Congress are not praiseworthy people, heroic victims who fought a last stand for a lost cause. Trump is not the leader of a legitimate American political movement. We must keep on saying it. We have to refuse to let Trump’s narrative prevail. In the time of Trump, be a warrior for the truth, be a Bill Martin. Take people out to lunch and talk about it. Refuse to sit on the sidelines.

We’re in this together,

Joyce