I knew Race Bannon wouldn’t let us down.
But I couldn’t have imagined how much Donald Trump would.
I couldn’t have imagined how a president I voted for twice, and supported from the morning of the Iowa caucus, and who had done well through the first 46 months of his presidency, could so turn his back on the Constitution he and I had both sworn to defend.
The dog went back to his vomit.
He said “pussy” to Billy Bush in the campaign bus and he shouted it at Mike Pence over the phone in the Oval Office. Bookends of vulgarity on a presidency that came at a very high price.
And collapsed into infamy on a day of dishonor.
On a day the vice president of the United States, the House of Representatives and the Electoral College were gathered to perform their constitutional duty, to engage in the sacred ritual of our Republic, Donald Trump held forth on The Mall and in the White House as a law unto himself. He sought to subvert the election of a president and the transfer of power.
In short, he attempted a coup d’etat, the theft of sovereignty from the American people, for his own benefit, to satisfy his own ego and lust for power.
Don’t get me wrong. The January 6 select-committee is a political stunt, a Democrat campaign commercial. I wish Trump had won, and I believe that if he had our country and the world would be better off. We wouldn’t have inflation, we wouldn’t have lawlessness, and Putin wouldn’t be in Ukraine. I believe America would be better served if there was a President Trump in charge instead of a President Biden.
I wish Donald Trump had won.
But he didn’t.
And in the two months that followed his electoral defeat, he dishonored himself and disserved his country.
Culminating on January 6, 2021.
On January 6, Donald Trump almost destroyed the country.
But Mike Pence saved it.
As Donald Trump was ignoring repeated assertions from within his own party and circle that he had lost the election, he pressured Mike Pence to illegally reject the electors of the Electoral College and fancifully send the election back to the state legislatures where, with Republicans predominating, he presumed he would be selected president.
But it didn’t work. It was a one-man conspiracy.
And his own staff, family, and vice president turned their backs on him – because their allegiance was to the country, and when duty was clear, they did it.
And for no one is that more true than the then vice president. Mike Pence of Indiana. A buttoned-down white-bread guy with a laser lock on duty and decency. As the president strayed from the sane and lawful, and as he targeted Pence for his followers’ scorn, the vice president’s resolve to do what was right was unflinching and unfailing.
And so it was that he stayed in the Capitol, the calls for his neck ringing through its halls, the president heaping pressure and fanning the flames. In the basement, by a loading dock, with a phone in his hand, Mike Pence made his stand. Trump called him a wimp and Trump called him a pussy but he kept his oath and he held the ground and they couldn’t push him from the place.
On the day Donald Trump sold his honor, Mike Pence proved his.
On the day the rabble tried to shut the Capitol down, to occupy it in force, when the House ran and the Electoral College dispersed, the vice president stayed. The flag did not touch the ground. Mike Pence did his duty.
And proved that he was ten times the American of the man in the Oval Office.
And that man proved that he was no longer worthy of admiration or trust. He proved that his critics’ worst estimations of him were based in truth.
Donald Trump and I both took the oath. He as a president of the United States, and I as a private in the Army.
It is an oath taken by millions, as a sacred obligation, as a commitment more dear than life.
A commitment Donald Trump did not keep.
He broke his oath. He became an enemy of the Constitution. He became a threat to the Republic.
So damn him. He is dead to me. If I outlive him, I will piss on his grave.
He has no future in the service or leadership of this Republic, and he deserves to be shamed in its history.
And that is all of his own doing, on that dark day in January of 2021.
Sic semper tyrannis.