“In our country — perhaps all? — natural disasters are accompanied by disastrous politics.” That is a sentence from my column today, which is headed “Hurricane politics, &c.” I talk about Helene and, looking back almost 20 years, Katrina. I go on to discuss Jack Phillips, the “Colorado baker”; Trump Bibles, made in China; the late, great Luis Tiant; and more.
On one of my items, I would like to expand, here in the Corner. That item:
There are two questions — basic ones — that I think Republicans should be asked, regularly. Until they are addressed, conversation cannot usefully proceed. (1) Was the 2020 election legitimate? Did Joe Biden win it fair and square? (2) Who attacked Congress on January 6? Trump supporters? Or BLM, Antifa, and the FBI?
People who cannot face up to these questions, you can hardly have a conversation with. They side with unreality over reality — and this embrace of unreality does great damage to the country.
J. D. Vance, the Republicans’ vice-presidential nominee, answers Question No. 1 in different ways (as I say in my column). Well, one way is a non-answer: He refuses to address the question. But he also says that Trump, not Biden, actually won the 2020 election — as he did last week. (To read about this, go here.)
Why does it matter? Why not indulge Donald Trump in his little fantasy? “What is the downside for humoring him,” as someone once said? The answer is plain: The Trump election lie has corroded and inflamed our politics.
Ramesh Ponnuru devoted his column to this general subject on Tuesday (here). He notes that a great majority of Republicans believe that the 2020 election was, in fact, stolen. “No wonder Republican politicians don’t like having to talk about it,” Ramesh writes (meaning, the 2020 election). “At least through the end of this campaign, they seem to have concluded, they are stuck with the lie.”
Nick Catoggio, too, devoted his column on Tuesday to the subject (here). He cites Kevin D. Williamson, who says that the election question — “Who won in 2020?” — is “the single most important question in American politics today.” I agree.
On January 6 — January 6, 2021 — Senator Tom Cotton was very clear. So were many other Republicans that day, and for several days after. “Today, insurrectionists occupied our Capitol,” Cotton said. Also: “It’s past time for the president to accept the results of the election, quit misleading the American people, and repudiate mob violence.”
But wagons circled very rapidly, and, in 2024, Republicans decided to nominate Trump for the third time in a row. No other person in history has been nominated for president by the Republican Party three times in a row.
Last Sunday, Cotton was asked the question — in this form: “Can you say definitively, here and now, that Donald Trump did lose the 2020 election?” The senator went so far as to say, “Joe Biden was elected president in 2020.” He quickly added, “It was an unfair election in many ways.” Though pressed, he would not say that Trump lost the election. He simply repeated that “Biden was elected.”
This may qualify as candor in the present environment.
Also on Sunday, Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House, was asked the question — in this form: “Can you say unequivocally that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and Donald Trump lost?” Johnson would not address the question at all.
Let me ask: This is leadership?
In my view, a party that cannot talk straight about a question so important should not be trusted with power. Or at least, voters should think twice.
You know who was straight — perfectly straight — in 2022? Dan Crenshaw, the Republican congressman from Texas. “It was always a lie,” he said — referring to Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen. “The whole thing was always a lie. And it was a lie meant to rile people up.”
It succeeded, spectacularly. We saw it on January 6, at the Capitol, most starkly.
Crenshaw explained that Republicans in politics and the media knew it was all a lie. But they just needed to play along for a while, to give Trump Nation a “last hurrah.” “Trust me,” they said, “it’ll be fine.” Crenshaw answered, “No, it won’t.”
And it has not been.
There is such a thing as a “polite fiction,” and even a “noble lie,” I suppose. But this Trump stuff is neither polite nor noble. I have a feeling many Republicans will acknowledge this, if only inwardly, in years to come.
P.S. Jonah Goldberg, too, has devoted his column to “the Trump stuff,” as I have termed it — the 2020 lie. (Go here.) “Facts Don’t Care About Trump’s Feelings,” is his title. True. The problem is, millions upon millions care about Trump’s feelings. They have adopted them as their own — which is an amazing feat by Trump, that master populist and demagogue. Hugo Chávez would smile.