The Washington Post’s Philip Bump writes a piece expressing the sentiments I find myself screaming at the TV every day (and makes me slap myself for not writing it myself.) Noting the latest uproar over Mike Pence uttering the words “President Trump is wrong” he observes what should be obvious to anyone — so what? Pence said he was wrong back on January 6th and refused to do his bidding and we all know the result. Just as everyone assumed the McCain slur, Access Hollywood, Charlottesville, Helsinki and dozens of other horrific moments since he came down that escalator was “the moment” the tide had turned against Trump, it almost certainly is not. We know what he is. Everyone does. And tens of millions of Americans love him for it (or in spite of it.)
Bump writes:
So much of the political commentariat is looking for smudged fingerprints on a crowbar found near the scene of a break-in even as that crowbar is clearly labeled “property of Donald Trump” and Trump is selling a bunch of obviously stolen merchandise at a yard sale across the street.
For example, that resolution criticizing Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) for participation in the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 included a reference to the committee engaging in “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” As The Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey reported, this was a clumsily phrased reference to subpoenas issued to people who were engaged in the broader effort to overturn the election, not the day’s violence. Yet, on the hunt for the signal moment, observers — including Cheney — decided that the resolution was saying that the riot was being waved away as “legitimate political discourse.”
The important thing here is that it wouldn’t matter if that was the intent. We know that the Republican Party is whitewashing the riot. We know that the far-right media is spreading misinformation about it. We know that those arrested for participating in violence are getting sympathetic responses from powerful Republican officials. To insist that there is greater significance in the phrasing used for a resolution than the accreted evidence of efforts to play down what happened that day is simply bizarre. What matters isn’t that linguistic detectives are on the case, what matters is literally everything else we know.
It happened this week, too. When Trump released that statement saying Pence could have overturned the election had he acted on Jan. 6, this was hailed as a novel confession of guilt. Perhaps a prosecutor will see it as such after comparing it to the letter of the law. But this was not, in itself, a revelation of intent! No kidding that Trump wanted Pence to overturn the election! What did you think was happening for the two months from the 2020 election to President Biden’s inauguration? A rational, good-faith consideration of what the voters had intended?
It was this comment from Trump that was the predicate for Pence’s switch from passive to active disagreement with his former boss. Here’s Pence, giving the crowd what it wants: not Joseph Welch saying “have you no sense of decency?” but someone performing the role of Welch saying that. At last, here was a moment the audience had been awaiting, Pence turning on Trump! Except he already did, back when it mattered. Focusing on spindly little trees obscures the breadth of the forest.
We are at an extreme. Our standard parsing of the moment, of dragging the center flag of the tug-of-war rope an inch one way or the other, doesn’t apply. The rope is already in a heap at the edge of the field and the losing team lying on the ground with dislocated shoulders. If you have discovered that the flag is slightly closer to the middle than was believed, you have not discovered anything of any use.
There’s not going to “that moment.” There have already been so many and it hasn’t made a difference. Maybe he will have to face some legal ramifications that will take him out of the race in 2024. (I doubt it…) Or maybe Trump will die unexpectedly in his sleep. That would be “that moment.” Other than that, I kind of expect “that moment” will have to be election day 2024 and God knows what will happen after that.