Kendall Stanley: Can voters live with this blot on the presidency?

The first public hearing of the Jan. 6 committee was the first major look at what is appearing more and more to be a concerted effort by various groups to physically stop the counting of electors and to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.

Testimony indicated the Proud Boys were at the Capitol early on that day and they were the first to breach the windows of the building. Video shown later in the hearing spotlighted what can be described as a squad of Oath Keepers making their way through the crush of other insurgents with a military precision.

Where were they headed? Hopefully more to come.

Some of the testimony laid to rest any idea that the events of the 6th were “similar to a regular tourist day” or simply “legitimate political discourse.”

“What I saw was a war scene,” officer, Caroline Edwards, one of the more than 150 officers injured in the rampage, testified. “I saw officers on the ground. They were bleeding. They were throwing up.”

She added: “I was slipping on people’s blood. It was carnage. It was chaos.”

Knocked unconscious, she now says she cannot watch video of the insurrection without eliminating the audio because it takes her to bad places mentally.

Just so the MAGA fans wouldn’t get a sense of the committee’s work, Fox News ran two whole hours of Carlson and Hannity commercial free, lest the Trump faithful think to turn the channel and hear the truth of that day.

The hearings continued during the week, but I think the most damning was the testimony that attorney Jeffrey Clark was willing to send out a letter to officials of states trying to get them to send new electors to Congress. He was willing to do that if Trump would name him attorney general.

One doesn’t know which is the most galling — Clark running with the lie the election was stolen and new electors could be put into place, or the fact he was asking for the president to make him attorney general as he sent out the letter.

None of that happened but certainly not for a lack of trying.

Also of note in the early hearings were reports of election night when those around Trump kept telling him he was about to lose the election. Those included his campaign manager and his daughter, Ivanka Trump.

But no, convinced in his own mind that he couldn’t possibly have lost the election Trump turned to a reportedly intoxicated Rudy Giuliani (whose lawyer says he wasn’t) who kept telling him to go out and claim victory. The irony there is Trump, a teetotaler, would listen to an intoxicated Rudy but listen he did.

Trump and his allies also managed to pull in $250 million in funds to go ostensibly to aid in battling the fraud, but that’s not where the money ended up.

While some contributors probably don’t mind seeing their money sent off to super pacs and other funds controlled by Trump because they are willing to support him no matter what, others might get the feeling that they were being hustled, which they were.

In case you haven’t noticed, Trump always manages to raise money that ultimately goes in his pocket in one way or another.

On Thursday, the committee was supposed to look at Trump’s efforts to coerce his vice president, Mike Pence, to throw the election his way.

You would have thought that would be an easy ask, as Pence had shown his loyalty over the years to Trump to the point where one wondered if he was a vertebrate or not.

This time, however, after consulting with many others, he said no, he could not legally change or challenge the electors. His job was to oversee the count of the electoral votes, period.

Given that, when the crowd invading the Capitol chanted “Hang Mike Pence” the president suggested they might be on to something.

Trump’s unwillingness for hours to call off protesters remains a blot on his presidency, one he apparently can live with.

The question should be is whether voters can live with it. Apparently for many who still contend the election was stolen and Trump remains “their” president, the answer is yes.

— Kendall P. Stanley is retired editor of the News-Review. He can be contacted at kendallstanley@charter.net. The opinions expressed in this column are those of the writer and not necessarily of the Petoskey News-Review or its employees. 

This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Kendall Stanley: Can voters live with this blot on the presidency?