Pro-Trump Kansas and Missouri senators don’t have much choice but to stick with him | Opinion

Once again, the Kansas-Missouri insurrection caucus in the U.S. Senate rushed to Donald Trump’s defense on Tuesday after the announcement of the former president’s long-anticipated indictment on charges stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and his fraudulent attempt to stay in power.

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, whose raised fist of encouragement to Trump’s supporters on Jan. 6 is perhaps the defining image of that day, quickly responded on Twitter: “Biden DOJ unveils the latest effort to stop Trump from running against Biden — totally unprecedented in American history.”

Sen. Eric Schmitt, who as Missouri attorney general signed onto a lawsuit that challenged Pennsylvania’s Electoral College votes for Biden, followed up: “They know they can’t beat Trump given Biden’s disastrous failures and scandals so Biden’s DOJ has created a two-tiered system of justice targeting his chief political opponent,” he wrote. “‘Equal justice under the law’ has been replaced with ‘show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.’”

Across the border in Kansas, Sen. Roger Marshall cast one of his first-ever votes against affirming Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. Tuesday, he weighed in too: “The DOJ has become nothing more than an agent of the Biden crime family. The timing of today’s indictment against Trump is so clearly an attempt to distract from yesterday’s bombshell testimony against Joe & Hunter Biden that exposed clear, undeniable corruption. Americans are exhausted and tired of this charade. What happened to equal justice under the law?”

These responses were absurd and false. They also seemed a bit desperate.

But it was to be expected. These guys have to defend Trump and launch baseless accusations against the Biden administration. They don’t really have any other choice.

After all, the three senators were deeply complicit in his crime — the most dangerous assault on American democracy since the Civil War. To abandon the former president in this moment, to acknowledge the damage done by his efforts to defy the will of the voters, to the need for accountability, would be to admit that their own conduct was egregiously wrong.

Hawley, Marshall and Schmitt have instead spent the ensuing years doubling down on their failed gamble on Trump. Hawley is still selling merch on his website celebrating the raised fist (and flagrantly breaking U.S. copyright law). Marshall went on “Meet the Press” and refused to acknowledge that Biden won the White House legitimately. Schmitt happily accepted Trump’s endorsement of his 2022 senatorial campaign.

They stuck with Trump long past the point of sensibility. So they’re stuck with him now.

Trump has told his supporters, “I am being indicted for you.” That’s not true: He’s being indicted because he fraudulently claimed that the election was stolen from him, and in so doing incited an insurrection against American democracy. The crime is his. The millions of voters who believed Trump’s lies? They’re victims, too, of the former president’s unabashed willingness to do or say anything to stay in power.

Hawley, Marshall and Schmitt are not victims.

Their names did not appear in the indictment of Donald Trump, but they were prominently and gleefully party to the conduct described in the charges. Their participation in Trump’s election lies was shameful then. And their defense of Trump — in this long-delayed but necessary moment of accountability — is shameful now.

The stain will forever attend their legacies.