Most Americans, I fear, don’t truly understand the danger the United States faced on January 6, 2021. I say this with confidence—our nation was one Mike Pence “yes” away from potential fracture.
As we reflect on January 6, it’s understandable to focus on the mob’s terror attack on the Capitol, but—as strange as this may sound—that dreadful spasm of violence was ultimately one of the less dangerous aspects of Trump’s campaign to overturn the election. Indeed, the moment of maximum danger had come earlier, and it occurred mostly behind the scenes.
This was the concerted effort to persuade or coerce Mike Pence into delaying or overturning the certification of the presidential election. We knew he was under pressure. We knew that Trump was demanding that he act. But we didn’t know how much pressure, and we didn’t know that Pence had been handed a road map to a coup.
We also didn’t yet know that even dreadful violence, instigated by Trump, would not be enough to materially undermine Republican support for Trump.
But here’s what we now know. We know that Vice President Pence had been presented with a legal argument that he had the power to overturn the presidential election entirely or—at the very least—the ability to delay certification of the election to build pressure on Republican legislatures in Biden states (like Georgia, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania) to select an alternate slate of electors.
We also know that Jeffrey Clark, the former acting assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice’s Civil Division, actively threatened Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen’s job if Rosen didn’t use the power of the DOJ to attempt to coerce Georgia and other states to appoint new electors.
At the same time, former Trump adviser Peter Navarro has explained in great detail that he and Steve Bannon were actively executing a plan they called the “Green Bay Sweep” to use the weaknesses and ambiguities in the Electoral Count Act to attempt to force Pence to delay certification.
Finally, all of this was taking place against a background reality that while the GOP base might not have endorsed the attack on the Capitol, they were still committed to the idea that the election was stolen, and they were still absolutely committed to Trump.
Doubt me? Look at this startling approval chart, and remember that January 6 is not just the day the mob attacked the Capitol, it’s the day that Pence and Senator Mitch McConnell broke with Trump and took the lead in making sure Congress certified Biden’s victory:
So, let’s walk through what happens if Mike Pence says yes on January 6, 2021. What happens if, instead of announcing that he will discharge his constitutional duties and certify Biden’s victory, he puts out a different letter, one that echoes the “reasoning” of the infamous Eastman memos and either attempts to certify a Trump victory or refuses to certify Biden’s win?
First, the attack on the Capitol would almost certainly not happen. Instead of an angry mob chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” the Capitol would be surrounded by a jubilant mob celebrating a great victory, and the very existence of the mob would hang like the Sword of Damocles over any Republican who dared object.
This mob and its Republican allies wouldn’t see themselves as usurping American democracy; they would believe in their heart of hearts that they were saving the country from a corrupt election and a corrupt party. You would immediately hear rhetoric about 1776 and a great triumph over the hated forces who tried to destroy the nation they love.
Second, there would almost certainly be immediate, massive protests in blue cities and blue states. There would be a good chance that some of those protests would turn violent, and that would immediately not only harden Republican support for Trump; it would grant him yet another pretext for attempting to invoke the Insurrection Act and using active-duty troops to secure control of the streets.
Third, governors on both sides of the divide would face intense pressure to declare their intentions (who will they recognize as president?), at the same time that Biden would be launching an immediate legal effort to obtain Supreme Court review. Trump would almost certainly begin to publicly prepare his own swearing-in ceremony.
The Supreme Court would intervene and confirm Biden’s win—how could it not? But then it would be an open question whether Trump would respect the ruling. It would be an open question whether an even more radicalized Republican base would allow Trump to respect the ruling. Remember, the Supreme Court has no meaningful independent authority to enforce its orders. It ultimately relies on voluntary compliance from the nation’s political branches of government.
If Mike Pence had said yes, would our nation witness two swearing-in ceremonies, one with John Roberts administering the oath of office to Biden and the other with a different judge administering the oath to Trump?
And again, if all of this sounds too far-fetched to contemplate, remember that when Mike Pence stood for the rule of law and the Constitution, millions of Republicans rejected Pence, not the man who tried to engineer an American coup. Even to this day, where I live in Tennessee, there is considerable base-GOP anger at Marsha Blackburn, one of Trump’s most loyal senators, because she didn’t ultimately vote against election certification on January 6.
And if you think more than a few GOP politicians would have actively resisted Trump, you forget the way in which the vast majority of the GOP quickly folded and refused to vote to either impeach or convict a president who plotted a profound constitutional crisis. And you forget the power of a jubilant, victorious right-wing media that would have thundered their approval for Pence across the length and breadth of these United States.
We would have seen GOP resistance, but those resistors would have immediately faced a wave of threats and intimidation unlike anything we’ve yet seen—especially if they were understood to take the side of violent protests on the left.
I’m sorry to walk through this darkness, but it’s necessary. It’s important to understand that many millions of Americans believe that the election was stolen and that Trump was the true victim of 2020, that his fight was noble, and that the members of the GOP who thwarted him were traitors. They long for Trump’s return.
Yes, this devotion may fade, and there are signs that Republicans are more divided than polls may suggest, but it hasn’t faded yet, and even the suggestion that Trump should face a serious primary challenge in 2024 can generate intense backlash.
We can’t heal the patient unless we diagnose the disease, and the disease is serious. Hatred of the left combined with devotion to Trump almost plunged our nation into an existential crisis. The vice president’s courage in a pivotal moment prevented further chaos, but when the GOP is busy attempting to purge the party of all but the former president’s most loyal allies, can we be confident such courage will prevail again?
A conversation about manliness and moral courage …
Late last year I had a great conversation with Vox’s Sean Illing about the Trump right’s corrupted view of masculinity and how bullying had replaced moral courage as a cardinal masculine virtue in parts of the right.
It’s always fun to talk to Sean, and I’d encourage you to listen to the whole thing, but I wanted to close this newsletter with a bit of hope. One of the reasons why the Trump right is so vicious is that it knows it’s vulnerable:
Sean Illing
I really do believe the ultimate choice is between conversation and violence. But I don’t think it’s too late, I really don’t. Things have been much, much worse than they are now. But we have to pull back and we have to do it soon. How does that start?
David French
Well, let’s say bad news, good news. So I think the bad news is this idea that we might reach a point where millions of Americans who were all-in for Trump will essentially give some version of mea culpa — I don’t think that something like that is in the cards.
I think the way things change is people move on. It’s not necessarily that they’ll sit there and they’ll say, “I never should have been on this guy’s team.” They’ll just say something like, “Well, let’s not do that again,” or, “I like this other person better.” I think there’s a lot of room for that kind of transformation.
There’s something telling in one of the text messages that was released that the Fox News hosts sent to Mark Meadows on January 6. Laura Ingraham said, “This is hurting all of us.” What you have is this group dynamic on Trumpism where part of the appeal, actually, is they’re all in this together, they’re really all in this movement.
One of the reasons why it’s so hostile toward dissent is, I think, they know their own vulnerability. I think they know that they’re vulnerable to a better vision.
So one of the reasons why people who are “never Trump” politicians, or politicians who once supported Trump now don’t support him anymore, are so viciously attacked is because these people are the threat. Because they offer an alternative conservative vision for this country that is not based on hatred and animosity and aggression and cruelty. They offer an alternative to the J.D. Vance version, which says, “I think our people hate the right people.”
An alternative version of conservatism says, “There are no right people to hate. You don’t hate people. You believe what you believe out of conviction that this is a worldview and a set of policies and ideas that contribute to the flourishing of all of the American people, not just your tribe, and your goal is not to pit American against American.”
There is a vision and a version of conservatism that stands in total contradiction to what the Trumpist right is. I think it still has appeal, and it’s one of the reasons why there is such aggression directed at those who dissent. Because they have memories, most of them except the very youngest, they have memories of a different version of conservatism, one that could motivate people through inspiration rather than aggression, and they know they’re vulnerable to it.
So my optimistic take is that if enough conservatives, enough conservative politicians, enough conservative public intellectuals, enough conservative pop culture figures offer this alternative, don’t expect some mass American repentance. But some mass Republican turning away from Trump is very, very possible, and it’s the very possibility of that which makes the aggression of the other side seem so urgent and necessary to them.
That’s the path past Trumpism. We shall see if it’s a path Republicans take.