Trump’s final outrage

A mob descended on Capitol Hill last night acting on lies and disinformation, but there was no foreign actor to blame. This hostility was homegrown and came from the highest echelon of government. The President of the United States has been stoking fear, division and doubt since his defeat in November’s election, and yesterday it bubbled over into an attack on the very heart of American democracy. 

Trump had been speaking at a ‘Save America’ rally where he invited crowds to march on the Capitol. ‘You’ll never take back our country with weakness,’ he told them, ‘you have to show strength’. Trump’s supporters showed their ‘strength’ by disrupting a debate over the certification of the presidential election result — usually a symbolic vote conducted by representatives before inauguration day. But it has become contentious this year as so many Republican senators decided to indulge the President’s fantasies of a ‘stolen’ election and contest certain state results.