Trump’s Taste for Blood
If Republicans won’t
convict, bring on the handcuffs.
By Maureen Dowd
Opinion
Columnist
- Feb.
12, 2021
WASHINGTON — Every scene in “Lawrence
of Arabia” is perfect, but there’s one I find especially haunting.
Peter O’Toole’s Lawrence returns to
Cairo after successfully leading the Arabs in battle against the Ottoman Empire
and tells a military superior that he does not want to go back. Slumping in his
Bedouin robes, looking pained, he recalls that he executed an Arab with his
pistol.
There was something about it he didn’t
like, he says.
The irritated general tries to brush it
off, assuming the erudite Lawrence is upset at killing a man.
“No, something else,” Lawrence
explains. “I enjoyed it.”
The first time I
realized that Donald Trump took pleasure in violence was back in March 2016. In
an interview, I asked him about
the brutish rhetoric and violence at his rallies and the way he goaded
supporters to hate on journalists and rough up protesters. Even then Mitch
McConnell was urging Trump to ratchet down the ferocity.
I told Trump that I had not seen this
side of him before and that he was going down a very dark path. With his
denigrating mockery of rivals and critics, he had already taken politics to a vulgar
place, and now it was getting more dangerous.
Shouldn’t parents be able to bring
children to rallies without worrying about obscenities, sucker punches, brawls
and bullying, I wondered?
He brushed off the questions and
blithely assessed the savage mood at his rallies: “Frankly, it adds a little
excitement.”
A couple weeks later, I pressed
him again on
his belligerence and divisiveness, and, with utter candor, he explained why he
was turning up the heat.
“I guess because of
the fact that I immediately went to No. 1 and I said, why don’t I just keep the
same thing going?” he said. “I’ve come this far in life. I’ve had great
success. I’ve done it my way.” He added, “You know, there are a lot of people
who say, ‘Don’t change.’”
Dear reader, he didn’t change.
And everything bloodcurdling that
happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6 flowed from his bloodthirsty behavior. He had
always been cruel and selfish, blowing things up and reveling in the chaos,
gloating in the wreckage. But it was only during his campaign that he realized
he had a nasty mob at his disposal. He had moved into a world that allowed him
to exercise his malice in an extraordinary way, and he loved it.
He became his own Lee Atwater, doing
the dirty stuff right out in the open. He embraced the worst part of his party,
the most racist, violent cohort.
The faux-macho, Gotti-esque air of
menace he cultivated as a real estate dealer, the Clint Eastwood squint, just
seemed like performance art; mostly he was around New York, acting genial at
parties and courting the press. He would say stuff sometimes; after Sacha Baron
Cohen pulled a prank on Ryan Seacrest at the Oscars, Trump said that Seacrest’s
security guard should have “pummeled” and “punched” Baron Cohen “in the face so
many times” that he’d end up in the hospital.
But once Trump got into politics, he
realized, with growing intoxication, that the more incendiary he was, the more
his fans would cheer. He found that he could really play with the emotions of
the crowd, and that turned him on. Now he had the chance to command a mob, so
his words could be linked to their actions.
Trump never cared about law and order
or the cops. He was thrilled that he could unleash his mob on the Capitol and
its guardians, with rioters smearing blood and feces and yelling Trump’s words
and going after his targets — Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence.
It was Manson family-chilling to watch
the House impeachment managers’ video with
a rioter hunting for the House speaker, calling out: “Where are you, Nancy?
We’re looking for you, Na-a-ncy. Oh, Na-a-ncy.”
It was like watching
his vicious Twitter feed come alive. Others were chanting “Hang Mike Pence!”
even as a gallows, complete with noose, was erected on the lawn. Watching those
shivery videos, it hit home how Pelosi and Pence could have been killed and the
melee could have turned into a far worse blood bath.
Trump not caring about the fate of his
vice president was the inevitable sick end of the pairing of the Sociopath and
the Sycophant.
As The Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey
wrote in a tweet Friday,
recapping his reporting with Ashley Parker: “Pence’s team does not agree with the
Trump lawyer’s assessment that Trump was concerned about Pence’s safety. Trump
didn’t call him that day — or for five days after that. No one else on Trump’s
team called as Pence was evacuated to one room & another, with screaming
mob nearby.”
Trump’s whole defense in the
impeachment trial was like a low-budget movie trailer, cornier than the
new Louise Linton flick. It was just another Trump flimflam reality TV show, meant
to prove how he was wronged,
not how he wronged the country.
Trump’s lawyers showed a video of
myriad Democrats using the word “fight,” as though that was the equivalent of
what Trump did.
If he’d had better lawyers and a real
strategy in the effort to purloin the election, or if a few brave Republicans
like Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, had not stood up to
him, he might have succeeded.
Certainly, opportunism has always run
rampant in Congress. But most Republicans, who continue to tremble before Trump
even though he devoured and destroyed their party, turning its traditional
values upside down, are plumbing new cowardly depths. They are mini-Trumps,
making decisions solely on self-interest.
CNN reported Friday
night that Kevin McCarthy called Trump during the riot, telling him the mob was
breaking his windows to get in. The then-president told him: “Well, Kevin, I
guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.” The
conversation ended in a shouting match. Yet McCarthy still voted against
impeaching the president.
These
dreadful Republicans are all Falstaffs, trampling the concept of honor, blowing
it off as a mere airy-fairy word, not worth sacrificing anything for, not worth
defending your country for. “Honor is a mere scutcheon,” Falstaff scoffed.
McConnell
and the other craven Republicans realize now that they should not have played
along with Trump as long as they did, while he undermined the election. But
they still refuse to hold him accountable because he controls their voters.
The
Democrats put on an excellent case, and they were right to impeach Trump. But
if the Republicans won’t convict him, then bring on the criminal charges.
Republicans say that’s how it should be done when someone is out of office, so
let’s hope someone follows through on their suggestion.
A few
days ago, prosecutors in Georgia opened
an investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the
election there. Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance could
drag Trump into court on tax and fraud
charges. Karl Racine, the attorney general for D.C., has said that Trump could
be charged for his role in inciting the riot.
Maybe a man who gloated as his crowds screamed “Lock her up!”
will find that jurors reach a similar conclusion about him.