By Ken Zino
“What President Trump demanded that Mike Pence do wasn’t just wrong, it was illegal and it was unconstitutional,” committee co-chair, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) said in her opening statement last week. Given the testimony, videos and statements presented Thursday at the House Select Committee hearings, it seems that Donald Trump along with his legal advisor John Eastman and campaign advisors and supporters have stepped Through the Looking Glass into an insurrectionist wonderland that is completely baffling to those of us -- including Mike Pence, the White House Counsel, and a conservative federal judge -- who remain on the sane side.
In the sequel to Alice in Wonderland, Alice has a debate with Humpty Dumpty that roughly goes like this: Alice notes that Humpty looks "exactly like an egg." Humpty objects. Alice explains she said he looks like an egg, not that he is one. A debate ensues with Humpty declaring "When I use a word…" Humpty Dumpty replies "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
Donald Trump remains acting like he is Dumpty, rather than legally dumped by voters. Words mean what he chooses them to mean, and the constitutional crisis is still happening.
“Today, the Select Committee is going to reveal the details of that pressure campaign,” the panel’s chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) said in his opening statement. “But what does the vice president of the United States even have to do with a presidential election? The Constitution says that the vice president of the United States oversees the process of counting the Electoral College votes -- a process that took place on January 6th, 2021” [and was extended to 3:42 a.m. on the 7th due to the insurrectionist breach]. Pence refused to leave until the electoral count was complete. Donald Trump wanted Mike Pence to do something no other vice president has ever done. “The former president wanted Pence to reject the votes and either declare Trump the winner or send the votes back to the states to be counted again. Mike Pence said no. He resisted the pressure. He knew it was illegal. He knew it was wrong,”
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again.
Note these words from a pragmatic – versus semantic -- viewpoint in a statement released just before the hearing, by respected conservative retired federal judge Michael Luttig: “A stake was driven through the heart of American democracy on January 6, 2021, and our democracy today is on a knife’s edge. America was at war on that fateful day, but not against a foreign power. She was at war against herself. We Americans were at war with each other -- over our democracy. January 6 was but the next, foreseeable battle in a war that had been raging in America for years, though that day was the most consequential battle of that war even to date…
“Though disinclined for the moment, as a political matter of fact only the party that instigated this war over our democracy can bring an end to that war. Like our war from a distant time, these twin wars are testing whether this nation or any nation . . . so conceived in liberty . . . can long endure.” We must hope that January 6 was the final battle of at least the deadly war for America’s democracy.
Oh, another problem the Committee has with these Looking Glass wars; It cannot indite Trump and fellow insurrectionists no matter what their actions and words mean in the real world.
For more information I recommend a new Brookings report “Trump on Trial: A Guide to the January 6 Committee Hearings and the Question of Criminality.”