The most recent hearing of the House Select Committee on the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol painted a picture of a nonplussed and detached American president, Donald Trump, who sat back and observed the attack on Congress with little intention of fulfilling his constitutional duties. Reinforced by two live witnesses, and snippets of sworn testimony from videotaped depositions of former Trump administration staff, what emerged was a portrait of a power-hungry politician who could not accept that he had lost an election and was willing to enable a lynch mob to harm the Vice President of the United States for the purpose of stopping the certification of the 2020 presidential election.

The testimony presented gave us a picture of an American president who was willing to risk the life of the Vice President, the person he chose as his running mate, to stay in power. Throughout the day Donald Trump sat in his private dining room in the White House fuming that Vice President Mike Trump would not violate his constitutional oath and suspend the Electoral count certification process. Trump then gave the green light, through his social media postings and refusal to call in security reinforcements on the mob at the Capitol, for his followers to storm the building and if necessary, harm the Vice President. Meanwhile, Vice President Pence’s security detail was expressing concern for their own personal safety as they became aware of the intense anger of the pro-Trump mob. For his part, Pence was doing the job of the President, reaching out to security agencies to send reinforcements for the Capitol police. As the mob grew more violent, injuring police officers and knocking one unconscious, Trump did nothing though White House staff urged him to call the mob off. We even heard one of the insurrectionists read a Trump by text and mockingly note that while the President urged cooperation with the Capitol Hill police, Trump said nothing about the safety of the members of Congress.

We should have come to understand through these proceedings, the danger of unchecked power. Donald Trump envisioned himself as ‘King’ of America not the popularly elected President. He knew before the November 2020 election, that his chance of re-election was slim. Trump calculated that his followers would fall prey to a narrative of a ‘stolen election’ and he set about early to plant that seed in their minds. He manufactured fraud that did not exist and painted an elections system, and his Democratic opponent and critics, as in cahoots to steal the election from him. With no evidence and all the facts against him, Trump set himself up as a victim and wronged President before the first votes in the 2020 were cast. This plot was so devious he set up a counter Cabinet to support his coup attempt to the annoyance of his staff and daughter Ivanka. Donald Trump never intended to peacefully transition out of office. His plan was to hold the Oval Office, even by force if necessary.

What is worse he was willing to coopt the infrastructure of the United States government to achieve his ends. We now know the elite presidential protective service, the United States Secret Service, inexplicably deleted texts from January 5 and 6. The agency has now been subpoenaed by the Inspector General. The January 6 Committee showed how some members of Congress were complicit in their support and encouragement of the insurrectionists, and demonstrated their hypocrisy by showing one, Senator Josh Hawley, saluting the mob when he was entering the Capitol but fleeing when the mob violently entered the building. Were it not for the seriousness of what I can only describe as the ‘crime’ that was committed on January 6, 2021, the clownish behavior of the Trump legions would make for a great cinematic comedy.

What we have now is the People v. Donald Trump. This is now clearly a matter of decent Americans versus Donald Trump, with no gray area. Either you are on the side of decency and constitutional rule, or you stand in opposition to the principles this nation claims are absolute. There is no equivalency here between those who support Donald Trump and Americans who, every day, attempt to exercise their citizenship rights in accordance with the law and in respect of their fellow citizens and government institutions. We cannot allow what Trump has wrought to be normalized. It must be stopped. It must be eradicated. Those who are responsible must be imprisoned. There is no other means by which to save this nation.

Donald Trump is a dangerous man, who as Congresswoman Liz Cheney suggested, should never be allowed to hold a public office again. He is a megalomaniac with an aversion to the truth and no regard for the Constitution or adherence to the rule of law. On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump’s only intent was to subvert the will of the American public and insert himself as permanent President (Czar) of the United States. Donald Trump sought absolute power. He came dangerously close to succeeding because he was being encouraged by a conspiratorial minded cabal of bottom feeders whose greed and thirst for power by approximation to Trump drove their sinister plot. He left behind the residue of an angry mob brainwashed into believing their democracy had been stolen when what Trump has attempted to do is destroy this Republic.