At the end of a day of chaos and bloodshed on January 6, 2021, it was unthinkable that Donald Trump, who had summoned crowds to Washington and told the crowd to “fight like hell,” would ever get close to the president again.
But on Monday, four years after his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, assaulted police officers, and disrupted the certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, Congress reconvened to certify another election.
The democracy that Trump sought to undermine has confirmed his return to power.
The joint session of Congress to count the votes from his November victory brought back chilling memories of terror and fear by someone in the U.S. Congress four years ago.
The two-week preparations for Trump’s inauguration as the 47th president have also marked a stunning moment in the country’s political history, with Trump more powerful and popular than ever before. The majority of voters decided that, despite his terrible behavior four years ago, he was the best choice to lead the country until January 2029.
January 6, 2025, marks the most stunning political comeback in American history, and the leadership of a new administration could prove to be the most intense constitutional stress test of a president-elect to date.
It also underscores the Democratic Party’s failures in convincing voters that Trump represents a mortal threat to the country’s democracy and that they had the answers to Americans’ economic struggles and concerns over immigration.
Americans made a choice in November, and even though he conjured a day of infamy four years ago, they picked Trump.
Whitewashing history
Trump’s confirmation of a congressional victory — which his losing opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, presided over — rewarded the extraordinary efforts of the former president, his supporters, and the conservative media machine to whitewash what happened on one of the darkest days in American history. .
Trump, with a storm of disinformation, has convinced millions of Americans of his lies about the 2020 election being stolen. Republicans have rebranded the January 6 riots as “tourists,” demonizing the victims and heroes despite hundreds of convictions by the courts. Trump has promised to pardon those found guilty of the attacks. He launched his 2024 campaign with a recording of the national anthem by the “J6 Choir,” sung by inmates imprisoned for their roles in the riots. And he has renamed January 6, 2021, “Beautiful Day” and “Valentine’s Day.”
This could hardly be more confusing. The truth of January 6 was told in detail by witnesses and law enforcement officials to the House Select Committee, when the House was still under Democratic control. “It was a massacre,” said Caroline Edwards, the Capitol Police officer whose testimony was interspersed with video of her being mobbed by Trump supporters and described the bloodied faces of her colleagues. “I was not trained, and that day it was just hours of fighting,” Edwards said in June 2022.
As the story unfolded, senators and representatives ran for their lives, Trump supporters stormed the Senate floor, and Secret Service agents pushed Vice President Mike Pence to safety as the crowd chanted for him to hang.
But by dismissing his second impeachment on January 6, 2021, reestablishing his dominance over the GOP and winning consecutive elections despite the many impeachments, Trump avoided paying a meaningful political price for his abuse of democracy. As he won a second consecutive term, he rose from political obscurity to one of the most important figures in American history. Along the way, he showed resilience in efforts to bring him to justice for his abuses of power as a political obstructionist. He will return to the White House as a powerful leader, thanks to a Supreme Court ruling stemming from one of his legal cases that grants the president immunity from prosecution for official acts committed while in office.
Most profoundly, Trump will send a message down the ages that a president who refuses to accept the results of a free and fair election and who instigates an attack on the Capitol can get away with it and regain power.
An affirmation of the will of voters
But the process of affirming Trump’s victory is also a reaffirmation of democracy. And Biden and Harris, in their final acts in office, are restoring the tradition of smooth handovers between administrations that Trump has rejected.
Biden said Sunday that this was intentional.
“If you notice, I reached out to make sure the transition was smooth, that we need to get back to a normal transfer of power,” the president told reporters at the White House.
In a Washington Post op-ed published late Sunday, he also warned of the dangers of forgetting what happened four years ago.
“A relentless effort is underway to rewrite — even erase — the history of that day, to tell us that we didn’t see what we all saw with our own eyes. To dismiss concerns about it as some kind of partisan obsession. To explain it away as a protest that just got out of hand,” Biden wrote, without naming Trump.
“And we should commit to remembering January 6, 2021, every year. To remember it as the day our democracy was tested and won. To remember that democracy, even in America – is not guaranteed,” he continued, adding that he had invited his successor to the White House on the morning of January 20 and that he would attend Trump’s inauguration.
Unlike in 2020, the losers – this time, the Democrats – did not lie about voter fraud, fabricate voter rolls or call for crowds to come to Washington to protest claims of fraudulent ballots.
How voters decided on Trump despite the horror of January 6
Trump, with his bitter anti-immigration rhetoric, has succeeded in painting his turbulent presidency as a kind of lost golden age, despite the scenes of violence and lawlessness he has highlighted at the end.
The country has moved to the right in the 2024 election, toward Trump’s populist nationalism, even in many blue-collar counties and cities. Trump won seven swing states and became the first Republican since 2004 to win the popular vote, even though he fell short of a majority of the electoral vote. His claim to a historic mandate is exaggerated, but it is unlikely to thwart his promise to use his power to push through mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, retaliate against his political enemies, and attempt to crack down on the media. Republicans now control both the House and Senate and will have the support of a majority of the Supreme Court.
Trump’s victory has left Democrats scrambling for a new message and wondering how they can reconnect with working Americans. And the party is facing the reality that a majority of voters favor a former president who tried to destroy democracy to keep his candidate in power. Enough voters seem to have decided they’d rather have a strong man who voices their grievances than an alternative who warns that Trump is a threat to democracy.
