Which side are you on?

That is the question facing 50 Republican senators today

Will you be on my side and subscribe to my Newsletter?

We know which side Trump is on.  His own.  It’s the only side he’s ever been on.  Donald Trump’s side.  He doesn’t even recognize another side.  Anyone other than him is an enemy.  The press?  Enemies of the people.  Democrats?  Traitors.  Enemies of the United States.  Republicans who are disloyal to him?  Cowards.  RINOs.  Traitors.  He even told his own vice president he would “go down in history as a pussy” if he failed to use his ceremonial position overseeing the certification of electoral college ballots to overturn the election for Trump.  He did this in a phone call to Pence’s vice presidential residence on the morning of January 6, as Pence was headed out the door to go to the Capitol to do his duty.  Less than six hours later, Pence and his family would be hustled out of the senate chamber by Secret Service agents and hidden in the basement of the Capitol as insurgents in red MAGA hats carrying Trump flags  stormed the senate chamber screaming “Hang Mike Pence!  Hang Mike Pence!”

I sat here today watching the presentation of the House Managers’ case against Trump to the senate, as I watched again the videos from the attack on the Capitol, as well as new videos that haven’t been seen before of senators and members of congress literally running down back corridors in the Capitol for their lives as insurgents beat on the doors of the House and flooded into the senate chamber, and it was difficult to even imagine Donald Trump taking an oath to anything or anyone other than himself.  To the Constitution?  He probably hasn’t even read the thing.  To uphold the laws of the United States?  Oh, you mean the laws he’s been flouting practically since he was in short pants, beginning to “inherit” parts of the family fortune for purposes of reducing his father’s taxes and eventually his own?  Oh, those laws!  Nah, don’t think so.  Following the law, just like serving your country in uniform, is for “suckers” and “losers,” not for Donald Trump.

The question today, according to the House Managers, is which side are the 50 Republican senators on?  It’s an apt question, because we don’t know the answer for most of them.  Six Republican senators showed a few of their cards yesterday when they voted with 50 Democrats to confirm that it is indeed constitutional for the senate to hold the trial of Donald Trump’s impeachment.  But the other 44?  They’re the ones who are having to make up their minds which side they’re on as they watch the videos of Capitol and Metropolitan police in hand-to-hand combat with Trump’s racist violent horde.  Are they on the side of the policemen and women who fought the insurgents and were killed and wounded in the process?  They were told three cops lost their lives and another 140 were injured.  One cop lost parts of three fingers.  Other cops had ribs and arms broken.  Others suffered wounds to their faces, limbs, and torsos. Some  are even now still recovering and many more are in treatment for PTSD.  So which side are you on, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley and Marsha Blackburn and John Neely Kennedy and Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham?  The cops’ side, or Trump’s side?

And which side are you on when it comes to the elemental issue of whether or not we should hold elections and respect the results, no matter which party wins or loses?  Are you on the side of the Constitution, which holds that that is the way things should happen in a democracy?  Or are you on the side of Donald Trump, who has insisted against all evidence to the contrary that he didn’t lose the election on November 3 but should remain president, unelected as he might be?  Will all of you 50 Republican senators accept the result of the 2020 election, that Joe Biden won fair and square and nothing was stolen from anyone?  Or will you take the side of Donald Trump, that the election was stolen from him.

These are the questions that are at issue before the senate today.  Not just whether to find one man, Donald Trump, guilty of provoking an insurrection against the seat of government of this country, but whether the senate is to certify itself as a body which has the purpose not just of  making laws, but the duty to follow them.

Which side are you on, you quivering, cowering, frightened little Republican senators?  The whole world is watching.