Editor’s Note: Doug Jones, a CNN political commentator, is a former Democratic US senator from Alabama. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.
In today’s partisan political world, we often hear folks on both sides of the aisle say, “Elections have consequences,” to explain policy shifts they support. Coming from Alabama, where we all too often have witnessed political figures using “dog whistle” style rhetoric to inflame passions and in many cases incite violence, I also remind people that words have consequences as well. And when those consequences include a violent insurrection in our nation’s Capitol like the one on January 6, accountability is an absolute necessity, in order to protect our democracy.
In my view, the House impeachment managers presented a concise and compelling case that former President Donald Trump incited the insurrection of January 6.
At the outset, it is important to be clear that two “legal” issues have been dispensed with and should not be part of any senator’s deliberations.
First, regardless of one’s personal opinion about the Senate’s jurisdiction to hear the impeachment case, this issue was decided by a bipartisan vote of the Senate on Tuesday evening: It is constitutional to try a former president following the presentation of the articles of impeachment. The Tuesday vote is binding in this case and leaves only the issue of guilt or innocence to be determined.
Second, no serious constitutional scholar argues that the First Amendment protects speech that incites violence. The only question for the senators is a factual one: Did the then-President’s conduct incite the insurrection?
In any trial, the accusing party must connect the dots between the words and actions of the defendant to the harm that occurred. Over the last two days, the House managers did just that.
The managers presented evidence of the former President’s support for the “fine people” whose conduct resulted in the tragedy in Charlottesville and subsequent occasions when he condoned violent behavior. They also showed that the seeds of this insurrection were planted last spring when Trump’s supporters twice stormed the Michigan State Capitol to protest the state’s stay-at-home order – designed to help combat Covid-19 pandemic – and plotted to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Then-President Trump never condemned the actions of those who showed up at the state’s Capitol, but rather praised the group, telling Whitmer that they were “very good people” and she should negotiate a deal. In response to the foiled kidnapping plot, Trump made light of the situation. The President was clearly taking up the cause of those threatening Whitmer and the state Capitol, using precisely the kind of dog whistle-style rhetoric seen in Alabama decades earlier. And it is clear that the insurrectionists were listening, prompting House impeachment managers to refer to the Michigan episode as a “dress rehearsal” for what transpired on January 6.
As the election drew nearer, Trump knew his reelection was in trouble. But instead of retooling his campaign, he began to fertilize the seeds of insurrection with baseless allegations that the election would be stolen. Time and time again he set the stage for an election loss, claiming that it could only be the result of fraud. And his supporters grew more and more angry.
After the election loss became a reality in November, Trump ratcheted up the rhetoric of the false narrative that he had won the election by a landslide but that it had been stolen – not only from him but from his supporters. And his supporters grew even angrier.
When all his efforts to overturn the election results failed, Trump knew that his only hope of the clinging to the presidency was to stop Congress from counting and certifying the Electoral College votes on January 6. That was the moment when, in a string of tweets, he summoned his supporters to Washington, DC, on the day of the vote count, promising it would be “wild.” And his supporters came – by the thousands.
The then-President knew that the crowd he had summoned was prone to violence. He even retweeted some of their posts and amplified their violent and divisive rhetoric.
This was a crowd ready to start a revolution in Trump’s name, and he knew it. And just like Southern politicians of the past who never explicitly told the White supremacists to bomb a church or murder a civil rights leader, Trump never told that crowd to commit a specific act of violence. He told them to go to the Capitol and fight to take their country back. Given all that he knew and all that had been said in advance, how in the world did he expect them to do that, to stop the counting of the electoral votes, without violence? If he did not expect violence, why did he not “be there with” them, as he promised?
In the hours following his speech, the horror of the insurrection played out live on TV. But there was no condemnation by the Commander in Chief. There was no meaningful effort from the White House to get the insurrectionists to stop the madness.
Republican members of Congress were pleading with the President to call the rioters off. But instead, he tweeted a video of the incendiary speech he had made earlier. At one point he went so far as to criticize then-Vice President Mike Pence at the same time insurrectionists carrying Trump flags were yelling, “Hang Mike Pence!” as they searched for him in the US Capitol.
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The House managers connected all of these dots to the video of Trump finally telling insurrectionists to leave but also that they were “special,” that he loved them and that they should “remember this day forever.” Trump’s 6:01 p.m. tweet made the picture, and his intent that day, crystal clear, “These are the things and events that happen …”
I never dreamed I would see what happened in this country on January 6. I never dreamed that I would see a president stoke the flames of hate to cause a siege of the US Capitol with Congress in session. If Trump’s actions are not impeachable, then nothing is, and we may as well strike that provision from the Constitution.