“New Yorker” staff writer Susan Glasser argues that President Donald Trump’s second term is rooted in January 6 and that Republicans have decided “to go along with the falsehood that he was not defeated in 2020.” <\/p>\n
KATY TUR, MS NOW HOST: It’s another missed opportunity to try to move in a new direction or a more empowered direction. This is going to get hung around Republicans next by Democrats come November, and some of them could lose their seats over it. I mean, that’s not, you know, a crazy thing to predict. It reminds me, Susan, it’s not the perfect parallel, but it does remind me of what happened in the Senate trial after January 6th, and the senators who chose not to convict him. I think a lot of them maybe in the moment thought that maybe his political future was over anyways, and they didn’t need to. You heard Mitch McConnell kind of justify it that way and say, this is up to a criminal court. But I wonder how many of them looking back on that moment wish they had taken that opportunity to get rid of Trump once and for all. SUSAN GLASSER, THE NEW YORKER: Well, Katie, that’s right. That is the signature moment. And by the way, this conversation we’re having is about the pardon January 6th offenders. I mean, to me, this is the January 6th presidency and the decisions that were made by Trump, by his followers, by Republicans in the Senate in the days and few weeks following January 6th. You know, they’re shaping our political reality still today. And I think that, you know, that’s the underpinning of so much of the extreme kind of radical nature of what Trump is doing in the second term. It’s because he got an entire one of our two political parties to go along with the falsehood that he was not defeated in 2020. That’s now a condition for employment in the senior levels of the executive branch of government in this country. It is now a litmus test that they’re imposing on nominees to be federal judges or to have other top-level positions. Again, it’s an untruth. So the administration’s foundational moment here is January 6th, and you have to lie about what happened then and what happened in the 2020 election. Just one minor point on this immigration reconciliation bill that’s passed in the last 24 hours. Not only did Republicans sort of flip-flop when it mattered on the $ 1.8 billion fund, but it’s a classic Trump move because no one’s even talking about the thing that they’ve left stand without squawking about at all, which is the president of the United States suing his own government, coming to a settlement with his own government that’s controlled by him that essentially gives himself and his family immunity from having to pay taxes or any consequences for not paying taxes in perpetuity. No one’s even talking about that part of it. There was no legislation to undo that part of the settlement, a scandal in its own right, in any presidency of our lifetime, and by the way, a disqualifying scandal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n