Class based reforms must be combined with a fierce crackdown on the violators of the law on January 6th, says Gerald Horne. He provides deep historical context in this discussion with Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news podcast.

Transcript

Paul Jay

I wrote a piece titled The Real Coup on January 6th, saying that Mitch McConnell set a trap for Trump, knowing that Trump would incite his adoring crowd to storm the Capitol building.

Hi, I'm Paul Jay. Welcome to theAnalysis.news podcast. Please don't forget the donate button at the top of the web page.

The sergeant at arms who controls the Capitol Police, who was nominated by the majority leader, that means McConnell and serves the Senate. And as the majority leader who speaks for the Senate with weeks to prepare, did not follow the most basic security protocol and set up a security perimeter around the building.

This has to be a decision to not follow procedure, not just incompetence. The internet was full of plans to storm the building amongst the far-right groups, Steve Bannon had said the war starts on November 3rd.

How do you not call in overwhelming policing to make sure the building is protected? If it wasn't McConnell directly, then the sergeant at Arms made a deliberate decision not to follow protocol, but McConnell had to be informed of it.

It was far too a political decision to be left up just to the what's called the executive of the Senate, who's in charge of many, many things. It's actually quite a powerful position. He doesn't just guard some doors.

Of course, I don't have any hard evidence of such a conspiracy, but surely there's at the very least enough evidence that a full inquiry must be held and not just by the Senate itself. Why would McConnell do this? Because Trump was clearly going mad.

He contributed to the GOP losing two seats in Georgia. He was threatening not to leave office. There are even reports that he was trying to get the military to intervene on his behalf.

The elites didn't want this chaos. They didn't want this maniac destroying their investors' paradise, as Mark Blyth calls it. And it took only a few hours for the American Manufacturers Association to call for Trump to be removed by the 25th Amendment.

Now, McConnell, Pence, and Graham, after years of enabling and encouraging Trump, can go down as the man who stood up to him. Trump had outlived its usefulness, and this became a way to bury him. By no means is this the end of the racist and fascist movement Trump helped galvanize. But it wasn't something new that Trump did. He picked up from where Ronald Reagan left off. And the Republican leadership will find a new standard-bearer soon enough.

I've received some mail saying, how could I accuse the Republicans of deliberately allowing the fascists to attack the hallowed grounds of the Congress? Excuse me? This is the hallowed grounds of mostly about lobbyists. If you've ever been there, all you see is Senators and House members, with a few exceptions, meeting with lobbyists.

This is a place that's been bought and sold. Remember, these are also the same Republican leaders that are the ones that deliberately created the fabrication about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that led to a war that killed over a million people, they live on lies and deception, and this wasn't much of a stretch.