On Wednesday January 6, a line was drawn in the sand. Before that date, critics had unfairly criticized Trump supporters for being violent, resentment-fueled lunatics for four years, but they could not point out any significant evidence of that.
Yes, the march to Charlottesville in 2017 was deadly and shocking, but the protesters involved in that event were white supremacists who objected to the removal of Confederate statues. They weren’t there to support President Trump.
Then, on Jan. 6, the critics were right when thousands of Trump fans – exasperated by the president at a rally – surrounded and stormed the Capitol as Congress tried to certify the election.
The riot that followed embarrassed our country. The scenes were chaotic and gruesome, with protesters smashing windows and smashing doors, waving Confederate flags through convention hallways, and using leadership offices as selfie platforms. When it was all over, dozens of officers were injured and five were killed.
The president did nothing to stop the massacre except by inaccurately saying in a Twitter video that the election had been stolen and that his people should go home.
Trump and the crowd have given his critics the proof they always wanted. From this point on, the rioters will forever be synonymous with Trumpism. His populist platform, which had given voice and hope to marginalized workers across the country, will now be discredited.
Jamie Roe, a Trump voter from Sterling Heights, Michigan, said on Wednesday that any remaining goodwill towards the president has evaporated.
“ So any chance he had to flee again, ” Roe said, of speculation Trump could be running for president in 2024. His brand has been destroyed. Ruined. He took everything he had achieved and threw it all away. He had the opportunity to use his last weeks in office to stimulate the spread of the vaccine and give people the opportunity to miss out on what he had achieved. Instead, he used it as a month-long tantrum.
“What he did was betrayal.”
I have covered Trump’s conservative populist coalition for more than five years, since he rode down the golden escalator in Trump Tower in August 2015 and announced his candidacy.
As the press that day focused on his unorthodox entrance and harsh words about illegal immigrants, people outside of elite circles heard a very different message about restoring the dignity of work and bringing their communities back from desperation.
While Trump continued to make rude comments about minorities, Gold Star families, a disabled reporter and Megyn Kelly, his appeal grew among working-class Democrats, independents, evangelical voters and reluctant suburban Republicans. “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot someone and I wouldn’t lose any voters,” Trump said in 2016, before beating Hillary Clinton in an upset that shocked the media, but not his supporters. Even after the siege of Capitol Hill, some voters still say they support him: A YouGov poll found that 45 percent of Republicans actively support the mob’s actions, while 43 percent are against. And while a handful of Trump’s fans told me they’re still behind him because they don’t have anyone else to fight for them in DC, none of them will make it onto the record.
The majority of Trump supporters I’ve met and interviewed over the years feel like Mike Martin from Erie County. If he dies, he probably won’t even have a president’s funeral. Will we even have a Trump presidential library? Probably not, ”said Martin, who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020.
Martin said none of his friends who voted for Trump now support him – something he never thought would happen.
All these years, reporters would want to write the story of what Trump would do to lose their voice … well, they finally have their story, he said. “And he’s no one to blame but himself.”
While the actions of a few should never affect the good intentions of many, that is exactly what will happen now.
“The vast majority of people were there just to hear the president speak,” said Mike Mikus, a Democratic strategist from western Pennsylvania. “The president just went there and turned them on.”
Trump “has been heating this up for weeks and anyone with brains could have seen this coming,” Mikus added. “If you play with people’s emotions for a long time, especially when they are vulnerable, then you play with fire.”
For Roe, a Republican strategist, this moment is personal: “I have had tears down my cheeks. It’s heartbreaking as an American. I voted for this man. I voted for him in the primary election in 2016. I voted for him twice in the general election.
“If you vote for him there will be people who will do this to you.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s four years of good policy – Middle East peace accords, tough trade with China, tax cuts, conservative Supreme Court appointments – will now be tainted forever.
Roe has one word for what Trump did with his legacy and the reasonable, law-abiding Americans who believed in him: “Unscrupulous. Yes, it is unscrupulous. ”
Salena Zito is the co-author of “The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics” (Crown Forum), which is out now.