THE U.S. Congress has certified Democratic Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as the next president and vice president of the United States. This was made only possible because the Republican President of the Senate (Vice President of the United States, Mike Pence) who was the presiding officer of the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021, elected not exercise his powers to reject the contested electors’ votes from the contested states of Alabama, Georgia, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, which really was well within his discretion to elect. So, that is that.
Everyone denounces the thugs who stormed the U.S. Capitol at Washington, D.C., they should be made to pay for their wrongful acts. Donald J. Trump was against the thugs’ conduct. Meanwhile, House of Representatives Democratic Speaker Nancy Policy and soon to be Senate Democratic majority leader Chuck Schumer demanded that the 25th Amendment to the U.S Constitution be invoked by Pence and executive department heads to oust the sitting president of the United States. Vice President Pence, who will take over and discharge the duties of the president in case President Trump is incapacitated, refused to participate in that process, and even Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (who stands next in line after the Vice President) gave notice to everyone that that is not going to happen.
Thomas Jefferson, the writer of the Declaration of Independence and the third president of the United States, was said to have said that a “little revolution” here and there would be quite healthy for the country. Now, when he said “little revolution” I believe he meant men in arms far greater than the thugs that overran the Capitol police on January 6, 2021. What Jefferson meant, I believe, was that people in power sometimes needed to be reminded that the real revolutionaries are the common men that mean to keep in line people in power, and the conduct of the thugs who overran the Capitol should not be considered an act of a “revolution,” “subversion” or an “insurrection,” but merely vandalism…the true Trump-supporter crowd fated away after realizing that what happened was just not right.
Invocation of the 25th Amendment to the U.S Constitution is a serious exercise and a usurpation of the powers of the president of the United States, and it should not be taken lightly. When President Ronald Reagan was shot by a lunatic named John Hinckley, he was taken to an emergency room and was incapacitated for some time. Then Vice President George H.W. Bush was urged by Reagan’s cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment, which he flatly refused. His reason was that absent a national emergency, Ronald Reagan was the people’s president and him as Vice President was not going to take that away from him — and this, was to be the case no matter what the executive departments’ urges were.
George Washington, so many, many times during the revolutionary war, was urged by his lieutenants to declare himself a dictator so that he could mobilize material, food, supplies and men to win the revolution, and even after the revolutionary war was won he still refused to do so. He always declined telling them that he could not do that against the representatives of the people’s wishes — he was truly the American Cincinnatus. Then it was not written in the U.S. Constitution, but Washington, our first president, set the precedence of just two four-year terms of presidency so that power could be rotated amongst competing contenders for the office. This precedence was faithfully adhered to by his successors that when President William McKinley was killed by an anarchist and succeeded by Vice President Theodore Roosevelt as president, that when it became time for his urged reelection by his supporters, he refused saying that he was sticking to the precedence set by Washington. This was followed until came four-term president Franklyn D. Roosevelt, when finally thereafter his death it is now enshrined in the U.S. Constitution as the Twenty-Second Amendment.
Vice President Mike Pence exercised his discretion and did not attempt to usurp the presidency of the United States of America, even if his decision in the January 6, 2021 joint session of Congress went against him and the president of the United States.
On another front, the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, not being able to “dethrone” Trump, is contemplating another impeachment of the president. Crazy Nancy, as Trump referred her, wants to impeach Trump again in this 10-day short period of time that Trump remains in office. Nancy Pelosi is so unhinged, maybe because when the thugs stormed the Capitol and her office, where (I believe) a flash drive or a laptop computer, was taken from there (possibly containing information similar to the Hunter Biden’s (as president-elect Joe Biden’s assertions that it was a Russian disinformation scheme) is frantically attempting to impeach Trump so that he can never again run for president of the United States and that a possibility of a Trump, or a Trumper, return haunts her and/or maybe that the taken flash driver might reveal something embarrassing or implicating her criminally. Nancy Pelosi is so scared that if Donald Trump says he has a way to cure cancer that she will initiate a case for impeachment because Trump is a liar — this reminds me of President Ronald Reagan’s hypothetical posture: “If I walked on water my enemies would say that I could not swim, missing the phenomenon and the significance of the event!” Whatever was stolen or taken from Pelosi’s office must be revealed to the world for everyone to know the schemes of the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
This last presidential election Trump got everyone all fired up, Republicans and Democrats alike. If there was an election fraud (YouTube and other online high tech media platforms have banned the word “fraud” and now there it is the banned “F” word for it, or “Feerr…” or “Foooob,” really just silly considering everything. Trump started a movement with the support of neglected grassroots voters that both Republican and Democratic establishments have long ignored, or the swamp as he referred it. Next midterm elections might just show the net result of his movement.
In the election of 1826, Andrew Jackson (yes, the guy on the twenty dollar bill) lost over John Quincy Adams as a result of a bargain made between him (Adams) and Henry Clay who threw his support for Adams in the House of Representatives — Jackson referred to this as the “Corrupt Bargain.” He was elected president in 1828 and was mobbed by the people who climbed through the White House windows to meet THEIR president, the Tennessean Jackson was nearly crushed by well wishing supporters. Jackson’s 1828 election came to be known in the U.S. history as the “Jacksonian Era” — no other president ever got this distinction. The Jacksonian Era ended presidents and anyone officially connected with the Revolutionary War after that, and it ushered in the so-called Jacksonian Democracy whose voices were echoing from the frontier lands west of the Appalachian Mountains…it also ended of the so-called Virginia Dynasty of presidents.
During the last election, Joe Biden (Sean Hannity of the Fox News referred to him as “Bunker Joe”), who remained in his basement almost for the most part early on of the election campaign, when he openly started campaigning you could see more cars and media people at the scene, whereas Trump’s rallies were overflowing with people (the hundreds of thousands of people at his January 6, 2021, D.C. rally is a testament to this), some of them camped for days to be in the arena where Trump was speaking, can expect that at Biden’s inauguration (Trump saying that he will not be there) that there will more guards and empty seats, and crows cawing, attending his inauguration. His presidency will not amount to anything like the Trump presidency. Biden will be the last of the swamp presidents, whether Trump makes a comeback or not. And, like the already dead great El Cid who was saddled up on his horse by his lieutenants “rallying” his men to fight on and won the battle, we might have a “Trumpian Era” because of Trump being saddled up!
P.S.: The most that Biden can deliver is the $2,000 stimulus check he promised that I look forward to.
The writer is a resident of Kagman, Saipan.
