If the (erroneous) Office of Legal Counsel memo saying president's can't be indicted for crimes while in office had not been written, hundreds of thousands of Americans would still be alive today.
If Rod Rosenstein had not told Mueller to stay out of investigating Trump's finances and to narrowly define his investigation, the coup attempt would never have taken place.
If Mueller had not gone along with Rosenstein and had followed all of the investigations into Trump's ties to the Russians and his finances, we would not have seen months of attempts to attack and weaken our democracy.
If Mnuchin had not blocked the attempts to release Trump's tax returns and had followed his constitutional responsibilities and the law, millions would not be out of work due to COVID.
If McConnell had fulfilled his Constitutional obligations and had conducted a Senate trial in which evidence was presented and the GOP had not reflexively defended Trump despite all his abuses, millions of US children might not be going hungry now.
If Murdoch & Fox & Breitbart & OANN & an army of commentators had not let partisanship and self-interest supplant their decency and ethical obligations to the truth, the mobs storming the Capitol would have known Trump, Hawley, Cruz & the others were lying about the elections.
If Trump had been rejected by the GOP as a candidate when it was revealed--as it repeatedly was--that he was a lifelong sex abuser, fraudster, liar, racist and crook, children would never have been thrown in cages, separated from their families.
If Trump appointees and supporters in the government had honored their oaths to the Constitution ahead of their loyalty to one man, years of attacks on the rule of law in America would not have taken place.
The coup attempt was not Trump's first crime. It did not reveal anything we did not know about the man. It did not provide our first insight into the fact that the GOP has been attacking democracy in America for years.
This past week was not the first time we realized that what McConnell and McCarthy and the Cruzs, the Hawleys, the Gohmerts, the Jordans, the Pompeos, the Barrs, their donors, their spin doctors, and their supporters were up to.
Had our eyes been open...had our system worked as it should...perhaps 500,000 lives would have been saved, millions would be employed, our cities would not be struggling, our standing in the world would not be weaker than its ever been, our democracy would not be under siege.
We could have stopped Trump as a candidate. Our system should have stopped Trump for countless crimes over the past four years. We could have thrown his enablers out of their jobs in 2016. We could have used the law to bring down his defenders. We had the tools.
We had the knowledge. The truth was out there for all to see. But greed and political self-interest and lack of moral courage and corruption ate away at the guardrails, the checks and balances and at the other mechanisms of conscience within our government.
The result was a massive failure that must be studied so we can ensure it never happens again. Trump was a failure as a president because he is a failure as a man. He was a demagogue and a fraud and a traitor. But blaming it all on him is not enough to protect us in the future.
We must identify & acknowledge the failures in ourselves as an electorate, in our institutions, in our leaders, in the media, in the GOP, in those who should have stood up sooner & more forcefully in opposition, in our justice system & within our society that made Trump possible.
Because the COVID catastrophe, the economic disaster that followed, the human rights abuses at our borders, the damage done to our environment, the weakening of our alliances, the damage done to our democracy, was all avoidable.
It was very clear that if Trump was not stopped disaster would inevitably follow. This week's events were shocking. But none were a surprise. To avoid such shocks in the future will require much introspection but that alone is not enough.
It will also require accountability. Crimes must be investigated, prosecuted and punished. Failures of leadership must result in new leaders being put in place. Broken guardrails and failed checks and balances must be examined and reformed.
Where our democracy is broken it must be repaired. This is not the work of one party or one administration. Trump is the culmination of years and decades of decay and malfeasance and concerted efforts to pervert our system.
With luck, the shock of this week will put a stake through the political viability not only of Trump but Trumpism. But that is not enough. The desecration of the Capitol should stand as a reminder of all the violations and abuses that have come before that made it possible.
And we should recognize it signals a massive job ahead for each and every one of us as citizens.

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More from @djrothkopf

8 Jan
Just had to turn off CNN. Can't listen to one more pol bloviate about how Trump shouldn't be impeached because it will make healing harder. Have they not been paying attention? We got here because there have been no consequences for Trump's abuses...or those of predecessors.
Without consequences for Trump and those who supported this sedition and those who enabled his corruption and those who collaborated with a foreign enemy and those who obstructed justice THERE WILL BE NO HEALING.
The impunity of the empowered is what has fueled our current crisis & enabled them to inflame political divisions. Lincoln was wrong to let Confederate traitors off the hook. Ford was wrong to let Nixon off the hook. GHWBush was wrong to let the Iran-Contra crowd off the hook.
Read 5 tweets
31 Dec 20
140 elected members of Congress who have publicly stated they will seek to overturn the results of an election judged free and fair by every single court or legal authority that has examined it. It is a devastating and profoundly dangerous development.
The GOP is now actively opposed to democracy, our Constitution and our values. Under Donald Trump it has become America's first fascist party. Overstatement. Consider the dictionary definition from Meriam-Webster:
"A political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation & often race above the individual & that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic & social regimentation, & forcible suppression of opposition."
Read 5 tweets
27 Dec 20
@ianbremmer With respect, it's not that simple. For decades the right have been engineering institutional changes (gerrymandering, packing courts, working to take over legislatures, increasing the corporate money flows through Citizens United etc., suppressing votes, etc.)...
@ianbremmer They have worked hard to enable a minority to gain influence (abetted by flaws in our Constitution). Since the elimination of the fairness doctrine and pulling strings to help Murdoch gain his US licenses during Reagan, they have created an alternative reality media bubble.
@ianbremmer And they have actively promoted policies that increased the power and wealth of their sponsors among the few and promoted division below. Have the needs of regular Americans been ignored? Of course. Look at our social safety nets compared to every other developed country.
Read 5 tweets
27 Dec 20
Take a moment and try in your mind and in your heart to calculate the enormity of the human suffering created by the failure of our government to rise to the challenge of this COVID crisis, a failure fed by their greed, self-interest and willful ignorance.
Try to imagine the hundreds of thousands dead, the millions among their immediate families and friends, the tens of millions who have lost their jobs or suffered economically, gone hungry, gone to bed wracked with anxiety about what tomorrow will bring.
Imagine if it was you and your family. Perhaps it has been. Then imagine another and another. When does your mind start to boggle. After how many deaths, how much loss, how much fear, how much apprehension and uncertainty?
Read 7 tweets
24 Dec 20
So, we have a little holiday treat from @DeepStateRadio. Some of the liveliest conversations about politics & the world take place in the kitchen. So we thought we would try an experiment-listening to 2 very smart people talk about our crazy times while actually baking together.
The recipe is simple: Take one brilliant comedian known for letting the world know what she thinks, one former food writer for The NY Times & Newsweek who is also a baker and journalism professor, and let them dissect everything from Trump to the Kardashians.
Oh, and let them bake lemon bars despite one of the participants being way too famous to actually know much about baking. The result is the pilot for #TheSecretLifeofCookies featuring the wonderful @kathygriffin & my also great sister @MarissaRothkopf. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/too…
Read 4 tweets
19 Dec 20
As others have observed, the ideology of the GOP has become about one thing only: maintaining power. For them that single goal transcends values, historical traditions, decency, ethics & the law. So the important question to ask is "why?"
Power has always been attractive & offered rich benefits to the powerful. But in our system, power is held not by parties or individuals but by the people In a 2-party system the idea was that to reflect the will of the people power might shift back & forth between parties.
But it is clear that the GOP feels they no longer can hold onto power within that system. The electorate is changing. The times are changing. Their ideologies have no place in America's future. So they are turning to illegal means to hold onto power...
Read 4 tweets

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