“The Weeknight” Co-host Symone D. Sanders says Republicans at Jack Smith’s Thursday testimony revealed their dangerous plans to disrupt future U.S. elections, even as Smith laid out the details of their leader’s last attempted coup.
“… [W]hile Democrats on the committee focused on the past, Republicans looked to change the subject,” said Sanders. “Instead of sincerely grappling with the violence or the attempt to overturn the election, Republicans focused on process. They questioned procedures, attacked the special counsel and debated legal technicalities. … [T]hey did everything they could to make it feel less consequential. That distinction matters.”
Sanders said Republicans’ antics, as Smith presented the facts, were an exercise in the normalization of coup behavior.
“When a violent attack on democracy is treated as just another political disagreement, something dangerous is happening,” said Sanders. “At times, the hearing felt less like an effort to hold people accountable and more like an attempt to wear the public down until it grew tired of attempting to hold people accountable.”
This was not a presentation of the past, said Sanders. What the hearing was really about was the future.
“We can argue about rules and process. But what Democrats tried to do, and what Republicans largely resisted, was to remind the country of a basic truth. Jan. 6 was a violent attempt to overturn an election, encouraged by the man who lost it,” she said. “… When serious crimes are not punished, it sends a message. It tells future actors that they can try again. Accountability is not about payback. It is about preventing the next attempt. Right now, the message of accountability has been lost.”
She further stated that by focusing on side arguments instead of the crime itself, and by treating election interference as a matter of opinion rather than fact and downplaying real concerns about future elections, as Republicans did during Smith’s presentation, “we risk normalizing behavior that should never be normal in a healthy democracy.”
And even now, Sanders says Trump is seeding the ground for future coup attempts, claiming the 2020 election was stolen.
“The goal is no longer to prove anything. It is to confuse people enough that they stop knowing what to believe,” Sanders said.
Read the full MS NOW report at this link.
