Opus 412a: Bunny Bonus  (January 10, 2021). With the Trumpet and his minions seeking to overthrow the government, editorial cartoonists had a field day, ridiculing the bloviating would-be monarch. With this Bunny Bonus, we offer a short gallery, sampling the editoonery outrage, as well as a screaming text expressing Rancid Raves outrage, plus an explanation of the 25^th Amendment. It begins here—:

This time we convinced ourselves—this time, he’s gone too far. After five years (including a year of campaigning that brimmed with dubious behavior) of pushing the envelope of what is barely permissible over the line into what is indecent, immoral, ill-advised and ugly, the Trumpet has gone too far. In his colossal ignorance and narcissistic arrogance, he doubtless thought he could get away with it again—that he could behave badly again, that he could make figurative juvenile delinquency into a literal grown-up assault on the citadel of democracy, the Capitol of the United States of America, and we would watch, again, clutching our pearls and tut-tutting until he’d leave that and go on to commit the next indecency, when we’d clutch and tut all over again.

            But not this time. This time, he’s gone too far for even many of his fevered cultists and closest supporters.

            This time, January 6, 2021, he tried to start an insurrection, thinking, no doubt, that it was just another Trump stunt.

            But it wasn’t. It was an authentic mobs in the street yelling riot.

            And so January 6, 2021 is a date that now joins December 7, 1941 in infamy. Rioters incited by a President of the United States stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6 in what can only be interpreted as an attempt to overturn the results of the November election, and thereby to overthrow the government. Treason, no less.

            January 6 might have been remembered for an intraparty battle over whether to certify Joe Biden’s election win or who to blame for the Georgia senatorial defeats. But instead, Politico reported, “it will go down as the day that broke the Republican Party as we know it and began the GOP’s ultimate reckoning with Trumpism.

            “It literally took a riot of Trump supporters in the Capitol for many Republicans to finally confront the defeated President,” Politico continued, “— a moment of bedlam that put those GOP lawmakers’ own lives at risk. After his supporters stormed into the Capitol, vandalized the building and fought with police officers, several typically strong allies turned on Trump.”

            The Politico report, by Burgess Everett, Marianne Levine and Melanie Zanona, continued: “Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, one of the most steadfast supporters of the President, said bluntly that ‘it’s past time for the president to accept the results of the election, quit misleading the American people, and repudiate mob violence.’

            “And House GOP Conference Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who has carefully crafted her criticism of Trump over the past year, did not mince words: ‘There is no question that the President formed the mob, the President incited the mob, the President addressed the mob. He lit the flame,’ Cheney said on Fox News, speaking from a secure location after being evacuated.

            “Wednesday’s violent episode was the culmination of two months of Trump stoking the flames by making false allegations of widespread voter fraud and refusing to concede the election. While most Senate Republicans did not adopt Trump’s rhetoric, the majority of them waited until the December 14 Electoral College vote to acknowledge Biden as the President-elect, following a string of Trump losses in court.

            “And even for weeks afterward, most Republicans declined to condemn Trump’s language or call for a peaceful transfer of power. On Wednesday, that finally changed, and even those who had recognized Biden took their criticism of Trump to a new level. ...

            “The GOP Trump backers who sought to block Biden’s certification will ‘forever be seen as being complicit in an unprecedented attack against our democracy,’ said Senator Mitt Romney, Utah Republican. ‘They will be remembered for their role in this shameful episode in American history.’...

            “And the criticism wasn’t just coming from the usual corners of the GOP. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), who doesn’t usually make waves on Capitol Hill, said Trump has been ‘lying’ to his supporters and ‘owns responsibility’ for today's ‘coup attempt.’ ...

            “Freshman Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who just recaptured a GOP seat in a hard-won race, directly pleaded with Trump: “Mr. President, enough is enough. This is not a protest, this is anarchy. Get off Twitter and work to restore peace to the Capitol.’

            “Even Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a close Trump ally who even inquired about election procedures in Georgia on Trump’s behalf, has had it. In a fiery floor speech, the South Carolina senator concluded: ‘All I can say is count me out, enough is enough.

            “‘I, above all others in this body need to say this, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were lawfully elected and will become the President and the Vice President of the United States on January 20,’ he said.”

            Maybe this time Graham is right. Maybe we’ve all had enough of the Trumpet. In the days immediately after the riot of January 6, it certainly looked like it. The talking heads on television news couldn’t stop talking.

            And the nation’s editorial cartoonists had a field day.

THE BASIS, THE FRAUDULENT FOUNDATION, of the Trumpet’s inciting his cultists to insurrection—the thing that gave them something to fight for—was his claim that the election had been stolen from him. And in Georgia, where they’d counted the ballots three times and failed to come up with any rigged voting, if Trump’s minions could find 11, 780 more Trump votes, he’d win the state.

            At the upper left of our first visual aid, Clay Jones gets us off to a start with a tidy tableau in the Oval Office. Here’s the Trumpet, frying a hamburger, eating Colonel Sanders’ fried chicken, and drinking from a cup labeled “coup.” And speaking into the phone, he directs that someone “find me 11,780 votes.” Then the caption tips us to the crime: “Finally, proof of mass election fraud.”

            Behold: it’s Trump who’s committing the fraud!

            Next around the clock, Kevin “Kal” Kalaugher offers a somewhat disgusting image—the Republicon elephant with an ugly growth on its butt—namely, Trump (the Trump Rump?), urging the pachyderm on to the capitol. And when the animal asks for advice about what to do about the growth, the clinic’s diagnosis is simply, “Next time, don’t nurture it for four years.”

            And now that lawless thuggery has emerged wearing the cloak of political protest, the outrage among the Good Guys is that the Capitol Police failed to do their job of guaranteeing the security of the nation’s Capitol. In demanding that the chief of the Capitol Police resign, the Democrant donkey joins the Grandstanding Obstructionist Pachyderm in hoping that we won’t notice that it was through their neglect, their nurturing of the Trumpet, that he acquired power enough to indulge his tantrumps.

            Not that the Capitol Police are blameless. They mustered too few guards in anticipation of the looming threat: but they were not alone in thinking that the evidence of advance planning for the insurrection was simply unbelievable. Most of us thought the same—even when were were witnessing the attack. So the chief of the Capitol Police is merely a handy scapegoat.

            Frederick Deligne’s visual metaphor is that of an amusement park with a new attraction—a riotous parade of Trump’s friends (we recognize them from television footage of the mob storming through the Capitol’s halls) attacking the Capitol. Part of Deligne’s imagery is a sneer at politicians, whose antics are always entertaining; but another part of the slam is on us for seeing political antics as just another form of entertainment instead of taking it seriously.

            Then Jack Ohman gives us a picture of the riot in progress—ugly-looking fat guys in MAGA caps, waving flags that say “Patriots” (we can barely make out the “Pat” on the fold behind the “riots”; canny deployment of drapery).

            In our next display, Joe Heller’s image of the Trumpet and his gang of thugs carrying him along as they deface the Declaration of Independence suggests the nasty, uncouth nature of the mob as well as their disrespect for American democratic institutions. Incidently, in his inspirational harangue that launched the mob’s march down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol, Trump promised he’d be “with you, all the way.” But of course, he wasn’t; he was watching them on tv back at the White House.

            Dave Granlund’s visual metaphor for the besieged Capitol shows the building in the grip of a monstrous serpent labeled “Pro-Trump,” “Anarchy,” “Violence,” “Thugs,” and “Traitor,” which about sums it up. And below that, Michael Ramirez’s picture duplicates the imagery that television news gave us in reporting the assault—invaders like cockroaches, scrambling up the walls—with some misguided adherent saying they have to destroy the country to keep Democrants from destroying it.

            Then at the lower left, Chris Britt shows the GOPachyderms leaping off a cliff (“Sedition Leap”) like so many lemmings, following their leader to certain death (although in fact, he was not at the head of the parade, as we observed a moment ago: he was home watching tv and devouring cheeseburgers; but the parade was his idea).

            Several editoonists deployed the imagery of fire consuming the Capitol building. Bill Bramhall’s metaphor suggests a famous James Cagney film, “White Heat,” in which Cagney plays a deranged crook with an Oedipal complex who robs in order to earn his mother’s favor.

The movie concludes with a celebrated scene. Cagney, whose latest plot has been discovered by police who are now poised to arrest him, is trapped atop a gigantic gas storage tank. As the police fire at him, he fires his pistol into the tank, setting the gas ablaze, and as he is consumed by fire, he yells, “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!”

            Invoking the Cagney film suggests that those who are assaulting the Capitol are as crazy as Cagney was in the film.

            And the Capitol dome standing in for the giant gas tank suggests that the building is full of gaseous presences.

            To record his reaction to the would-be coup, Gary Varvel resorts to a common image—an appropriate personage, weeping with grief. In this case, it’s George Washington who’s shedding the tears over the presumed death of democracy. Jeff Koterba’s eagle, representing American democracy, has suffered only a scratch, which is small enough to be covered up with a band-aid. I think this image is accurate. The political gasbags commenting on the riot have too eagerly portrayed it as signaling the impending demise of democracy. I think they’re going a little too far. Yes, Trump engineered an assault on American democracy, but it was scarcely of a dimension that would destroy the institution. American democracy has had a couple centuries to evolve, and I see it as entirely capable of withstanding the pranking of a few malcontents under the Trumpet’s sway.

            Finally, Dave Granlund offers the last word—the final image—with Uncle Sam, an expression of mild exasperation on his face, cuts the cord that will activate the catapult and fling the straight-jacketed Trumpet flying away.

            Yes, it’s time. And this time, I can’t resist making a comment myself.

FITNOOT: Impeachment, Resignation and the 25^th Amendment

A good bit of hot air is being blown about as to whether the Trumpet should serve out his term—or be booted out of the White House. There are three ways that a sitting Prez can be evicted: 1) he can be impeached by the House of Representatives and then tried in the Senate, and if the Senate finds him guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors, he can be evicted; 2) he can resign (Richard Nixon resigned); 3) he can be ousted by means of the 25^th Amendment.

            First, to clear up a persistent misunderstanding: “impeaching” a Prez does not kick him out. Impeaching simply accuses the Prez (or any elected or public official) of high crimes and misdemeanors or some other malfeasance. The Senate then tries the culprit and if he’s found guilty, that’s when he’s kicked out. A person can be impeached but never found guilty, in which case he (or she) would continue to serve. But he’ll always wear the stigma of having been impeached. The Trumpet was impeached, and he’ll be impeached forever. It’s like being baptized.

            The 25^th Amendment was adopted in 1967, and it was devised chiefly as a way of dealing with a Prez who was unable to perform the duties of his office because he was too ill. The 25^th Amendment formalized a maneuver that some presidents had voluntarily performed previously. Dwight Eisenhower when he went into the hospital after suffering a heart attack designated his Vice Prez, Richard Nixon, to be Prez until such time as Ike re-claimed the throne. Ronald Reagan did the same but under the auspices of the 25^th Amendment, which had been adopted before he was elected in 1980.

            The 25^th Amendment’s mechanism is also applicable to kicking the Prez out involuntarily. It works like this:

            The Vice Prez and a majority of the Cabinet write the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House declaring the Prez unable to “discharge the powers and duties of his office,” whereupon the Vice Prez immediately becomes Acting Prez.

            But if the Prez disagrees, and writes back to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House, saying he is not unable, then he promptly assumes again the powers and duties of the office—UNLESS the Vice Prez and Cabinet re-affirm their belief, in writing, within four days that the Prez can’t do his job. Who is Prez and when in this scenario isn’t clear. Prez or Vice Prez? Doesn’t say. In any event, it’s now up to Congress to make a final decision.

            Congress has forty-eight hours to assemble in order to consider the matter. It then has 21 days to arrive at a decision. And if, within 21 days, two-thirds of Congress agrees that the Prez can’t do his job, then the Vice Prez takes the office. If the Congress can’t agree within 21 days, or disagrees, the Prez continues in office.

            In the case of the Trumpet, the mechanisms of the 25^th Amendment would probably not work to remove him from office. The Trumpet would surely disagree about whether he can do his job, maintaining that he’s perfectly capable of doing so. Then it would be up to Congress. Two-thirds of Congress is not likely to decide what “unfit” for office means in Trump’s case, so he would doubtless escape.

            But that’s moot anyhow. If Trump disagrees about his inability to function, then Congress has 21 days to disagree with him and boot him out. But from the date that Will Live in Infamy, January 6, he had only 14 days left in office before Biden assumes the mantle on January 20—not enough time to get kicked out by Congress.

            So the only way to discipline this miscreant is to impeach him again. If the Democrats are angry enough, that could take only a couple days. And the Trumpet would emerge from the White House at the end of his term, the only Pres of the U.S. to be impeached twice.

            Trump, of course, will make lemonade. He just loves being “the only” anything.

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