Trump Wanted To Be President for Life

From this piece: Fiona Hill details how Trump Jan. 6 scheme was years in the making: “This was Trump pulling a Putin”

What the evidence will eventually show about Trump’s attempts to stay in power after he clearly lost the 2020 election is yet to be determined.  Yet it appears obvious that the former president believed he could work his way into the position that Putin, Xi, and Hungary’s Orban have fashioned for themselves, i.e., “president for life.”

From the article: (Hill), a foreign policy expert who testified against Trump at his first impeachment trial, said she was alarmed by the former president’s clear preference for authoritarian rule, and she overheard him trash democracy in conversations with other world leaders, reported the New York Times Magazine.

This blatant attack against U.S. democracy either will or will not stand.  There is no middle ground, in which we pretend this didn’t happen, and move back to the pre-Trump days.

There is a story that, on exiting the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Franklin was asked what sort of government the delegates had created. His answer: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

This moment in U.S. history may be the point at which Franklin’s famous quote comes into play.  If we want to preserve our republic, rule of law either matters, or it doesn’t.