One has to hand it to Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for his disturbingly efficient mounting and riding of the two tigers of political expediency and moral hypocrisy and not be eaten up by either. Not yet at any rate. History will be more bruising of his reputation for his vote not to convict former President Donald Trump than duped by the skullduggery of his diametrically opposite speech after that absolution.
Here is a seasoned politician who said this in his speech about President Trump’s gleefully malevolent and self-servingly destructive conduct on January 6 and weeks preceding it: "There is no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.”
He also said, "This was an intensifying crescendo of conspiracy theories orchestrated by an outgoing president who seemed determined to either overturn the voters' decision or else torch our institutions on the way out.”
If a historian 50 or 100 years from now was lazy enough just to play the video of the speech, they would happily conclude that the man who made it must have cast his judgment on the impeachment commensurate with the moral and practical outrage that he felt. That would be a staggering mistake. How does a man who has “no question, none” that the presidential conduct was “practically and morally responsible” for provoking a violent and deadly insurrection on the very nerve center of the country’s democracy also manage to absolve him? Perhaps he is banking on the idea that historians 100 years into the future will be as obsessed with consuming mem-laced videos as we are today.
McConnell also said this about the Trump supporters’ belief that insurrection was the only way to right a bogus wrong: “Having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet earth."
That the gall of that speech and speciousness of the vote to absolve can reside in a single human being tells how duplicitous our species is.
What has happened to America under the Trump presidency is not an aberration as some delusionally optimistic political commentators seem to think. It is a thumping reiteration what a defining part of the country is. The idea that the Republican Party can extricate itself from this morass is like saying that the Republican Party had to liberate itself from itself. This is indeed the Republican Party. The so-called moderate, saner, rational and reasonable voices are just hapless bystanders whom history will celebrate but the present will eventually bury.
I can write a 10,000-word piece on this theme that also incorporates former South Carolina Governor and former US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley’s pathetic approach to simultaneously extenuate and excoriate her former boss and friend’s grievous wrongs. But what would be the point of that?
On a separate note, and this is admittedly a very narrow pop cultural reference, Senator McConnell is the Ajay Devgn of US politics as someone standing astride two motorbikes without falling. For those who may not catch on, as an actor Devgn began his career with 'Phool aur Kante where his entry was the much-celebrated standing astride two motorcycles and then doing the split while on them.
