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The president of the United States, Donald Trump, is left alone. Or that is what it seems, after being accused of being the main person responsible for inciting protesters to assault the Capitol in Washington DC this Wednesday, where the Senate and the House of Representatives were preparing, in a special session, to declare the Democrat Joe Biden as the next president.
The magnate’s maneuver, which triggered one of the darkest days for American democracy, finally did not work because Congress ended up certifying Biden’s victory, in a session that lasted until dawn.
But in addition Trump has also been running out of allies, because yesterday his vice president Mike Pence turned his back on his move to derail the session of Congress, and today Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also distanced himself by calling them “criminals.” those who stormed the Capitol, unlike Trump who treated them as “great patriots who have been unfairly treated.”
In addition, little by little resignations have begun to occur among his White House advisers, and even in his cabinet, as happened today with the resignation of Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao.
Moreover, this day, President-elect Joe Biden said that the attack on the Capitol was an assault on democracy promoted by the president and called the Trump supporters who entered the building as “domestic terrorists.”
“They weren’t protesters. Don’t you dare call them protesters. They were an unbridled mob. Insurgents. Domestic terrorists,” Biden said in a speech in Wilmington, Delaware.
Trump has 13 days left in the White House, but members of his cabinet and allies of the president have discussed the possibility of invoking the US Constitution to remove him before then.
“It was an instigated insurrectionary effort”
At the time of the analysis, one of those who blamed Trump for inciting his adherents was the director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch (HRW), José Miguel Vivanco, who assured Cooperative radio that the assault was “an insurrection effort directed, conceived, and instigated by Trump.”
According to the lawyer, Trump “is not measured, he is willing to throw away democratic values and institutions with the sole purpose of remaining in power, of trying to perpetuate himself in power.”
In Vivanco’s opinion, this fact helps Trump to become “a legend, a fiction that allows him to continue manipulating that fan base that supports him.”
However, he ruled out that Donald Trump is going to be removed from office, despite the fact that the president “has more than proven not only to be a pathological liar, a patient, a despot, but also a real danger to democratic institutions in the United States, for internal security and also for international security. “
Attempted “self-coup”
Harvard University governance professor Steven Levitsky described what happened as the response to “four years of discrediting and delegitimizing democracy” by the Republican Party and the president.
Levitsky is co-author of the 2018 book How Democracies Die, in which he laid out “the alarming signs that put America’s liberal democracy at risk.”
Also a student of democratic and presidential processes in Latin America, Levitsky described the seizure of the Washington DC Capitol on Wednesday by supporters of Donald Trump as “an attempt at self-coup.”
“It is a variant of what in Latin America we would call self-coup. It is a president mobilizing his followers to stay in power illegally. It will be a failed self-coup, but it is an insurrection from power to try to subvert the results of the election and stay in power illegally. I would call it an attempt at self-coup, “he said in an interview with BBC.
“This self-coup is going to fail. Those who protest at some point will be removed from the Capitol building and at some point Biden’s election will also be certified and Trump will be removed from the presidency. Now, it is not clear how that will happen. But Trump is going. to fail and American democracy is going to survive today’s events, “he added.
“But that doesn’t mean that everything is fine. These are terrifying and damaging events as they are in Latin America. The big difference between this self-coup and the self-coups in Latin America is that Trump was completely unable to get the support of the military. A president who trying to stay in power illegally without the backing of the military has very little chance of being successful, “he added.
“I have been waiting in terror for this day in American democracy for the last four years. Every day for four years. Our democracy is in a severe crisis and this is the culmination of it. But it is not that it comes out of nowhere, our democracy has It has been going into crisis for several years and I think it will continue like this, “he closed.
According to his analysis, “democracy will survive to this day”, but the future for the United States is uncertain and a period driven by crisis.
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