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Friend,

We now know that the smash and grab operation against Nicolas Maduro was about the oil, a word Donald Trump used more than twenty times in his freewheeling press conference. His more sober-minded acolytes are doing their best to remind us that it was also about arresting an indicted drug trafficker who happened to be the illegitimate leader of Venezuela. Illegitimate indeed.

The timing is suffocatingly ironic. Five years ago today, Donald Trump climaxed his madcap but lethal effort to become America’s first illegitimate leader with a shockingly violent attack on the Capitol. The frivolous lawsuits, the calls to states to “find votes”, the Giuliani clown car, and the hope for the corruption of the Vice President all failed. Only violence was left. “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore”, Trump said. The insurrectionists listened to this smallest of men and handed over whatever meager honor and integrity they might have had.

I was there that day and saw the violence. I watched the desecration of America’s most sacred political temple. I saw the fear in the eyes of the overwhelmed Capitol Police, several of whom would lose their lives to the mob.

Atrocities lose their gravitational pull only when there is honest reckoning. The perpetrators and their enablers accept responsibility, learn, and commit to amends, restitution, and fundamental change. January 6 remains a bleeding wound because the opposite has happened.

Republican leaders in Congress and elsewhere discovered outrage that day, for about 48 hours. Then it was back to reflexive and unquestioning service to Donald J. Trump. I’ve watched for five years as MAGA has tried to whitewash the most serious attack on our government since the Civil War or spun conspiracies that fault the FBI Antifa, or BLM. The Republican Speaker has for years flouted a law that requires the placement in the Capitol of a brass plaque (already made) honoring the police forces who saved our lives there. And of course, Donald Trump has celebrated and pardoned every one of the attackers.

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I lost a lot of innocence that day. It turns out that many so-called “leaders” will sell their principles and integrity for power. Many of us believe that rules are for the other guy. Far too many believe that violence is sometimes necessary to get what you want, like Venezuelan oil or an illegitimate presidency.

I thought we Americans were better than that. Not today.

— Jim

Paid for by Himes for Congress

Himes for Congress
857 Post Road
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Fairfield, CT 06824
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