In two weeks, Donald J. Trump is to emerge from an arched portal of the US Capitol to as soon as once more take the presidential oath of workplace. Because the Inauguration Day ritual conveying the peaceable switch of energy unfolds, he’ll stand the place the worst of the mayhem of Jan. 6, 2021, occurred, largely in his title.
Straight behind Mr. Trump would be the metal-and-glass doorways the place protesters, infected by his lie that the 2020 election had been stolen from him, stormed the Capitol with golf equipment, chemical irritants and different weapons. To his left, the spot the place roaring rioters and outnumbered cops fought hand handy. To his proper, the place the prostrate physique of a dying woman was jostled within the bloody fray.
And earlier than him, a dozen marble steps descending to a lectern adorned with the presidential seal. The identical steps the place, 4 years earlier, Trump flags had been waved above the frenzied crowd and wielded like spears; the place an officer was dragged facedown to be crushed with an American flag on a pole and one other was pulled into the scrum to be kicked and stomped.
Within the wake of the assault on the Capitol, Mr. Trump’s risky political profession appeared over, his incendiary phrases earlier than the riot rattling the leaders of his personal Republican Social gathering. Myriad components clarify his beautiful resurrection, however not least of them is how successfully he and his loyalists have laundered the historical past of Jan. 6, turning a political nightmare right into a political asset.
What started as a strained try and absolve Mr. Trump of accountability for Jan. 6 step by step took maintain, as his allies in Congress and the media performed down the assault and redirected blame to left-wing vegetation, Democrats and even the federal government. Violent rioters — prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned — one way or the other grew to become patriotic martyrs.
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