Joseph Sabino Mistick: Presidential hopefuls must take stand against Trump

Immediately after the Capitol attacks, Republican senators and representatives who had barely escaped with their lives blurted out the truth, putting the blame for inciting the bloodthirsty mob right at Donald Trump’s feet. They must have been scared straight.

Because once the imminent threat to their lives had passed, that old fear that they could lose their seats to a Trump-backed primary opponent settled over them, and they stopped telling the truth. Now they sound like a chorus of Nikki Haleys, the former Trump appointee who exclaimed, “Give the guy a break.”

But Trump is not the issue now. We know all we need to know about him. Now we need members of Congress to show us who they are. And any kind of vote — after a Senate trial on impeachment or on a resolution to censure Trump or any other action that calls him out — will tell us more about the people voting than anything else.

That vote will be a litmus test for those who want to run for president someday. Let’s see who kowtows, hoping to inherit Trump’s 40% of the electorate in some future national election. The wrong vote here might seem like good politics now, but it could become a curse on anyone who hopes to be president.

And spare us the revisionist baloney. It’s all on tape and social media. This is not a case that Trump apologists can explain away. Even the insurrectionists, who openly announced that they had been invited to the Capitol by their president, have been more honest than those flip-flopping politicians who are playing games again.

Our children saw things that will shake their belief in America, and the world watched as our democracy teetered. Many of the insurgents were armed with military-style weapons as they threatened to hang the vice president and hunted for the speaker of the House and other leaders. They even erected a gallows on Capitol grounds.

A U.S. Capitol Police officer was killed. And these law-and-order phonies battled National Guard troops and attacked other police officers. That alone is why there must be an accounting for what happened. When a police officer is killed by a violent mob, there are no “let bygones be bygones” options anywhere else in America.

Trump had been warned for years that his words and actions would come to this, and he ignored those warnings. And just as he fueled the attack on our Capitol, any elected official who looks the other way now runs the risk of fueling future attacks. We may be in a lull, but this is not over.

Last week, in a National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin, the Department of Homeland Security warned that “the intent to engage in violence has not gone away,” citing an increased threat from “violent domestic extremists” who are encouraged by the attack on the Capitol.

This is one of those big moments in America, and it is time for our leaders to take a stand. As President Lincoln said to Congress one month before signing the Emancipation Proclamation, “Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. … The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.”