In Mother Jones, David Corn writes, today the three wealthiest men in the U.S.—Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg—”are scheduled to be at the Capitol as honored guests for Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, seated where four years ago Christian nationalists, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, militia members, and other extremists, incited by his brazen lies about the 2020 election, violently attacked Congress to overturn American democracy and keep Trump in power. This transition—from brownshirts to billionaires—encapsulates what has gone wrong. It is a clear signal that the United States is broken.”
Forbes “real time” billionaires list verify’s Corn’s claim.
https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#47294b623d78
Corn continues:
“All organisms and entities require defense systems to survive. The same is true for a democracy. Yet the US political system has elevated to its highest position the most potent threat to its existence since the traitorous rebels of the Confederacy. On January 20, 2025, the convicted felon who takes the presidential oath of office to ;preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States; will be a demagogic autocrat-wannabe who violated that oath during his first presidential term. Trump defied that vow by falsely declaring victory in 2020 before the votes were tallied, by concocting secret schemes to thwart the popular will and remain in the White House, and by initially doing nothing when his marauders assaulted the Capitol, hoping he could exploit this horrifying act of domestic terrorism as part of his plot to extend his reign.”
After his speech [in the Ellipse], Mr. Trump returned to the White House and, at around 1:30 p.m., settled in the dining room off of the Oval Office. There, he watched television news coverage of events at the Capitol and reviewed Twitter on his phone. When the angry crowd advanced on the Capitol building and breached it at around 2:13 p.m., forcing the Senate to recess, several of Mr. Trump’s advisors rushed to the dining room and told him that a riot had started at the Capitol and that rioters were in the building. Over the course of the afternoon, they forcefully urged Mr. Trump to issue calming messages to his supporters. Mr. Trump resisted, repeatedly remarking that the people at the Capitol were angry because the election had been stolen.
This, from Jack Smith’s recently released report.
Okay, you say, this is “old news.” But it’s not Fake news, and we should not underestimate the gravity of this legal but profoundly wrong moment in our history as a democracy. Trump, who nearly blew up the most powerful democracy in modern history, is again being handed the keys to the republic. Corn concludes, “It’s as if the American political system has a death wish.”
We can only hope and pray that the nation comes to its political senses, and sooner rather than later.