“President Trump Has Committed Treason”. This is the title of an op-ed posted on the Washington Post web site yesterday evening. This is most certainly not a headline I ever wanted to see, and certainly not one anyone is comfortable seeing in reference to this novel experiment we call the United States of America.

The front pages of this morning’s national papers look remarkably the same:

TRUMP INCITES MOB – Rampage in the Capitol forces evacuations; it’s ‘part of his legacy’, a Republican says – NY Times

INSURRECTION – San Francisco Chronicle

Trump mob storms Capitol: President Incites Crowd to Acts of Insurrenction, Violence – The Washington Post

MOB STORMS CAPITOL – The Wall Street Journal

INCITED BY TRUMP, MOB HALTS COUNT – The Philadelphia Inquirer

This, friends, is not right. The President, yesterday, addressing the crowds in DC yesterday afternoon, incited this violence (during which four* people were killed) against the US Government conducting the people’s business. Let’s look at the President’s own words:

“We will never give up, we will never concede…”

“We will not take it anymore, and that’s what this is all about…If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

“You’ll never take back our country with weakness, you have to show strength and you have to be strong”

Then hundreds of rioters with MAGA hats, confederate flags, various tactical/fascist cosplay, and weapons, stormed the Capitol building, broke through the barriers, playacted in the House and Senate chambers, raided members’ offices, and destroyed property, inspired by and in support of those words. It was, in short, armed insurrection and sedition against the United States.

This was criminal, fomented by the words of the President of the United States.

That WaPo opinion piece uses the word “treason”, which, according to the US Constitution, has a specific meaning in this country (it’s one of only three criminal offenses defined in the document). Per Article III, Section 3, it’s defined as follows:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

Let’s see…telling a group of people to “fight like hell,” who then storm the US Capitol building, while Congress was in session, armed with weapons, both manufactured and improvised. You could make the case.

If we reach WAY BACK to last winter when we went through impeachment, the buzzwords were “High Crimes and Misdemeanors”, which, according to Article II, Section 4, are described as the actions that warrant the removal of the President through impeachment; the whole operative phrase is “Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Treason’s still in the mix here, but the phrase itself, originating in English Common Law, has come to have a broad meaning in the United States, to include any serious abuse of power or of the office.

Fomenting armed insurrection against Government institutions? I’d say it counts.

I mentioned a couple of posts back (in regard to that phone call over the weekend with the Georgia officials) about the possibility of 45 being impeached twice; it was mostly theoretical there, but in the hours between yesterday’s insurrection and the time I write this, several members of Congress have committed to submitting Articles this week.

I’ve come to change my tune on the theoretical, as, it seems have many others. Yes, there are only fourteen days until Inauguration (and yes, the election was finally certified in spite of interruption in the early hours of the morning), it matters; the “wink-nudge find me the votes” thing on the phone was one thing; inciting armed insurrection is quite another. Who cares if the Senate as it stands won’t consider impeachment in the next two weeks? Holding him accountable is imperative here, if only to be on the right side of history.

I suggested yesterday evening on social media, along with many others, that this might be a 25th Amendment situation; particularly section 4, which details the way in which the Vice President might declare a President unfit for the office:

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

This concept seems to be being taken a bit more seriously according to the headlines this morning; several stories out there suggest that senior officials are discussing just that; having finally “had enough” of this kind of behavior. I don’t know if it’s going to happen (the Cabinet is largely still filled with loyalists, even if Pence appears to have broken with the President), but it’s another avenue.

In any case, the tl;dr version of this civics lesson is that the President, who’s been breaking boundaries and being generally awful for the last four years, crossed a line yesterday he’s not really going to be able to back away from. He encouraged violence against the government in order to overturn a legal and certified election, breaking the Republic’s sacred tradition of the peaceful transfer of power between administrations. There have to be consequences, even if there are only two weeks left in his term. Yesterday was one of the darker days in our Nation’s history, folks; it’s not going to be forgotten. Something (and this piece suggests a few somethings) has to be done so this sort of thing doesn’t happen next time.

So let’s do something; impeach (again), invoke the 25th, formal censure…something to show that Americans won’t stand for this sort of thing happening here.

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* – take that number, multiply it by about 1000, and you’ve got the number of deaths due to COVID for Wednesday. Ugh.