What a difference four years makes. For that difference, we must have eyes squeezed shut and teeth clenched and thank Donald Trump. After Joe Biden won, Trump incited the Capitol invasion, where lawmakers ran for their lives. It delayed the electoral vote count to allow phony electors to install Trump.
This January 6, there was no violence because the casting and counting of ballots went as smoothly as a Tesla. Trump won, so there are no threats to hang Mike Pence, no Rudy Giuliani defaming election workers and being held in contempt of court for refusing to pay them damages. Just as we don’t so much notice the cat that didn’t get run over or the Social Security check in the mail, we pay little heed to the insurrection that didn’t happen because only Trump has ever done such a thing. He persists in rewriting history, rebranding January 6 as a Day of Love, and planning to pardon a chunk of the 500 perpetrators in prison, more than enough to keep the prisoner’s choir humming.
In place of a riot, Trump gloats over his victory as he fist-dances the night away at Mar-a-Lago, crowing about how everyone wants to be his friend as if he’s back in military school where he didn’t have many. He loves that the Masters of the Universe are into pay to play. Amazon is making a Melania doc, so Brett Ratner’s been hanging around Mar-a-Lago. Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post scuttled an editorial cartoon showing the owner among a handful of titans bending the knee to Trump. Mark Zuckerberg has jettisoned Meta’s third-party fact-checking and put a Trump ally on the board of directors.
On January 6, 2025, power passed peacefully on Capitol Hill amid kids, spouses, partners, and constituents celebrating the swearing-in of the newly elected and re-elected who vow to uphold the constitution, so help them, God. You wouldn’t guess from the standing ovation Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi got when she returned to the chamber after breaking her hip—in flats, not her standard four-inch heels—that among those welcoming her back were those who made light, if not a joke, of her husband Paul Pelosi’s fractured skull after an intruder pounded his head with a hammer. Let’s take our goodwill where we can find it. This is the same chamber where Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene shouted at President Joe Biden a few years back during the State of the Union address. Her colleagues ignored outburst.
After the brief ceremonies, it’s tradition to hold receptions in offices serving the usual cheese and salty meats but with hometown delicacies, too—from artery-clogging clumps of peanut butter rolled in chocolate, topped with cream cheese, fried pineapple hunks, and fresh fish courtesy of Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.
It’s the closest thing you will get to a county fair in Washington, although without the prize bull. Former Minnesota Republican Senator Norman Coleman returned to the Capitol to mark Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar’s fourth term victory over NBA star Royce White. She joined with Coleman when the I-35W bridge collapsed in 2007 during rush hour, dumping cars, trucks, and a school bus into the Mississippi River, killing 13 and injuring 145. They got federal funds, and 339 days later, the bridge was rebuilt. Fast forward and contrast that speedy bipartisan accomplishment with Republican Senator James Langford’s two-year effort working with Democrats to produce a workable immigration bill only to have it killed by his party because Trump preferred to campaign on the issue rather than solve it.
Formalities over, on Friday, the House suited up to convene for the first time since Christmas recess to elect a speaker for the 119th Congress. It took four ballots for poor Speaker Mike Johnson to retain the gavel he’d held for just over a year. Trump, who he will owe big time, pressured House GOP holdouts to get him there.
It was painful to watch the sausage being made, even though Johnson was spared the agony of his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy: the 15 nail-biting votes as members dozed off, the designer pizza giving way to cold Domino’s around midnight, and the whole thing dissolving into a schoolyard brawl after Representative Matt Gaetz denied McCarthy the vote that would have dragged him across the finish line. After that, the usually mild Alabama Representative Mike Rogers lunged toward Gaetz’s until other members pulled him off.
Rather than be disqualifying, the incident only endeared him to Trump. Gaetz was rewarded with a nomination to be Attorney General. Even in these morality-starved times, sworn testimony from a then 17-year-old to the House Ethics Committee that he’d paid her for sex should be disqualifying, if not grounds for jail time, except in Trump world. Shortly after, Gaetz’s orange made-up face, perhaps an homage to the boss, showed up on cable, where he landed a regular gig as a commentator on one of those not-Fox but still very conservative channels. In recent years, serving in Congress has become a stepping stone to the real dream of being Tucker Carlson.
It’s no way to run a country. The House has been spiraling in this direction since Speaker John Boehner packed up his Camels, his Merlot, and his golf clubs and returned to Ohio voluntarily in 2015, fed up with herding a caucus that had splintered into cliques whose agenda consisted of threatening Boehner if he didn’t shut down the government over this or that annoyance.
The pony in all the manure is that the country will have a proper inauguration with the outgoing president in attendance instead of pouting. Biden was denied that kind of ceremony in 2021. Trump huffed off to Mar-a-Lago before noon on January 20, 2021, taking classified documents with him and spending the intervening years claiming he was robbed.
Johnson has a margin so slim it will be tempting for anyone unhappy to go Joe Manchin on him, withholding a “yes” vote to show off for the folks back home and get booked on Hannity. The Speaker is a motion to vacate away from another referendum on his stewardship. He’s living proof that being elected to Congress is an honor. Being in Congress is not.
