The Trump menace is darker than ever – and snapping at Biden's heels

The problem with coverage of this month’s anniversary of the events of 6 January 2021 is that too much of it was written in the past tense. True, the attempted insurrection when a violent mob stormed Capitol Hill to try to overturn a democratic election was a year ago, but the danger it poses is clear and present – and looms over the future. For the grim truth is that, while Donald Trump is the last US president, he may also be the next. What’s more, the menace of Trumpism is darker than ever.

- Jonathan Freedland

At the time, Republican politicians were clear that the outgoing president had crossed a line, that he was “practically and morally responsible” for the rioters who had marched on Congress and built gallows for those politicians who stood in their way. Many of those Republicans had pleaded with Trump, sending text messages begging him to call offthe mob. Now, they either say nothing – refusing even to show up for a moment’s silence in memory of those killed on 6 January – or they apologise for having, rightly, branded that day a “violent terrorist attack ”.

That’s because they fear Trump and his supporters. In order not to rouse their fury, they have to accept the big lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and that political violence is to be indulged when it comes from your own side.

Trump’s tactics, his authoritarianism, have not shamed or repelled Republicans – as some hoped might be the result of 6 January – but infected them. What was once the eccentric stance of the lunatic fringe – that Trump won an election that more than 60 different court judgments ruled he had lost – is believed by two-thirds of Republican voters.

More alarming still, surveys show 30% of Republicans say that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country ”. Word the question slightly differently, and that figure rises to 40%. Not for nothing did the editor of the New Yorker last week ask if a second civil war is coming.