Mary Trump - A Very Dark Day

If things had gone differently, if things had gone as they should have, the anniversary of January 6th would be a time for reflection: How did we come so close to losing American democracy at the hands of a man who brought this country to its knees during his four years in office, and betrayed his oath to the Constitution by inciting a riot against his own government? What must we do, as American citizens, to strengthen a democracy that has proven to be much more fragile than most of us imagined it to be?

In the immediate aftermath of the January 6th attack on the Capitol, and the years that followed, we spoke of a “failed” insurrection, but I always said that we did not yet in fact know if the insurrection failed or not. On November 5, 2024, we finally learned that Donald’s self coup succeeded.

It wasn’t until today that I felt the full import of what happened on January 6th, 2021—because, obviously, we failed to learn to the lessons of that day. And here we are, certifying the election of the insurrectionist who was allowed to run for the Republican nomination, who was allowed to be a candidate for the highest office in the land, who is, in two weeks, going to be president of the United States of America.

Four years ago today I was on Cape Cod. It was overcast and I didn’t have much planned other than a couple of interviews—which had nothing to do with the certification of the election. Up until that then, most Americans had no idea that Congress met on January 6th for the purpose of making the electoral college votes official. It was a procedural, mundane process that was the hallmark of our history of the peaceful transfer of power.

https://www.marytrump.org/p/a-very-dark-day