The Conservative editorial board of the Wall Street Journal called on President Donald Trump to resign in an unsigned staff editorial Thursday evening. The editorial goes much further than other Republican voices, particularly those in Congress, which have been calculating in their statements on how to respond to Wednesday’s siege on the Capitol. “This was an assault on the constitutional process of transferring power after an election,” the editorial states. “It was also an assault on the legislature from an executive sworn to uphold the laws of the United States. This goes beyond merely refusing to concede defeat. In our view it crosses a constitutional line that Mr. Trump hasn’t previously crossed. It is impeachable.”
The Journal was unequivocal in its reading of the events of the day and Trump’s role in them, a seemingly redundant step, but saying plainly what happened this week over and over again is vital ahead of the revisionist onslaught. Establishing factual truth, out loud, is indispensable to accountability, which will frame the historical rendering the event. “In concise summary, on Wednesday the leader of the executive branch incited a crowd to march on the legislative branch,” the Journal wrote. “The express goal was to demand that Congress and Vice President Mike Pence reject electors from enough states to deny Mr. Biden an Electoral College victory. When some in the crowd turned violent and occupied the Capitol, the President caviled and declined for far too long to call them off. When he did speak, he hedged his plea with election complaint.”
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The Journal’s opinion pages have long been influential in Republican circles, the types of Conservatives that were not at the White House rally Wednesday afternoon and did not march on the Capitol. Trump has been extraordinarily successful playing not to these WSJ readers, but the MAGA marchers. So successful, in fact, that Republicans like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, both former clerks in the Supreme Court, have been falling all over themselves to get a piece of the Trump action, to help perpetrate the Trump fiction. It remains to be seen what influence institutional Republicans, like the Journal, retain on the party and its thinking. Over the next two weeks, we’ll get some inkling by which narrative takes hold. The emerging call, as articulated in the WSJ, for some form of accountability? Or that this was actually all Democrats fault somehow? Or will an even more dangerous narrative prevail, one already being pushed by some extremist House Republicans, that this was actually the work of ANTIFA all along?
The Journal foresees problems with availing upon the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office, fretting that “[a] Cabinet cabal ousting him would smack of a Beltway coup and give Mr. Trump more cause to play the political victim.” “Impeachment has the virtue of being transparent and politically accountable,” the Journal writes. “If there were enough votes to convict in the Senate, it would also seem less partisan. The best case for impeachment is not to punish Mr. Trump. It is to send a message to future Presidents that Congress will protect itself from populists of all ideological stripes willing to stir up a mob and threaten the Capitol or its Members.”
The WSJ notes impeachment, too, will be bruising politically for a country that is already black and blue. “If Mr. Trump wants to avoid a second impeachment, his best path would be to take personal responsibility and resign,” the WSJ writes. “We know an act of grace by Mr. Trump isn’t likely. In any case this week has probably finished him as a serious political figure.”
“It is best for everyone, himself included, if he goes away quietly,” the Journal concludes.
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