The Jan 6 hearings showed why it’s reasonable to call Trump a fascist

Fresno CA

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We now know Trump expressed support for hanging Pence and did little to stop the violence — actions that suggest some very dark historical parallels. Amid the many extraordinary revelations at the January 6 committee’s first primetime hearing Thursday, one stood out for its sheer depravity: that during the assault, when rioters chanted “hang Mike Pence” in the halls of the Capitol, President Donald Trump suggested that the mob really ought to execute his vice president. “Maybe our supporters have the right idea,” he said, per a committee source. “[Mike Pence] deserves it.” Endorsing violence is hardly new for Trump; it’s something he’s done repeatedly, often in an allegedly joking tone. But the reported comment from January 6 is qualitatively worse given the context: coming both amid an actual violent attack he helped stoke and one he did little to halt. The committee found that the president took no steps to defend the Capitol building, failing to call in the National Guard, or even speak to his secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security. While he was de facto permitting the mob’s rampage, he was privately cheering the most violent stated objective of people he acknowledged as “our supporters.”