THE GUARDIAN: The ex-president’s attacks on officials to overturn the election resulted in them being harassed by his followers
Donald Trump was the most powerful man in the world. But he was also a paranoid fantasist who did not care how his lies destroyed people’s lives.
That was the picture of the former US president that came into focus with startling clarity at Tuesday’s hearing of the congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
Dead people, shredded ballots and a USB drive that was in fact a ginger mint were all part of the delusional narrative of election fraud peddled by Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani. They would have been as comical as flat-earthers but for the way they posed a danger to both individual citizens and American democracy.
“The president’s lie was and is a dangerous cancer on the body politic,” committee member Adam Schiff said at the hearing into how Trump pressured state officials to overturn [overturn] results.
It was worth remembering that Trump once boasted that he had passed a cognitive test by reciting the words, “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV,” in the right order. And that, according to the Washington Post, he made 30,573 false or misleading claims during his four-year presidency. » | David Smith in Washington | Wednesday, June 22, 2022
