With His Post-Jan. 6 Comeback, Trump May Have Normalized Coup Attempts

He was the first president to try to remain in power despite losing reelection, but democracy advocates worry he may not be the last.

WASHINGTON ― Losing presidential candidates who in the past were limited to asking for recounts and filing lawsuits may now, thanks to Donald Trump, have a new tool at their disposal: attempting a coup to steal the election by force and intimidation.

Five years after inciting a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol in a last-gasp effort to cling to power, Trump is now back in the White House, from where he has pardoned all those who participated in his insurrection, including the hundreds who assaulted police officers. For many, if not most Americans, the televised carnage of Jan. 6, 2021, is a distant and apparently irrelevant memory.

“Trump did what he set out to do. He has fundamentally changed this country forever,” said Michael Fanone, a former Washington, D.C., police officer who suffered a heart attack after an insurrectionist attacked him with a stun gun that day. “And the American people let him do it.”

Amanda Carpenter, a former Republican Senate aide and now a researcher for the group Protect Democracy, said Trump has actually turned history on its head and made it the official policy of the U.S. government to lie about a day on which violence left 140 police officers injured and led to the deaths of five.

“Our government has not just normalized Jan. 6, it has radicalized the events into a loyalty test for top government officials,” she said. “Willingness to rewrite the history of that day, namely by pardoning violent rioters who maimed and injured police officers, is part of the Trump administration’s basic operations system.”