AIn the end there was violence again. Throughout Saturday, thousands of Donald Trump supporters in Washington had been walking back and forth between the Capitol and the National Mall. There weren’t as many as in November. The President paid them a brief visit as well. He said on Twitter that he knew nothing about this “Stop the Steal” demo, only to fly over the Freedom Plaza shortly afterwards in his “Marine One” helicopter, where the American anthem was playing.
Majid Sattar
Political correspondent for North America based in Washington.
When it got dark, the clashes of the hard core of Trump supporters, including the right-wing radical “Proud Boys”, began with counter-demonstrators. In the end, it was said that four people had been hospitalized with stab wounds. At first, the authorities could not say whether they were supporters of the American president or his opponents. The police also reported 23 arrests.
Trump supporters protested the Supreme Court decision on Friday night. For the second time, the constitutional judges rejected an application aimed at depriving Democrat Joe Biden of the election victory. Trump probably had an idea how the demonstration would end. His suggestion that he did not know anything about the meeting should certainly serve as a precaution against criticism. After all, during the election campaign he called out to the “Proud Boys” to “stand back and stand by”. Now they marched in small groups through the streets of the capital and chanted: “1776” – the year of the American declaration of independence.
Twitter from the helicopter
Trump still hadn’t calmed down on his flight over Freedom Plaza, as his Twitter posts showed. The constitutional judges had spoiled his mood on Friday evening. A festive party had already gathered in the White House for a Christmas party – in the government you take the freedom to disregard your own corona rules. Shortly before his scheduled appearance, the assembly was informed that the president would not come.
What he had to do instead, they could follow on Twitter. The Supreme Court “really let us down,” wrote Trump. He has neither wisdom nor courage. The elected president wrote that he was “so disappointed” with the constitutional judges. They came to the conclusion that he, that is Trump, as well as Texas and the other states were not entitled to sue: “We were not allowed to present our evidence.”
Indeed, the president, Texas attorney general and eighteen of his counterparts, as well as the 126 Republican congressmen who supported the lawsuit, had been slapped. The Supreme Court only needed three sentences for the decision about which Trump had said after dozens of defeats in various other courts that it was “the big thing”. The nine constitutional judges, three of whom he had nominated, dismissed the motion not to recognize the election results in four states that Biden had won. They found that Texas had not shown any legally recognizable interest in how other states carried out their elections.
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