On Jan. 6 many Republicans blamed Trump for the Capitol riot. Now they endorse his presidential bid

In their 2018 best-seller “How Democracies Die,” writers Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky discuss three guidelines that political parties ought to abide by. Reject the use of violence to seize power, accept the outcome of free elections, and sever relations with radicals. Following the 2020 election, they write, just one US political party “violated all three.” The attack on the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, is commemorated on Saturday for the third time. The front-runner for the Republican nomination in 2024 is none other than former President Donald Trump. He still won’t accept that he lost to President Joe Biden earlier. He has indicated that he might pardon those people who have been found guilty of violent crimes, far from dismissing the rioters. Rather than rejecting radicals, he welcomes them to his rallies and refers to them as patriots. And Trump now has the support of numerous Republican leaders who ran for their lives and sheltered from the rioters, including those who had previously opposed Trump. Several senior Republican leaders have backed his candidature. The outpouring of support for Trump underlines the schisms in the aftermath of the tragic Capitol storming and raises the question of whose concept of government will win — or whether democracy will triumph at all. “If our political leaders do not stand up in defense of democracy, our democracy won’t be defended,” said Levitsky, one of the Harvard professors whose new book is “Tyranny of the Minority.” “There’s no country in the world, no country on Earth in history, where the politicians abdicated democracy but the institutions held,” he told The Associated Press. “People have to defend democracy.” The third anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack comes during the most convulsive period in American politics in at least a generation, with Congress barely able to keep up with the basics of governing, and the start of the presidential nominating contests just over a week away. Trump’s persistent false claims that the election of 2020 was stolen — which has been rejected in at least 60 court cases, every state election certification and by the former president’s one-time attorney general — continue to animate the presidential race as he eyes a rematch with Biden. Instead, Trump now faces more than 90 criminal charges in federal and state courts, including the federal indictment brought by special counsel Jack Smith that accused Trump of conspiring to defraud the US over the election. Biden, speaking Friday near Pennsylvania’s Valley Forge, commemorated Jan. 6, saying on that day “we nearly lost America — lost it all.” While the Congress returned that night to certify the election results and show the world democracy was still standing, Biden said Trump is now trying to revise the narrative of what happened that day — calling the rioters “patriots” and promising to pardon them. And he said some Republicans in Congress were complicit. “When the attack on Jan. 6 happened there was no doubt about the truth,” Biden said. “Now these MAGA voices — who know the truth about Trump and Jan. 6 — have abandoned the truth and abandoned the democracy.” At a quieter Capitol, without much ceremony planned for Saturday, it will be the last time the anniversary will pass before Congress is called upon again, on Jan. 6, 2025, to certify the results of the presidential election – democracy once more put to the test. Rep. Jamie Raskin, the Maryland Democrat who led Trump’s impeachment over the insurrection, said Biden’s 306-232 electoral victory in 2020 remains “the hard, inescapable, irradicable fact that Donald Trump and his followers have not been able to accept — to this day.” Raskin envisions a time when there will be a Capitol exhibit, and tours for visitors, to commemorate what happened Jan. 6, 2021. Five people died during the riot and the immediate aftermath, including Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by police. All told,140 police officers were injured in the Capitol siege, including US Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick who died later. Several others died later by suicide. One officer, Harry Dunn, has announced he is running for Congress to “ensure it never happens again.” Trump’s decision to reject the results of the 2020 election was the only time Americans have not witnessed the peaceful transfer of presidential power, a hallmark of US democracy. A giant portrait of George Washington resigning his military commission hangs in the US Capitol, a symbol of the voluntary relinquishing of power — a move that was considered breathtaking at the time. He later was elected the first US president. Trump opened his first rally of his 2024 presidential campaign with a popular recording of the J6 Prison Choir — riot defendants singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” recorded over a phone line from jail, interspersed with Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. More than 1,200 people have been charged in the riot, with nearly 900 convicted, including leaders of the extremist groups the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who are serving lengthy terms for seditious conspiracy. Trump has called Jan. 6 defendants “hostages” and said there was so much love at the “Stop the Steal” rally he held near the White House that day before he encouraged the mob to march down Pennsylvania Avenue, assuring he would be with them at the Capitol, though he never did join. Allies of Trump scoff at the narrative of Jan. 6 that has emerged. Mike Davis, a Trump ally sometimes mentioned as a future attorney general, has mocked the Democrats and others for turning Jan. 6 into a “religious holiday.” Republican Kevin McCarthy, who went on to become House speaker, had called Jan. 6 the “saddest day” he ever had in Congress. But when he retired last month he endorsed Trump for president and said he would consider joining his cabinet. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has said he would back whomever becomes the Republican Party nominee, despite a scathing speech at the time in which he called Trump’s actions “disgraceful” and said the rioters “had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth because he was angry he lost an election.” Asked about Trump’s second-term agenda, GOP lawmakers brushed off his admission that he would be a dictator on “day one.” “He’s joking,” said Trump ally Byron Donalds, R-Fla. “Just bravado,” said Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn. “There’s still checks and balances.” Levitsky said when he and his colleague wrote their earlier book, they believed that the Republicans in Congress would be a “bulwark against Trump.” But with so many of the Trump detractors having retired or been voted out of office, “We were much less pessimistic than we are today.”