Four years ago today while I watched on television as Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol during the joint session of Congress to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election I thought to myself, "it's finally over. Trump can't possibly come back after this." Until then I had assumed that he would immediately start his comeback. It didn't occur to me that he could survive inciting this violent assault, especially since he egged it on as it was happening:

As we later saw on video, the crowd soon began chanting "Hang Mike Pence!"

Related

Later in the evening Trump finally emerged and put out a video telling the rioters he understood why they were so upset about all the evil people who "stole" the election but they needed to go home now. He said he loved them and that they were very special:

Over many hours we watched as bizarre Trump supporters occupied the Senate floor and took possession of the dais. The Capitol was vandalized and trashed and rioters beat police over the head with American flags. It was the most shockingly surreal event I've ever witnessed in American politics. The whole world was stunned by the live pictures we saw over the course of that momentous afternoon.

Yet later that night, once the police and National Guard restored order and the rioters dispersed, Congress returned to the Capitol and they certified the election. For many people that signaled that the guardrails had held, that the Constitution was intact and that American democracy was preserved.

We need your help to stay independent

But when 147 Republicans still voted to overturn the election even after all that had happened, it was clear to me that was premature and that Trump wasn't done with us yet. They were all politicians, after all, with a much better knowledge of how the system works than most Americans and they knew his insistence that he'd actually won the election was a lie. Yet they voted to steal the election anyway, despite the violent insurrection that had taken place just hours earlier.

Oh sure, many Republicans did

© Salon