Anybody who has been paying attention knows trump is a liar and, apparently, always has been. Now there are facts in evidence proving that he knew he was lying when he whined, over and over, about the so-called “stolen election.” Well, maybe “should have known” is more accurate. He should have known he was lying. Everyone around him told him the election was lost. The thing is, at the time and even AFTER the testimony was revealed during the January 6th hearings, he CONTINUES to tell the same sad, disproved story. It seems delusional to me. Now, I’m no expert on mental health issues so I’m not making any diagnosis here. Just a layman’s observation.

Look, in matters of faith, the fact that one person can’t convince another person has a place. One doesn’t accept items of faith based on factual information. In my experience, the two are mutually exclusive. Facts and faith don’t mingle. In fact-based matters, though, things like…oh, I don’t know…um, say, counting? 1 then 2 then 3 and so on? No, there’s no room for faith in that. It’s math, a hard science. According to the information presented by the January 6th commission, every rational person around trump told him he’d lost. They hired experts to do deep dives on the numbers, desperately looking for something, anything, that they could build a case on. The experts found nothing – and said so.

The truth is, I don’t think trump is delusional. No, I don’t think he’s right in the head, either, but he knew damned good and well what he was about. People told him things he didn’t want to hear. Where he could, he fired and tried to replace them with someone who would tell him what he wanted to hear. Now, to a rational person thinking about peaceful transfers of power that sounds crazy but to a would-be strongman, it’s just the next logical step in his claim to permanent power.

I suspect I’m going to enjoy watching the commission’s report. There’s a cloud hanging over it, though. Even as I watch them show, over and over, that trump was personally responsible for the attempted coup, that he participated in the planning and preparation, that he knew every step of the way what he was doing – and that he was engaging in criminal activity, I also know that Americans don’t put ex-presidents in jail. Ever. Politicians apparently think it will look bad on the world stage. That’s true, of course, but it looks worse that a person can freely run rough-shod over the constitution without consequence. The one thing it shows, more than any other, is that America is a poor risk. If there ARE no rules, how can anyone know what the rules are?

Of course, the REAL reason we don’t jail ex-presidents, regardless of their crimes, is that, politics being what it is, the GOP won’t care about the crimes. They’ll just spend the rest of their days trying to jail a Democrat – any Democrat, on any charge they can trump up. Of course, when everybody is just trying to throw their opponents in jail, the country fails under the pressure.

But I’ll tell you this: if we can’t jail an ex-president who actively engaged in treason while in the Oval Office, there’s no country left to protect anyway…

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Congress critters do NOT enjoy the “no jail” protection we afford our ex-presidents. Several of them (names currently under wraps but we can largely guess who) worked with trump, the Proud Boys, and other criminal elements to facilitate the insurrection. When the plot failed, they ran to their boss and asked for pardons. That says something, too. There’s a thing called consciousness of guilt. It indicates a person said or did something that shows they know they did wrong. I, for one, put “ask for a pardon” squarely on the consciousness of guilt list. Nobody asks for a pardon if they don’t think they’ve done anything illegal. Yet here they were, members of Congress, asking for pardons. My guess is, they were reminding the dumbass of promises made during the run-up. Speaking of faith, those morons were stupid enough to believe something “promised” by Donald J. Trump, perhaps the biggest known liar in history. “Oh, he didn’t come across? How…predictable…”

Even after the Trump Insurrection, 139 congress critters voted to overturn the 2020 election, citing “The Big Lie.” There’s your starting point. 139 GOP members of Congress tried to maintain the story even AFTER they saw the consequences of their mendacity. Except for Scott Perry (R, Pa), I don’t know who among them begged for pardons after the fact but the list could well include trump’s strongest supporters like Reps. Paul Gosar, Mo Brooks, Matt Gaetz, Billy Long, and that craziest of crazies, Marjorie Taylor Greene. Keven McCarthy seems a likely candidate. He’s the House Minority Leader! The Minority Whip, Steve Scalise, also seems like a “pardon me” kind of guy. Sadly, the commission will tell us that several GOP members sought pardons, but I’m guessing the names won’t be revealed. (I hope I’m wrong about that, though.)

I’ll tell you this: when push comes to shove, Congress will do what it perceives protects itself and it’s image, not the Constitution. Knowing that some members actively participated in a coup attempt is bad enough. Knowing exactly who participated risks throwing some individual members into a bad light, and that is seen as a poor reflection on the House as a whole. (Why surrendering the Constitution isn’t seen as “poor optics,” I can’t explain…)