On Jan. 6, 2022, a mob converged at the U.S. Capitol. According to CNN’s minute-by-minute timeline, around 1 p.m, “Top White House staffers [were] quickly alerted by the U.S. Secret Service that the police lines [were] collapsing at the Capitol.” Earlier in the day, around 11:20 a.m., President Trump spoke with Vice President Mike Pence on the phone — and not hearing what he wanted to hear, Trump called Pence a “wimp.” Had it been left at name-calling, there would have been no need for the televised hearings that have now overtaken our news feeds. But that wasn’t the end of it.
OurQuadCities.com reports that everything fell apart once Pence informed Trump he couldn’t change the outcome of the election. Trump rallied the troops, and “a mob of violent supporters incensed by Trump’s rhetoric stormed the Capitol Building and tried to halt the peaceful transfer of power.” As several reports have noted, Trump needed a scapegoat for his loss — because it certainly couldn’t be his fault, and couldn’t be the fact that the American voters were sick and tired of his tirades and fallacies.
So Mike Pence became the fall guy, and lives were lost over the fact that President Trump refused to move on. As noted by Tennessee Lookout: “Donald Trump spoke approvingly of chants by his followers to ‘Hang Mike Pence!’ even as mob members erected gallows on the National Mall near the Capitol.” The Lookout also reports that “members of then-Vice President Mike Pence’s security detail made personal calls to family members at the height of the attack to tell them goodbye, so worried were they for their lives.”
As disturbing as it is to read about the former president inciting these acts, it is just as hard to hear about Tennessee’s U.S. Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty potentially supporting such acts. On Jan. 6, while a mob formed outside the Capitol and threats were being made, Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani placed calls to these two senators, not to discuss the dangers but “to ask them to slow walk the Senate vote to certify the 2020 presidential election,” the Tennessee Lookout reports.
As U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Illinois) noted during the hearings, “Despite the violence of the day, the effort to delay the certification continued.” “Both of our U.S. senators may have been on board with a scheme to overturn a free and fair election and the peaceful transfer of power,” writes the Lookout’s Holly McCall. “In short, Blackburn and Hagerty may have been part of a plot to overthrow the U.S. government.”
Tennessee’s two senators should be gravely concerned. I have serious doubts surrounding their judgment. It is profoundly concerning that it took an attempted insurrection for them to see the need for a smooth transition of power. Initially both Hagerty and Blackburn refused to certify the election results. On Jan. 2, 2021, The Tennessean reported that Republican lawmakers — including Blackburn and Hagerty — “have not cited any specific evidence, but use unfounded statements including ‘allegations of voter fraud’ and ‘voting irregularities’ to explain [themselves].” The report continues: “For months, President Donald Trump has unsuccessfully tried to overturn election results in six battleground states, falsely claiming the election was stolen despite no evidence of widespread fraud. … Federal and state courts have also dismissed his claims of voter fraud nearly 60 times.”
Despite this, it was not until that fateful day in January 2021 that Sens. Blackburn and Hagerty changed direction and decided to vote for certification of the Electoral College results. Perhaps it was because they were, as NewsChannel 5 puts it, “forced out of their respective chambers by pro-Trump protesters.” Or perhaps Giuliani wasn’t able to get either of them on the phone, as the Lookout’s McCall surmised. I wonder what kind of brow-beating they took from the former president for that move. But perhaps he decided to forgive them, since the mob he incited could have cost them their lives.
What I find unconscionable is the fact that, even though these two senators were at the Capitol when it was under siege, both appeared and spoke at the recent Faith & Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” event in Nashville, which was headlined by Trump. Presumably both still support him. I don’t know about you, but I cannot imagine a situation in which a “friend” deliberately puts me, my family and my associates in danger yet I go running back to them to show my loyalty — and certainly not if they’ve jeopardized the country in which I live.
I don’t believe Blackburn or Hagerty would overturn the government — but their continued support for Trump is beyond puzzling. I know I’m not the only Tennessean scratching my head over this one.
Bill Freeman
Bill Freeman is the owner of FW Publishing, the publishing company that produces the Nashville Scene, Nfocus, the Nashville Post and Home Page Media Group in Williamson County.
