The Memo: Echoes of an earlier Jan. 6 reverberate as Trump’s win is certified by Congress

It was routine — and that was the point.

Congress certified President-elect Trump’s election victory in a smooth and relatively brief ceremony Monday.

The normalcy of the occasion was a juxtapositional reminder of the events of four years before, when a mob laid siege to the Capitol, coming ominously close to keeping Trump in power following an election he lost.

This time around, it was Trump’s opponent, Vice President Harris, who oversaw proceedings in her role as president of the Senate.

This led to some curious moments. Harris was at times addressed as “Madam President” — a recognition of her Senate role yet a reminder of the presidential title she had hoped to enjoy.

When the electoral votes had been duly tallied, it fell to Harris to announce the result. She had to wait for GOP cheers to subside after she announced Trump’s total — as expected, he received 312 votes — before announcing, in the third person, the 226 votes acquired by “Kamala D. Harris.”

Democrats cheered for what might have been at that point. But there were no objections raised by Democrats to any part of the proceedings. 

This year, and into the future, any party that wishes to protest the results from any state will have to clear a higher bar than was the case for Trump’s supporters four years ago. The Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act was passed in 2022, largely in reaction to the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

Harris, whose political future is unknown — there is some speculation that she might run to be governor of her native California in 2026 when Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is term-limited out of office — made some broadly political points, however. 

In a video released Monday morning, she emphasized that “the peaceful transfer of power is one of the most fundamental principles of American democracy.” It was, she added, a key marker that “distinguishes our system of government from monarchy or tyranny.”

She reiterated that point in brief remarks to reporters after the ceremony, saying that it “was about what should be the norm and what the American people should be able to take for granted.”

“Today, America’s democracy stood,” Harris concluded.

For all the fine words, though, it has to be galling for Harris that the man she considers to have endangered American democracy has been reelected. Trump performed better last November than in either of his previous two elections. He prevailed over Harris in the popular vote, a feat he had failed to pull off against either Hillary Clinton in 2016 or President Biden in 2020.

His most recent victory was explainable, to some extent, by standard political factors. Harris was weighed down by the same millstones that had hung around Biden’s neck up until his withdrawal from the race, notably voter concerns over immigration, inflation and the economy.

But Trump was also rendered electable in part because, for some voters, he had succeeded in recasting the events of Jan. 6, 2021, in a whole different light.

The president-elect speaks of the protesters now as patriots. He has promised pardons for many of them once he takes power on Jan. 20. And he has blasted the efforts to hold him legally accountable for his actions in and around that day as a nefarious political plot.

On social media on Monday, Trump avoided any mention of the events of four years ago, however. 

“CONGRESS CERTIFIES OUR GREAT ELECTION VICTORY TODAY — A BIG MOMENT IN HISTORY. MAGA!” he wrote.

He soon returned to what passes for business as usual for him on social media, blasting a “fake news” story in The Washington Post, contending that Biden is trying to make the transition “as difficult as possible” and suggesting — presumably mischievously, on the day that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his resignation — that Canada should merge with the United States.

But as Trump prepares to take power again, the question of how Jan. 6, 2021, will come to be seen with the passage of time is sharp.

On Monday morning, the Department of Justice offered the latest figures on prosecutions related to the events of four years ago.

It noted that almost 1,600 defendants had been charged in federal cases, of whom more than 1,000 have pleaded guilty and more than 200 have been convicted in contested trials.

In the political sphere, Biden wrote an op-ed that appeared Sunday in The Washington Post, asserting that Americans “should be proud that our democracy withstood this assault [in 2021]. And we should be glad we will not see such a shameful attack again this year. But we should not forget.”

The same day, speaking to reporters, Biden said of Trump, “I think what he did was a genuine threat to democracy. I'm hopeful that we are beyond that.”

But an old saying holds that history is written by the victors.

Trump’s victory in November is proof that the plurality of voters did not see his role in the events of four years ago as disqualifying.

Now, he will soon take power again — and the relative tranquility of Monday’s certification of his victory will almost certainly give way to new volatility.

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.