Editor's Newsletter

Former Ohio Senator Rob Portman led off a national magazine article that generated quite a buzz recently. But not in a good way. The Atlantic piece by editor Jeffrey Goldberg, titled “A Study in Senate Cowardice,” featured Portman on his high horse about a low legacy of authoritarian appeasement. Ouch.

The Ohio Republican was one of 43 GOP Senators who will go down in history as cowards if, as the column concludes, they’re remembered at all. It is a stark rebuke of the conservative elite in the U.S. Senate who had a window, in February 2021, to wield real influence on the fate of the country — and walked away. 

Americans were still reeling from the sickening spectacle of Jan. 6, 2021. It is burned in our memories like a bad dream. We saw the unspeakable unfold. Rampaging Trump supporters taking the U.S. Capitol by force. We saw the savage beatings of outnumbered police by a violent mob that bashed and bulldozed its way into the seat of our democracy as federal lawmakers ran for their lives. 

We saw the makeshift gallows erected outside the iconic domed building as red-hatted thugs, decked out in wannabe military gear, roamed the halls of Congress chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” They came to kill the vice president for not obliging the lawless coup attempt of the president. They came to “Stop the Steal” in Trump’s name because Trump had lied to them for months about his “stolen” victory in the 2020 election he lost.

It was Trump who called them to Washington on Jan. 6 (“will be wild!”) and exhorted them to “fight like hell” before they swarmed en masse to the Capitol. The malignant narcissist they battled so brutally for watched the tear gas fly and the cops fall at the White House, entertained for hours as smoke billowed and people died.  

Portman knew exactly who had seeded and sparked the armed assault on Congress to viciously end the peaceful transfer of power. All 43 Republican senators did. But they refused to hold Trump accountable for his “staggering betrayal” of oath and nation, for his attempted overthrow of our government, for nearly destroying what generations of Americans have fought and died to preserve. 

A year after Portman acquitted Trump — whose scheme to overturn a legitimate election was the very definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors” in his impeachment charge — the senator was asked, in hindsight, whether he regretted his vote. The Jan. 6 select congressional committee was airing explosive, first-hand testimony from Trump administration aides and senior officials detailing the sore loser’s nefarious conduct to remain in office.

The Atlantic noted Portman’s unease with the question and defensiveness in denouncing the attack on the Capitol. He insisted his “impassioned speech about democracy and the need to protect it ” on the Senate floor the night of Jan. 6 showed “who I am.” No, it didn’t, countered the writer. “Portman showed the people of Ohio who he is five weeks later, on February 13, when he voted to acquit Trump, the man he knew to have fomented a violent, anti-democratic insurrection meant to overturn the result of a fair election.”

Portman took the easy way out. His cowardice allowed Trump to escape conviction in 2021 and plan his vengeful authoritarian return to power in 2024. Portman knew better. They all did. But it took courage to convict an immoral and dangerous ex-president. They made excuses to let him off the hook. 

They could have removed significant GOP pillars of support for an insurrection-inciting coup plotter and eliminated, once and for all, an abiding existential threat to a free America. But it’s much less scary to simply make speeches and do nothing.   

Three years later, an emboldened Trump, still lying about the 2020 election, salutes the most violent rioters from Jan. 6 as “unbelievable patriots,” and calls the tried, convicted and jailed felons  “hostages” he’ll release on Day 1 if he wins the presidency. Portman, Goldberg writes, could have ended Trump’s political career after his unprecedented violation of oath and public trust but chose not to. It was easier to accommodate an autocrat than grow a spine. 

Right Gov. Mike DeWine? “I am certainly going to support the Republican nominee for president.” Right Ohio House Speaker Jason Stephens? “I look forward to campaigning on behalf of President Trump.” Right Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose? “I’m giving my full endorsement and support to his campaign.” Right Ohio Treasurer Robert Sprague? “We must elect Donald Trump and get our country back on track.” Right Youngstown State University president (and former election-denying MAGA congressman) Bill Johnson? “I’m pleased to endorse him in 2024.” 

Are Ohio Republicans accommodating Trump’s authoritarian ascent to unrestrained power saying they’re fine with a presumptive Republican nominee who reposts a doctored photo showing a sitting president bound and gagged in the back of a pickup truck, who attacks the daughter of a judge presiding over one of his criminal trials provoking death threats against the young woman, who vows retribution against political opponents, the free press, and anyone who dissents, who dehumanizes families fleeing hell to find freedom in America?

Is that who Trump’s accommodators and appeasers are? Or, like Portman, are they just cowards protecting themselves in a collective moral collapse?