Nov. 21, 2025 Editor, The News-Gazette: Everyone knows what happened on January 6, 2021. Trump, still president, called on hundreds of his supporters, many armed, to assault the U.S. Capitol, seeking to prevent a required constitutional procedure from taking place. Damage was done, property destroyed, capitol police wounded, several people killed. The result was true sedition, which is incitement of rebellion against the government. Trump was guilty of sedition but n ever c onvicted. E ventually, scores of assaulters were convicted of sedition and other serious felonies.
Four years later Trump was again elected president, and one of h is fi rst official a cts was t o pardon every single person convicted of those offenses.
Trump, who has twice sworn the constitutional oath of presidential office, pays little attention to the Constitution and laws that guide most law-abiding citizens and officials here. He continues to act in dangerous and illegal ways. Because of that, several Democratic congressmen and women have publicly stressed the need for members of the military not to obey illegal orders but to follow the law and the Constitution.
Recently Trump found those statements unacceptable and publicly demanded that these members of Congress be arrested and charged with sedition, which he thinks should lead to the death penalty.
Trump has long shown that he is a hypocrite. He believes that his actions in setting in motion violence in the U.S. Capitol are acceptable, but that Democrats who call for adherence to law and the Constitution ought to be arrested and treated as criminals. In fact, what Trump did was sedition; what members of Congress did was not.
Where are the decent Republicans, members of Congress and other good citizens, who know Trump is wrong and his leadership dangerous? They need to speak out and begin acting to rein in this egotistical charlatan before he causes irreparable damage to our country. HARDIN MARION Rockbridge County
