If the video of George Floyd’s murder showed President Trump kneeling on Mr. Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and forty-six seconds, Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, their Republican colleagues, Fox News and perhaps even a majority of the Supreme Court, would dismiss the murder as merely Trump’s “unconventional” approach to law and order.
But the videotape makes it clear that Officer Chauvin’s conduct was deliberate and murderous. There is no other way to interpret or “spin” what the video shows. No amount of “instant replay” or “official review” will allow any other explanation of the live footage of Officer Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck as he cried out “I can’t breathe” until his voice was silenced and his body became still.
Similarly, despite all the excuses offered by Trump’s enablers and supporters for Trump’s disgraceful behavior as President, from his flood of lies, his affection for authoritarian dictators such as Putin, Erdogan, Xi and Kim Jong Un, his concerted attack on the rule of law and his violation of almost all norms of presidential conduct and basic human decency, it is no longer possible or plausible to give any credence to such excuses or the people who make them.
If the George Floyd video revealed it was Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham and Kevin McCarthy, standing next to Trump as he murdered George Floyd, then shouldn’t McConnell, Graham and McCarthy be charged for aiding and abetting, for their complicity in George Floyd’s murder?
If there is any saving grace in George Floyd’s tragic, unwarranted and deliberate murder it is that it has unmasked the horrible truth of the Trump Presidency – his deliberate and intentional effort to kill the values, ideals, principles and institutions which launched and have sustained this nation since its founding. As Trump’s former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis recently said: “We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort” of President Trump to divide the American people. “We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership….We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of the Constitution…..We need to unite around a common purpose. And it starts by guaranteeing that all of us are equal before the law.”
George Floyd deserves the “Medal of Honor” for his selfless sacrifice to the cause of freedom and in defense of the Constitution of the United States in our country’s current civil war, a war that has been waged largely by the President and his enablers against the American people. With any luck, George Floyd’s death may be Trump’s Gettysburg, signaling that the high tide of government grid-lock, division, dishonesty and distrust has finally been reached, that the tide has finally and irrevocably turned, and that the Trump presidency is on its way to the oblivion it deserves.