In the follow-up to their 2018 bestseller How Democracies Die, authors Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky write about three rules political parties must follow: accept the results of fair elections, reject the use of violence to gain power and cut ties with extremists.

In the aftermath of the 2020 election, they write, only one American political party violated all three.

Saturday marks the third anniversary of the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, and Donald Trump, the former president, is by far the leading Republican candidate in 2024. He still refuses to acknowledge his earlier loss to President Biden. Rather than censure the rioters, he has suggested he would pardon some of those convicted of violent crimes. Instead of distancing himself from extremists, he welcomes them to his rallies and calls them patriots.

And Trump is now supported by many of the Republican leaders who fled for their lives and hid from the rioters, even some who had condemned Trump. Several top Republican Party leaders have supported his candidacy.

The support for Trump starkly highlights the divisions in the aftermath of the deadly storming of the Capitol and frames the question of whose definition of governance will prevail, and whether democracy will prevail at all.

If our political leaders do not stand up in defense of democracy, our democracy will not be defended,” said Levitsky, one of the Harvard professors whose new book is Tyranny of the Minority.

“There is no country in the world, no country on earth in history, where the politicians have abandoned democracy, but the institutions have survived,” he told the Associated Press. People must defend democracy.

The third anniversary of the January 6 attack comes during the most frenetic period in American politics in at least a generation, with Congress barely able to keep up with the basics of governing and the start of presidential nominating contests little more than a week away. .

Trump’s continued false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, which have been dismissed in at least 60 lawsuits, every state election certification and by the former president’s former attorney general, continue to animate the presidential race as he eyes a rematch with Biden has.

Instead, Trump now faces more than 90 criminal charges in federal counsel and state courts, including the federal indictment filed by special Jack Smith, accusing Trump of conspiring to defraud the US in the election.

Biden, speaking near Pennsylvania’s Valley Forge on Friday, commemorated Jan. 6, saying that on that day we almost lost that America had lost everything.

As Congress returned that evening to certify the election results and show that world democracy was still standing, Biden said Trump is now trying to change the narrative of what happened that day, calling the rioters patriots and promising them a pardon to provide. And he said some Republicans in Congress were complicit.

When the attack happened on Jan. 6, there was no doubt about the truth, Biden said. Now these MAGA voices, who know the truth about Trump and January 6, have abandoned the truth and democracy.

In a quieter Capitol, without many ceremonies planned for Saturday, it will be the last time the anniversary will pass before Congress is called again on January 6, 2025 to certify the results of the presidential election-Democracy resubmitted to the presidential elections, to certify. test.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, the Maryland Democrat who led Trump’s impeachment over the insurrection, said Biden’s 306-232 election victory in 2020 remains the hard, inescapable and irrefutable fact that Donald Trump and his followers have been unable to accept this day.

Raskin envisions a time when there will be a Capitol exhibit and tours for visitors to commemorate what happened on January 6, 2021. Five people died during the riot and immediate aftermath, including Trump supporter Ashli ​​Babbitt, who was shot and killed by police.

All told, 140 police officers were injured during the Capitol siege, including U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who later died. Several others later died by suicide.

One officer, Harry Dunn, has announced he is running for Congress to “make sure this never happens again.”

Trump’s decision to reject the results of the 2020 election marked the only time Americans have not witnessed the peaceful transfer of presidential power, a hallmark of American democracy.

The U.S. Capitol hangs a giant portrait of George Washington resigning from his military commission, a symbol of voluntarily relinquishing power, a move considered breathtaking at the time. He was later elected the first American president.

Trump opened his first rally of his 2024 presidential campaign with a popular recording of the J6 Prison Choir riot defendants singing The Star-Spangled Banner, recorded over a phone line from the prison, interspersed with Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

More than 1,200 people have been charged in the riot, with nearly 900 convicted, including leaders of the extremist groups Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who are serving long prison terms for seditious conspiracy.

Trump took the January 6 defendants hostage and said there was so much love at the Stop the Steal rally he held at the White House that day before encouraging the crowd to march down Pennsylvania Avenue, assuring that he was with them would be in the Capitol. although he never became a member.

Trump allies scoff at the January 6 story that has emerged. Mike Davis, a Trump ally who is sometimes mentioned as a future attorney general, has derided Democrats and others for making Jan. 6 a religious holiday.

Republican Kevin McCarthy, who would later become speaker of the House of Representatives, called January 6 the saddest day he ever had in Congress. But McCarthy

(R-Bakersfield)

retired last month

And

he supported Trump for president and said he would consider joining his cabinet.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has said he will support anyone who becomes the Republican Party’s nominee, despite a scathing speech at the time in which he called Trump’s actions shameful and said the rioters had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on earth because he was angry that he had lost an election.

Asked about Trump’s second-term agenda, Republican lawmakers dismissed his admission that he would be a dictator on day one.

He’s joking, said Trump ally Byron Donalds (R-Fla.).

Just bravado, said Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.). There are still checks and balances.

Levitsky said when he and his colleague wrote their earlier book, they believed Republicans in Congress would be a bulwark against Trump.

But now that so many of Trump’s opponents have retired or been voted out of office, we were far less pessimistic than we are now.