Silence is complicity: Idaho’s Republicans helped allow Capitol riot to happen

What a sad day for America.

Armed rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, supporting President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election, seeking to use violence to achieve their ends.

What happened Wednesday at the Capitol was not close to a peaceful protest. This was a riot fomented by President Trump, who riled them up by feeding them lies about our election system.

And our congressmen from Idaho, Sen. Mike Crapo, Sen. Jim Risch, Rep. Mike Simpson and Rep. Russ Fulcher, did nothing to stop it from happening.

Crapo and Risch said and did nothing to push back against Trump’s dangerous lies leading up to Wednesday’s violence. Simpson and Fulcher went even further, signing up for a ridiculous lawsuit filed by Texas seeking to refute election results in another state. Fulcher then went a step further, announcing that he would join a band of Republican lawmakers objecting to the Electoral College results.

Silence is complicity, and the silence of Crapo, Risch, Simpson and Fulcher let us go down this path.

When you don’t say, “No, this is not who we are, this is not right, this is not America,” when you are silent as the lies and disinformation spread, and you allow the paranoia and conspiracy to grow, then this is what you get.

You get snipers on rooftops of the Capitol.

You get people who are shot and killed.

You get mobs breaking windows and doors, and breaking into the U.S. Capitol.

You get outnumbered police officers and security guards pointing guns at the doors of the U.S. Senate chambers.

This is the America you allowed to be created. Sens. Crapo and Risch, Reps. Simpson and Fulcher, you allowed this to happen, because you said nothing.

This is not the America anyone was taught to believe in, where you settle disagreements peacefully, and you believe in our system of fair elections — and you accept the legitimate results, even if you don’t like them and your candidate lost.

When you are unwilling to stand up against the president’s threats, lies, misinformation, disinformation, instigation and bullying, this is the result.

Instead of having a backbone to stand up for the system, you stood by an authoritarian leader who acts like a dictator. In the end, violence and intimidation are the only tools left for a dictator who has been defeated.

By your acquiescence and appeasement along the way, you allowed this to happen.

As a harbinger, we’ve seen armed protests over the past year at the Idaho Statehouse, at the homes of public officials in Boise and Meridian, even a plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan. Now, we are seeing an angry mob flood the People’s House, ignoring the rule of law and the rules of decency.

America has become something unrecognizable to most of us.

And Idaho’s delegation let it happen — by being silent, by not standing up for truth and for our country. This is the end game that many of us feared and warned you about. Yet, you did nothing.

In September, when Trump wouldn’t commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he lost the election, you said nothing.

“There will be a peaceful transfer of power,” Simpson told this editorial board at the time.

But then he spent several minutes talking about concerns about mail-in ballots and said he has “a friend who knows a person in California” who received a ballot even though they haven’t lived there in 20 years. Still, he assured us that there would be a peaceful transfer of power.

“But once the determination has been made, whether courts have to make decisions on what’s valid, and what’s not valid, and so forth and so on, the president will, it will be a peaceful transfer of power,” Simpson said. “There’s no, there’s not a doubt in my mind about that.”

There should have been. Even Simpson seemed to know something wasn’t quite right.

“But I do question whether the public’s gonna accept the fairness of the election,” he added. “Just because we’re so split. If Trump wins, I think you’re gonna see huge protests across this country continue, and vice versa. So I am worried about it. But I, you know, Trump is not going to burrow himself up in the White House, and say, ‘Hey, come and get me.’ It will be a peaceful transfer of power.”

At best, you could say Simpson was naive in how much damage Trump was doing, chuckling about “his tweets.”

“I originally wasn’t a fan of President Trump,” he told this board. “I didn’t like the tweets. And I still don’t like a lot of the tweets, or wish he would do a lot less of it and stuff because he says some things that are sometimes, you just kind of shake your head. But then a lot of the, I look past the tweets and look at the results of the policies that he’s enacted, and I agree with many of the policies enacted.”

That’s it in a nutshell, looking past who Trump is to get tax cuts and fewer regulations, looking the other way from those tweets that have been fanning these flames for the past four years, right up to Wednesday’s breaking point.

No peaceful transfer of power, as Simpson promised.

Fulcher has been even more complicit, siding with Trump and talking about “a parallel government” — avoiding the words “Deep State” — to explain why Trump, ever playing the victim, has been so relentlessly attacked.

Risch, of course, has never criticized Trump, defending him even when the Senate Intelligence Committee, on which he sits, issued a report showing that Trump’s campaign officials accepted and encouraged help from Russian government officials.

Crapo has just been silent. The Idaho Statesman reached out to Crapo, Risch and Simpson on Tuesday, asking for comment on certifying the Electoral College results and on a Trump phone call that was leaked over the weekend, during which he asked the Georgia secretary of state to “find” enough votes for Trump to be declared the winner.

Nothing from any of them. No statement defending the election results. No comment condemning the president’s abhorrent actions. No press release congratulating President-elect Biden.

Silence is complicity.

Wednesday’s outrageous violence and assault on our system of governance are what happens when you say and do nothing to prevent it.

We got here, in part, because Republicans like Crapo, Risch, Simpson and Fulcher took the side of Trump and not the side of America.

This story was originally published January 6, 2021 at 4:11 PM.