Let’s pause to consider what the Republican party’s posture means. They are rallying around a man who attempted to stage a coup; a man who used lies, intimidation, bullying, and eventually violence to try to retain office after his defeat. If nothing did it quite so thoroughly before, the past week has demonstrated beyond doubt that the Republican party is a threat to democracy.

Even now, the former president is playing the part of Mafia don. Through an intermediary, he apparently contacted Attorney General Merrick Garland saying, “The country is on fire. What can I do to reduce the heat?” Trump’s lackeys are portraying this as high-minded patriotism. “Trump will do whatever he can to help the country” read a Fox headline. Just the opposite.

Just as he did on January 6, when he rebuked a frightened McCarthy with the comment,“Well, Kevin, I guess they’re more upset about the election than you are,” Trump is using the grass-roots anger he stoked as a cudgel. The country is not, in fact, on fire, though some Trump zealots have threatened the FBI with a dirty bomb, crashed a car into a Capitol barricade, and opened fire on an FBI field office. That suits Trump. The power to incite violence is something a lost election has not removed from him.