Former D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone believes the 2024 election would be the most consequential of his lifetime.
“The future of our democracy is at stake,” he advised HuffPost this week, when requested what he’d prefer to say to voters. “Ultimately, you, the American voter, will be the last line of defense when it comes to preserving democracy as we know it and ensuring the peaceful transfer of power. And it’s that serious.”
“I’ve been of voting age for many, many years, and every year it seems that we’re told by politicians that this election is ‘unlike any other,’” he continued. “But I’m nobody, just some average American, and I’m telling you that this election is like no other.”
Fanone, who sustained a coronary heart assault and traumatic mind damage after he was crushed and electroshocked by supporters of then-President Donald Trump on Jan. 6, 2021, spoke to HuffPost forward of the third anniversary of the Capitol riot.
He mentioned that in a number of methods, he’s come to phrases along with his expertise that day, and resolved a lot of his trauma. But he’s infuriated by Republicans’ ongoing whitewashing and lies about what came about.
“Imagine the most traumatic, or a traumatic event in your life, that reaches the level of attention that January 6 garnered,” he mentioned. “I mean, it was an international story. And spending three years trying to convince people that it actually fucking happened.”
“It’s frustrating,” he mentioned. “It’s angering. It’s perplexing.”
A Washington Post-University of Maryland ballot launched this week discovered that within the years since a December 2021 survey, the variety of Republicans who believed President Joe Biden’s election was reputable had dropped from 39% to 31%.
It additionally confirmed Republicans changing into much less prone to consider that Jan. 6 rioters have been principally violent, and extra prone to absolve Trump of duty for the assault.
Alarmingly, 1 / 4 of respondents mentioned they believed the conspiracy concept, promoted by a number of distinguished Republicans, that the FBI organized the rebel.
Fanone advised HuffPost that lies “are the source of Donald Trump’s stranglehold over his supporters.”
“Without those lies, I think that you would start to see his support erode,” he mentioned. “But there’s the whole idea that the election, the 2020 election was stolen, not just from Trump, as he says, but from his voters. That really is the source of his power.”
Trump is by far the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. But even when he weren’t, Fanone mentioned he would have “a very difficult time” voting for any Republican candidate, “unless the party itself is willing to acknowledge the role that it played” in making the Capitol assault doable and subsequently whitewashing it.
Fanone mentioned he voted for Trump in 2016, however now believes that “Republicans have become the party of insurrection.”
In Fanone’s view, Trump’s Republican rivals have largely hesitated to talk out in opposition to the quadruply indicted former president as a result of they’re afraid of him and his political energy.
“I think it’s disgraceful,” Fanone mentioned. “I think that any of those candidates who are unwilling to call out Donald Trump and MAGA for what it is don’t deserve to run for office.”
Facing 91 felony counts, together with two indictments linked to his try to overturn the 2020 election, Trump has solely intensified his election fraud lies, and has lain the groundwork to contest this 12 months’s outcomes ought to he lose.
He has additionally leaned more and more into authoritarian rhetoric and reportedly plans to implement an much more excessive agenda ought to he win a second time period, together with by utilizing the Justice Department to actual revenge on political opponents.
Fanone mentioned his personal priorities boil right down to defending democracy in 2024.
“For me, the single most important issue is democracy,” he mentioned. “And I see President Joe Biden as our best defender of democracy.”
He mentioned he doesn’t have a lot deliberate to mark the date on Saturday.
“I don’t think about my experience on January 6 on the anniversaries,” he mentioned. “I just think about where we are as a country and how far we have to go.”
