Rep. David Joyce (R-OH), appearing on a Sunday TV show, “repeatedly refused” to criticize Trump for saying the Constitution should be “terminated” to return him to power.
Instead, he said he’ll “fall in behind” whoever the GOP nominates in 2024, and added that “he thought Americans did not want to look back to the 2020 election, the subject of Trump’s lies about electoral fraud and demand for extra-constitutional action,” the Guardian reported (read story here).
The Guardian as a “leader of moderate Republicans in the US House.” He’s nothing of the sort; he’s a Trump apologist, and he’s full of crap.
Joyce, 65, who never served in the military, was elected to Congress in 2012 after a 29-year career in criminal law. After law school, he was a public defender for 6 years, then a prosecutor for 23 years, winning convictions against a serial killer and a school shooter (see bio here).
In Congress, he voted twice against impeaching Trump, for establishing the Jan. 6 commission, and declined to vote to censure fellow GOP Rep. Paul Gosar (TX) for violent messaging.
Trump’s attempt to extort political dirt on Biden from Ukraine by holding up military aid approved by Congress was wrong, any civilian who did something similar would be prosecuted and go to prison, and it also was contemptuous of Congress’ policy to aid Ukraine. Why anyone would think that was okay is beyond me.
As serious as that was, Trump’s attempt to overthrow American democracy was far worse. No act by any president in American history was more deserving of impeachment, but Joyce again voted “no.” If he once had a moral compass, he must’ve dropped it in the woods.
The 2020 election is over, but the reckoning is not. A Pew Research poll in March 2021 found that 81% of Americans wanted the Capitol rioters brought to justice (see story here). In June 2022, an ABC News poll found that 58% of Americans thought Trump should be prosecuted for his role in the insurrection (see story here). I don’t know where Joyce gets his information; I think he’s talking through his hat.
Radical Republicans would love to bury the whole episode. Joyce has planted himself in that camp. He just said we should forget the whole thing: The attack on democracy, and everything that Trump’s lies have stirred up. He’s saying it doesn’t matter that Trump led a conspiracy to violate the rights of 81,283,501 Americans to choose Biden as their president.
That’s extremism, not moderation. After spending nearly 30 years in the criminal law system, Joyce can’t plead that he doesn’t know right from wrong. What he’s telling us is that in politics, it doesn’t matter, only your party getting its way does. That makes him a moral midget, even by politician standards.
Photo below: Really? Read that story here.
