Most of us humans have scant ability to hold in our minds things that seemed of tremendous importance not that long ago. We seldom hark back to an incident that at the time seemed momentous, only to be shoved to the back of our minds by a succession of more recent attention-grabbing events.

Thus, far too seldom do we think back on one of the most disturbing incidents in US political history: Donald Trump’s illegal scheme to destroy American democracy by attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election results and replace the duly elected president, Joe Biden, with the loser, Donald Trump.

Trump’s assault on democracy is something we must never forget.

The evidence of Trump’s criminality was such that the Department of Justice indicted him on four felony counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States and witness tampering. If brought to trial and convicted, Trump would have faced serious prison time.

The indictment cites compelling evidence of Trump’s illegal activities:

  • Using knowingly false claims of election fraud to get state legislatures and election officials to change electoral votes
  • Organizing fraudulent slates of electors to cast fraudulent votes for Trump
  • Using the Justice Department to conduct sham election crime investigations
  • Using Vice-President Pence in the certification proceeding to fraudulently alter the election results
  • Inciting a Capitol insurrection to halt the certification process of electoral votes

If Trump’s illegal scheme had worked, he would have supplanted Biden as president and American democracy would have been crushed. The election of the US president in accordance with the Constitution would have been subverted, the American people would have been denied their constitutional right to elect their president, and the losing candidate would have pulled off a bloodless coup against the US government.

The American people cannot be reminded too often or strongly that the person who attempted to destroy our democracy is now sitting in the White House. Had he not been elected president, he would have stood trial and if convicted by a jury of his peers, could very well be sitting in prison today.

Trump’s first seven months in office shows that he is as disdainful of democracy as when he attempted to subvert it in 2020. He has attacked judges who have ruled his executive orders illegal or unconstitutional, run roughshod over the Constitution and rule of law, usurped the authority of a compliant legislature, and appointed servile loyalists to head the FBI, CIA, and DOJ and do his authoritarian bidding.

Attempting to skew the 2026 midterm elections in Republicans’ favor, Trump has vowed to enact an unconstitutional executive order to end mail-in voting and pressed Texas to add five Republican-dominated election districts through gerrymandering to try and maintain a House majority.

With still a year and a half before the election, Trump will assuredly devise other schemes to try and corrupt the mid-term election process as he did the 2020 presidential election results.

We must never forget that our current president poses the greatest internal threat to American democracy of any president in history. He has already proven that he was willing to destroy our democracy to stay in power. Every day that he remains as president is a reminder that no person has ever been less deserving of the office.

So much has gone on since Trump was reelected that his vile assault on democracy in 2020 is a fading memory: his tariff wars, his outrageous lusting to acquire Greenland and make Canada our 51st state, his treacherous attacks on universities and blue states, his using his presidential power to wreak vengeance on his “enemies,” his failed claim to end Russia’s war on Ukraine, his green-lighting Israel’s genocidal slaughter of Palestinian civilians, and his transparent, pathological lying that reveals an ever-growing state of delusion.

Each of Trump’s latest outrages pushes the 2020 election treachery farther into the recesses of memory.

So what happens now that we’ve elected a democratic-smashing authoritarian president? First, we make sure that we never again elect a person whose is not 100 percent committed to protecting and preserving American democracy. Lesson learned.

Next, we do everything possible to mitigate the damage that Trump can do as president.

As patriotic Americans, we can protest regularly en masse against Trump’s ongoing attempt to turn America into an autocracy like Russia or Hungary. We can elect Democratic majorities to the House and Senate in 2026 to rein in an overreaching, power-grasping president and ensure that no onerous, anti-democratic laws are passed.

We should strongly encourage the 2026-elected Congress to impeach Trump, shortening the amount of time he has to shred our democracy. If democracy is as precious and inviolable to us as to our forefathers, we will do everything within the law to remove the democratic annihilator from the White House as soon as possible.

  • Tom Tyner is a freelance editorialist, satirist, political analyst, blogger, author and retired English instructor