Brooks: The sore winners and gracious losers of Jan. 6, 2025

There were no riots on Jan. 6, for a change. Congress certified Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential victory on Monday without incident.

The peaceful transfer of power used to be something Americans could take for granted. But calm and civility may be things we can only expect when an election goes Donald Trump’s way.

There was never really any question that Vice President Kamala Harris would certify the results of the 2024 presidential election she lost. Every vice president in this nation’s history has done the right thing, no matter how much it hurt.

She is the third vice president in recent memory to run for president, lose, then certify the election of the candidate who beat them. Al Gore did it. Richard Nixon did it. In the hours before the certification, Harris put out a video explaining why.

“The peaceful transfer of power is one of the most fundamental principles of American democracy. As much as any other principle, it is what distinguishes our system of government from monarchy or tyranny,” she said. “This duty is a sacred obligation.”

This Jan. 6, the only mass gatherings in Washington, D.C., were crowds of gleeful residents coming together for snowball fights after a winter storm. But the Capitol was girdled in layers of new security fencing. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, chair of the Senate Rules Committee, outlined new precautions that hadn’t been necessary before Trump undermined public faith in elections.

Next time someone tries to overturn democracy, there will be hundreds more Capitol police with enough riot gear for all. Next time, they will be able to call in the National Guard themselves, without begging Trump administration officials for help.

Peaceful transitions of power aren’t something we can take for granted anymore.

Four years of distraction and spin have dulled the shock of Jan. 6, 2021. The incoming president and vice president still deny the results of the 2020 elections, and so did more than half the Republicans who ran for governor, Senate or their state’s top election posts last year. You can find plenty of people who say what happened at the Capitol that day was just a rally, not a riot, not an uprising, not an attempted coup.

But at the time, in the moment, everyone — including many Republican elected officials — recognized Jan. 6 for what it was. A riot. An assault on democracy. An attempted coup. Within a year, many had shrugged it off.

“There’s no question — none — that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. No question about it,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said at the time. Trump’s actions, he added, were “a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty.”

Four years ago, as Congress gathered to certify the results of the election he’d lost, Trump staged a rally outside, urging his supporters to march on the Capitol and stop Congress from doing its duty.

“If you don’t fight like hell,” he told the crowd at his Stop the Steal rally, “you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, beat police officers bloody, smeared their feces on the walls and hung nooses on the trees. And even after all that, two members of Minnesota’s congressional delegation — GOP Reps. Michelle Fischbach and the late Rep. Jim Hagedorn — sided with the insurrectionists and voted against certifying President Joe Biden’s election victory.

Trump has promised to reward the convicted rioters all with pardons in his first hour back in office. The events of Jan. 6, 2021, left three police officers and four people in the crowd dead.

The United States of America turns 250 next year. A republic, Ben Franklin said, if we can keep it.