Today is Sunday, July 10, 2022. For those of you who are curious as to why I didn’t file an entry yesterday, I will satisfy your curiosity with the reason I didn’t write one. It was simple: I was away for the day with Elliot and our friend “Mark” in Lambertville, New Jersey. We didn’t return home until way past 10:30 p.m. We were away for almost 12 hours. We came home quite tired but unbruised. Elliot, fortunately, did the driving. We picked Mark up around 11 and we had breakfast in Jersey City at Beechwood Cafe. Then we made our way to scenic Lambertville and spent most of the day there, before crossing the bridge into New Hope, Pennsylvania. In Lambertville, we had coffee and muffins at a local coffee house. We walked to Panoply Books, a local bookstore, where I picked up Colton Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, in large print as a concession to my advancing age. It was only $5. We also frequented the various antique stores that dotted the commercial thoroughfare. When I went up to pay for the book, I asked the owner about the name of the former bookstore across the street and the time when it had closed. The older gentleman said the name of the bookstore was called the Phoenix; I made the bad pun that it seemed not to rise at this time. I learned that the bookstore closed about 6 years ago.

We decided to have dinner in Easton, at Porter’s Pub, on 700 Northampton Street. We knew of this restaurant because of our affiliation with “Ralph,” Elliot’s former student in middle school who now lives in Easton with his family. He has taken us to this rustic but unprepossessing restaurant that serves hearty pub fare on several occasions. The casual dining establishment has original stone and brick walls that were built in 1833, a mahogany bar, and flat-screen TVs.

Finally, there is one lone Republican who is talking sense in a post-Trumpian world, Governor Chris Sununu (R-NH), who stated in an appearance before Jake Tapper this morning, on State of the Union, that there is no room on the ballot for other repugnican candidates who run for office pushing Dumpf’s sordid election lies. He claimed that running on the “Big Lie” is disqualifying in his mind. This interview was covered in an online RawStory article by Tom Boggioni entitled “GOP governor claims he would ‘disqualify’ fellow Republican candidates for pushing Trump’s election lies.”

In the long-ranging interview with the rumored presidential candidate for 2024, Tapper listed the unqualified candidates now running for governor who would qualify to be disqualified for their allegiance to Dumpf and to the “Big Lie”: Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Darren Bailey in Illinois. He asked Sununu if that would be “disqualifying?”

The governor of New Hampshire responded, “Well, if they were on the ballot in my state, I would disqualify them.” Sununu replied to Tapper’s question without pausing before laughing and adding, “You just picked three pretty interesting individuals. They all do happen to be running for governor.” (Please note the article doesn’t list the third candidate here, so it’s not my error here; it’s the article’s omission.)

Sununu then mused about what would drive voters to the polls, which might not include these candidates’ obvious grounds for disqualification, but “gas prices, inflation, housing prices and the lack of housing and all of this sort of thing.” He concluded, “Those are the things that are going to be driving folks to the polls.” Let’s just hope that more than just these bread-and-butter issues will compel a large percentage of voters to oust repugnicans during the midterms, especially when a bedrock conservative Supreme Court just overturned a woman’s right to secure an abortion for any reason. Let’s hope that anger will propel most voters to vote Democratic in November 2022.

Today a forceful op-ed was published in The New York Times by United States Capitol Police Sergeant Aquilino Gonell who nearly lost his life in the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot fomented by the former president. An overview of that editorial is provided by an online piece for AlterNet by Brandon Gage entitled ‘He betrayed his oath’: Capitol Police sergeant unloads on Donald Trump in powerful editorial.”

In his editorial, Gonell demanded that Dumpf be held accountable for having “betrayed” him and his uniformed brethren and that Dumpf should never again be permitted to hold elected office. I’ve been saying this for a long time already.

The testimony of ex-White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson ushered in a painful reliving of that day’s events for Gonell. He writes that it was important for him to be in the committee room on June 28 when Hutchinson delivered her eye-popping testimony. Gonell writes, “Although I experienced firsthand the brutal onslaught of the insurrectionists, I was shocked to hear Ms. Hutchinson explain the extent to which former President Donald Trump incited the people who almost killed me.”

The immigrant from the Dominican Republic expounds on his background, stating that he is a U.S. Army veteran and a sergeant who has worked on the force for 16 years, but has never witnessed anything like the January 6 attack – “even in combat in Iraqi.” He indicates that he was sure he was going to die that day by being trampled upon by Dumpf’s hordes of misguided supporters “who were trying to stop the official transfer of power on his behalf.”

The editorial goes on to say that Gonell was found dumbfounded by the revelation that Dumpf did nothing to stop the marauding mob for hours, according to Hutchinson. He acknowledges that he doesn’t know what part of Hutchinson’s testimony enraged him the most: that Dumpf wanted to be driven to the Capitol to lead the vicious riot, that he’d spurred his supporters on knowing they were armed, or that he ignored some of his advisers and even his own daughter who told him to call it off, allegedly grappling with his own Secret Service agent after he refused to let the president be driven there. What particularly rankles the former Capitol Police sergeant even more is Dumpf telling the rioters that “We love you; you are very special” after they criminally assaulted his colleagues and him while trying to bring down the U.S. government.

The inaction on the part of Dumpf toward stopping the siege, to Gonell, was a death warrant. Gonell goes on to say that he was trying to hold the marauders at bay with only about 60 members of his team, while the size of the mob was later estimated to be 10,000 strong.

The scene at the Capitol, according to Gonell, “was like a medieval battleground.” He indicates that his right foot and left shoulder were so damaged in the melee that he needed multiple surgeries to repair them. His head was hit with such force with a pipe that if it were not for his wearing a helmet, he would have likely sustained brain damage, no doubt. The fallout from that day still resonates with Gonell and his family.

Gonell writes that he he has spent a year and a half in physical therapy for chronic pain that will never go away, he has been told. His young son almost lost his father and his wife had to drop out of medical school, “owing to the stress and the demands of my ongoing recovery.” The battle-scarred sergeant who recently passed the lieutenant’s test, but was told by his doctors that he shouldn’t work with the police force anymore because of the emotional and physical damage he has sustained as a result of the January 6 siege, was then unambiguous in his passionate conclusion, “The enabling of Mr. Trump needs to stop now. He should not only be banned from running for any other government office, he should never be allowed near the White House again. I believe he betrayed his oath to defend the Constitution, and it was to the detriment of me, my colleagues, and all Americans, whom he was supposed to protect.” Nothing else should be said! For the sake of Mr. Gonell’s peace of mind and for the country’s peace of mind, let’s hope he gets his wish.

Have a good week. As a reminder, my last blog for almost two weeks will be this Wednesday.

Stay safe and be well.