Lawrence: The Trump presidency is collapsing like the Berlin Wall collapsed

Well, what a week it has been in the madness of Donald Trump, the decline and fall of Donald Trump, with him tonight now calling for the execution of members of Congress, the first president of the United States to call for members of Congress to be put to death. The American news media has been so overwhelmed by Donald Trump since his emergence on the political stage that the New York Times, which continues to do great work in covering Donald Trump and the world, has lost its perspective on the enormity of what Donald Trump decided to say today about members of Congress saying something that he says is, quote, punishable

by death. Had any other president of the United States ever said anything like it, the New York Times would have a six-inch headline about it and a front page devoted entirely to that madness and the reaction to that madness. And tonight it's not even close to the lead story in the New York Times. It is impossible to make too much of this story.

And the only way to try to reduce the historic and moral and legal importance of what Donald Trump said is to internalize the notion that Donald Trump's words do not matter. And the American news media has done that. And they have done it for exactly one president. The old rules will come roaring back as soon as Donald Trump isn't president anymore. The next Democratic president better be prepared for the New York Times and the rest of the

news media to scream attention to any phrasing on any subject by a Democratic president that they think is imperfect. A week ago, Donald Trump had one member of Congress in the basement of the White House turning the Situation Room into a police interrogation room with the top cop in the country, Donald Trump's Attorney General, and others in the room trying to get one member of Congress to confess that she was wrong to sign that discharge petition in the House

of Representatives, signed mostly by Democrats, to force the release of the Epstein files. That's what Donald Trump was trying to do one week ago, not punish members of Congress by death, but just change one mind, one Republican mind. And he failed. And his attorney general failed. And Congresswoman Lauren Boebert did the honorable thing and stared back at the most powerful law enforcement official in the country and the president she has been so loyal to and said no. If she had said yes, if she had gone back to the House

representatives and taken her signature off that discharge petition then that bill never would have come to a vote. That's all Donald Trump had to do. That's how close he came. He just had to convince one Republican to take her name off that discharge petition. And Donald Trump, a week ago, wasn't powerful enough to do that. He wasn't powerful enough to force one Republican to bend to his will. And that's when we saw the first real crack in the Trump wall, in the Congress.

The Trump wall that forbids Republicans from ever voting with Democrats on anything. Never mind something that's personally important to Donald Trump, which is to continue to hide the details of his friendship with the child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, who said he was Donald Trump's closest friend for 10 years. There has been no more important vote in Donald Trump's presidency than the vote that was about him and his involvement with Jeffrey Epstein.

And all Donald Trump had to do to prevent that vote was to convince one Republican woman to take her name off that list, take her signature off that list, and Donald Trump couldn't do that. That was inconceivable just days before. It seemed impossible to imagine that Donald Trump, when he really needed a Republican member of the House to do what he wanted, that he wouldn't be able to convince that Republican. It's impossible to see the weakness of a dictatorship until defiance exposes that weakness.

The collapse of the Trump dictatorship in the Congress, the collapse of the Trump wall in the House of Representatives, and the Trump wall down the center aisle of the United States Senate, the Trump wall that prevented Republicans from ever voting with Democrats, the collapse of that wall happened as dramatically and quickly as the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, after 29 years of people being shot in the back, trying to climb over that wall to escape East Berlin,

murdered by a Soviet-controlled dictatorship. Suddenly, it was all over. And a week before, no one saw it coming.

Good evening.

Live from the Berlin Wall on the most historic night in this wall's history. What you see behind me is a celebration of this new policy announced today by the East German government that now for the first time since the wall was erected in 1961 people will be able to move through freely. This crowd has gathered here tonight spontaneously from the East German side. They have been training water cannon as you can see on some of

the celebrants but it doesn't seem to make much difference. NBC News Tom Brokaw was the only American news reporter there on November 9, 1989. The CIA didn't predict that. The people imprisoned in East Germany rose up in massive numbers and began pouring through the checkpoints where they used to be murdered for taking too many steps toward that wall. And by the time Tom Brokaw was there, 20,000 people had rushed through that checkpoint. And as people climbed to the top of the Berlin Wall that night, and the pathetic water cannons

from the dictatorship side of the wall sprayed on them, those protesters mocked the wall. They mocked the deadly fearsomeness of that wall. They instantly turned that wall of death into a joke. And then East and West Germans went to work with their own hands and tore it down. No government tore down that wall. No politician tore down that wall.

The people tore down that wall. Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell's victims, almost all of whom are now survivors, tore down the Trump wall in the House and the Senate. And we watched them do it. And a week before the unanimous vote against Donald Trump, no one, no one saw it coming.

Just like no one saw the collapse of the Berlin Wall coming a week before it fell. The collapse of the Berlin Wall was the collapse of the Soviet Union itself. A year later, the Soviet Union was tottering. And two years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Soviet Union was gone. Is that where we are tonight? We know Donald Trump will be gone in three years.

But will the people tear down Trumpism before that? A year after the unanimous vote in the House of Representatives and the Senate against Donald Trump, voters will go to the polls in this country to decide how many Trump supporters they want in the House and how many in the Senate and how many opponents of Donald Trump they want in the House and in the Senate. No one knew in that week when the Berlin Wall collapsed, the Soviet Union was then going

to collapse. And that's where we are tonight. We don't know what will happen next year. But now we know what's possible. We've seen the collapse of the Trump wall in Congress, and we know that Donald Trump is weaker than he has ever been as president.

And it may be that we are a year away from Donald Trump coming under the full control of a Democratic House of Representatives and a Democratic United States Senate, and that would bring Trumpism to an end. The Congress can fully control Donald Trump's madness, but the Republican Congress so far refuses to do that. A Democratic Congress will control Donald Trump.

A Democratic Congress will investigate Donald Trump and everyone working for him, and they all know it. And so, a week after trying and failing to convince one Republican member of Congress to change her mind, Donald Trump turns to threatening death for six Democratic members of Congress because they said this.

Like us, you all swore an oath to protect and defend this Constitution.

Right now, the threats to our Constitution aren't just coming from

abroad, but from right here at home. Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal

orders. You can refuse illegal orders. You can refuse illegal orders.

You must refuse illegal orders.

No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution.

We know this is hard and that it's a difficult time to be a public servant.

But whether you're serving in the CIA,

the Army,

or Navy,

the Air Force,

your vigilance is critical.

And know that we have your back.

Because now, more than ever,

the American people need you.

We need you to stand up for our laws,

our Constitution, and who we are as Americans.

Don't give up.

Don't give up.

Don't give up the ship.

At 9.08 a.m. today, Donald Trump wrote his first lies about what you just heard. And please remember that everything I report to you that Donald Trump said about this is a lie. He said, it's called seditious behavior at the highest level. Each one of these traitors to our country should be arrested and put on trial. Their words cannot be allowed to stand.

We won't have a country anymore, three exclamation points, an example must be set. There is nothing seditious about it. The only logic of Donald Trump's statement is that he wants to be able to issue illegal orders, and he wants the American military to follow his illegal orders.

It is impossible for anyone who understands the English language American military to follow his illegal orders. It is impossible for anyone who understands the English language and the law to disagree with a single word that any of those members of Congress said. And everyone today who has objected to what they said has left out the fact that they are all referring only to illegal orders. 12 minutes later, Donald Trump wrote, this is really bad and dangerous to our country.

Their words cannot be allowed to stand seditious behavior from traders, lock them up, question mark. Now, no, they will never be locked up. They will never be charged. There is nothing to investigate. Every word they said is. There is nothing to investigate. Every word they said is true and is legally correct. And then an hour later, Donald Trump said, seditious behavior, punishable by death. And then an hour later, Donald Trump said, seditious behavior, punishable by death.

To which Senator Chuck Schumer said this.