but what if he had not? ask yourself what might have happened to the united states and the american experiment, our democracy, had someone else been in that role, had kevin mccarthy been the house speaker? what if the chairman of the joints chief of staff or secretary of defense had been mike flynn, who had started for calling for trump to invoke partial martial law to enforce new elections in states that biden won? the threat of violence is no longer an abstraction. trump on thursday called the insurrection, quote, protests concerning the rigged presidential election. that's language that seems to, at least in trump's mind, justify the violence. none of this is a secret. it's all playing out right in front of us. there are two sides here, those in favor of the healthy, democratic body politic and those rooting for the man congressman gonzalez called a cancer on the country.