One of the fundamental Christian values is that of prioritizing the pursuit of truth, as Jesus identified himself as the truth, Satan is identified as the father of lies, and not only are lying lips an abomination to the Lord, but in one of the final verdicts in the Bible in Revelation 21, we are told:

⁸ But for the cowardly, and unbelieving, and abominable, and murderers, and sexually immoral persons, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”

So pursuit of objective truth must be one of our highest values; it is to Pontius Pilate’s eternal shame that he asked the question “what is truth” to the author of life himself. But even if you aren’t a believer, what would happen to anybody in a business situation that was found to be lying? They would almost certainly be fired. Now we understand that in the heat of passions of the immediate aftermath of the election that it may be hard to come to grips with reality. Yet Mr. Trump had two months to come to grips with the outcome–that in the changed rules of this election*, he lost. Yes, he was the loser of the election. And yet he is pathologically unable to acknowledge this reality, and continues to make false claims to the great harm of our body politic. The false claim is this: that there was massive voter fraud that prevented his victory in the 2020 election. Further, he continues to implicitly threaten the Republican Party, if they won’t swear fealty to his claims:

If we don’t solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020 (which we have thoroughly and conclusively documented), Republicans will not be voting in ’22 or ’24,”

Where is any evidence that even one state would have flipped to Mr. Trump of the four he needed?** He had his chance with multiple courts prior to January 6th, and he has had the intervening year to come up with it. I don’t know of a single respectable outfit that agrees with Mr. Trump’s conclusion. Let’s remember, the spurious Arizona “audit” even confirmed a Biden win there, despite the purported Trump backing of the firm chosen.

Further, another core Christian concept is that of personal responsibility, and with responsibility comes accountability. The essence of repentance is admitting we’re wrong on our sin. Refusal to admit when we are wrong is a core character defect; if we’re unwilling to recognize our problems, we can’t fix them. Of course I think it applies to Mr. Trump, but this is also a time for self-reflection. Will we continue to tolerate and try to explain away Mr. Trump’s behavior, and play the “whataboutism” blame game of pointing out Democratic hypocrisy?*** The fact that the Democratic party is shamelessly trying to leverage this to their partisan advantage is irrelevant; at this point we must recognize that even a stopped clock is right twice per day. It is in the nation’s best interest and the Republican Party’s best interest for Mr. Trump to have no political future in the Republican Party. And the best way to have that happen is to shine the light on Mr. Trump and his behavior, since that behavior was and is driving the lie that he won the election. And his continuing influence is a cancer on the Republican Party, engendering wannabes like this here in Ohio:

This is where Mr. Pence can serve our nation well. The House Select Committee on January 6th has requested Mr. Pence meet with their committee to tell what happened. Should Mr. Pence voluntarily do this, Trumpians may well be enraged. But the sunlight of truth is the best disinfectant, and if Mr. Pence paints an unflattering picture of Mr. Trump, well, that will make it easier for more Republicans to politically disassociate from Mr. Trump. If Mr. Pence paints a favorable picture, then all of us (including me) need to fully consider that testimony in our own personal assessment of Mr. Trump’s continuing influence. Let the sun shine in. Mr. Pence, time to suit up!

* I am sympathetic to the argument that Mr. Trump still likely wins if many states election rules were not changed (in many cases in contradiction to their state laws) by judicial fiat that made it easier for people to vote. That it helped the Democrats is likely seen in two ways–first, many of the lawsuits asked for what the Democrats had tried to get in prior legislation that could not achieve through the democratic process. Politicians do not pursue policies that do not help their future electoral prospects. And the second way it helped was Mr. Trump’s foolish decision to discourage any of his voters from using the mail-in process. The refs did change the rules for this game–but both sides were allowed to play by the rules and Mr. Trump chose not to.

** Mr. “I am Tariff man” Trump would have been much closer to winning the election if libertarians would have voted for him. Sure not all libertarians are economic libertarians, but Mr. Trump (and the rest of us suffering under the Biden administration) paid the price for not knowing that politics is about addition and not subtraction.

*** I saw the teaser for Sean Hannity’s show tonight flash across the scene: his show will be all about exposing the Democrat’s hypocrisy on focusing on Jan 6th today when they were largely sympathetic to BLM riots last summer. He is of course correct (on the Democrat’s hypocrisy) and yet simultaneously a Trump sycophant, simply trying to muddy the waters to avoid discussing Mr. Trump’s role. What is emerging about Mr. Hannity’s role in that day, and what he communicated to the administration vs what he communicated to his viewers is shameful (along with Ingraham and Kilmeade). Talk about not wanting to see how the sausage is made; this is worse.