Na­talee Legore

“Unit­ed States democ­ra­cy is frag­ile and the will of the peo­ple should nev­er be tak­en for grant­ed.”

So said Pro­fes­sor Andy Knight, Pro­fes­sor of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions, Uni­ver­si­ty of Al­ber­ta, Ed­mon­ton, Cana­da, dur­ing an in­ter­view on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew, ahead of to­day’s in­au­gu­ra­tion of Joseph Biden as US Pres­i­dent.

On Jan­u­ary 6, sup­port­ers of out­go­ing Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump stormed Capi­tol Hill fol­low­ing weeks of un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed claims that the elec­tion had been stolen from him. Mobs of an­gry pro­tes­tors made their way to the Capi­tol on the prompt­ing of the Pres­i­dent and caused sig­nif­i­cant dam­age to the façade of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy. Five peo­ple lost their lives in the melee, in­clud­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer.

Pro­fes­sor Knight said what hap­pened on Capi­tol Hill was a clear threat to democ­ra­cy and the US Con­sti­tu­tion. He said Amer­i­ca has al­ways been seen as the bea­con of democ­ra­cy and the in­sur­rec­tion shat­tered that im­age.

Pro­fes­sor Knight said he is sat­is­fied that Trump is re­spon­si­ble for the in­sur­rec­tion and it is an im­peach­able of­fence. How­ev­er, he is not sure the US Sen­ate will get the sup­port it needs from 17 Re­pub­li­cans to vote with the De­moc­rats to con­vict the Pres­i­dent.

Re­gard­less of the out­come, Pro­fes­sor Knight be­lieves the his­toric ac­tion of hav­ing Don­ald Trump im­peached twice, will put a stain on his po­lit­i­cal ca­reer. He was quick to point out that while the im­peach­ment has stained Pres­i­dent Trump, it does not pre­vent him from run­ning for po­lit­i­cal of­fice in 2024.

Ahead of the In­au­gu­ra­tion lat­er to­day, 25,000 troops have been vet­ted and de­ployed to pro­tect the event from pos­si­ble vi­o­lence and fur­ther in­sur­rec­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to Pro­fes­sor Knight, this in­au­gu­ra­tion is a ma­jor se­cu­ri­ty chal­lenge on Capi­tol Hill be­cause some Trump sup­port­ers are pre­pared to re­turn to cause dis­rup­tion.

“To see the bea­con of democ­ra­cy per­form in this way is shame­ful,” he said.

He not­ed that some coun­tries were elat­ed by what hap­pened as they would love to see Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy fail, while friends of the world pow­er were ashamed by the events that un­fold­ed there.

Pro­fes­sor Knight said the Unit­ed States no longer has the moral au­thor­i­ty to crit­i­cise oth­er coun­tries.