In an appearance on Fox News just hours before the impeachment trial began on Tuesday, Utah Sen. Mike Lee suggested that certain politicians should be given a “mulligan” for saying things they might not really have meant to say.
“Look,” he said. “Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone is entitled to a mulligan once in a while.”
(For those who don’t know what a “mulligan” is, it’s the informal practice in golf of giving someone another shot after a poor swing.)
I believe in mulligans — both in golf and in life. It’s true that we all make mistakes, that we all hope for second chances, that we all need mercy. And we all sometimes say dumb things off the cuff that we shouldn’t necessarily be held accountable for.
Lee has clarified that he was referring specifically to the Democrats whose video clips Fox had just shown him and not to Donald Trump in his remarks. That’s good, because Trump definitely does not deserve a mulligan.
Trump’s persistent inflammatory comments and tweets over many months were no mere slips of the tongue (or thumb). They were deliberate efforts to rile his supporters by first casting doubt on the security of our free and fair elections and then by continuing to perpetuate the lie that the election had been stolen.
Trump incited the violent insurrection of Jan. 6 for his own self-serving purposes with cold-hearted and calculated cunning. People died in that unimaginably horrific attack on our Capitol. The sacred temple of our democracy was breached by a violent, foul-mouthed, Trump-flag carrying mob intent on obeying their “boss.”
Video footage of the insurrection captured indisputable evidence of this.
“You’re outnumbered,” one of the rioters shouted at Capitol police officers during the attack. “There’s a f------ million of us out there, and we are listening to Trump.”
Trump has gotten a plethora of mulligans from his supporters these past few years. He got a mulligan in July of 2016 after he openly and cruelly mocked a disabled reporter. Incomprehensibly, he even got a mulligan after the release of the filthy, misogynistic Access Hollywood tapes just weeks before the 2016 election. He got a mulligan after complaining about immigrants coming to the U.S. from “s---hole countries”; after referring to Mexican immigrants as “drug dealers, criminals, rapists”; and after issuing the unspeakably inhumane zero-tolerance policy at the southern border that resulted in the separation of thousands of innocent children from their families.
He got a mulligan after refusing to condemn white supremacist groups during a presidential debate and instead telling the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.” He got a mulligan after every one of the more than 30,000 documented lies that he told over the course of his presidency. He even got a mulligan for his completely inept handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But for this — for inciting this attack on not only our Capitol but on our very Constitution and our sacred democratic institutions and processes? For this, there must be no mulligan. And Lee knows this. He can hide behind the flimsy argument that convicting an impeached president who is no longer in office is unconstitutional (though over 140 of the nation’s top constitutional lawyers disagree). But he knows that Trump crossed an indefensible line and must be held to account.
A sitting president who deliberately defiles his sacred oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” deserves no mulligan. And I call upon Sen. Lee, a man who I believe is a good man who has temporarily forgotten who he is and what he truly believes, to now honor his own oath in this impeachment trial to do impartial justice, so help him God.
It’s not too late for you, Sen. Lee. As your constituent, I’m willing to give you this mulligan.
Sharlee Mullins Glenn
Sharlee Mullins Glenn, Pleasant Grove, is a writer, teacher, community organizer and an accidental activist. She currently sits on the advisory board of Brigham Young University’s Civic Engagement program. The thoughts expressed here are her own.