In denying the release of a defendant arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, a federal judge wrote that the "steady drumbeat" of ongoing lies from former President Donald Trump and his allies claiming the November election was stolen pose an ongoing threat of incitement to anti-government violence. That assessment echoes what numerous other judges have said in the cases of other defendants from the attack and its aftermath — and they're right.

Trump can spew his big lie on any forum that will have him, but silence from congressional Republicans only serves to give his lies traction. Rather than challenge him, most stand somewhere between shameful silence and active promotion of the lies. Unless that changes, a repeat of Jan. 6 could fairly be blamed not just on Trump, but on his party.

The ex-president's election-fraud mythology is so toxic that it's necessary whenever possible to restate the uncontroverted facts: Joe Biden won that election by wide popular- and electoral-vote margins. Scores of judges and local election officials, including Republicans, reviewed Trump's allegations and found them to be baseless.

The terrorist mob that invaded the Capitol two months later wasn't Black Lives Matter or Antifa; they were Trump supporters who'd been whipped into a frenzy by Trump himself. Trump implored them at a nearby rally to march to the Capitol and "show strength" as Congress certified the election results. No informed observer operating outside of Trump's delusionary bubble disputes any of this.

Among the bubble-dwellers is one Cleveland Meredith Jr., accused of texting out his plan to shoot House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on live television and hauling a trailer full of guns and ammunition to Washington the day after the siege to carry out his plan. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson last month found Meredith to be a danger to the public and ordered him kept in custody pending trial.

"The steady drumbeat that inspired defendant to take up arms has not faded away," Jackson wrote. Six months later, "the canard that the election was stolen is being repeated daily on major news outlets and from the corridors of power in state and federal government, not to mention in the near-daily fulminations of the former President."

After four years of demonstrating his willingness to endanger American democracy for self-serving purposes, Trump's continued poisoning of the well isn't surprising. But it's indefensible that most of the GOP is still going along with it — by pursuing state-level election restrictions predicated on the big lie, refusing to back an official probe of the insurrection, and purging party leadership of the few who insist on adhering to the facts. They are aligning themselves squarely on the wrong side of history. Should this Trumpian powder keg go off again, their culpability will be beyond question.

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