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I have a Charlie Kirk-inspired challenge. Prove me wrong. Congressman Pete Stauber is a traitor.

I just sculpted a hockey player knocking our nation’s capital off its pins like young Pete Stauber knocked the goal off its pins to win a division 1 hockey championship for Lake Superior State. His Lakers were invited to the Reagan White House. It may have set Pete on his path to Congress.

I suspect it was a bitter St. Lawrence fan who posted the video of Stauber’s deed. The play by play clearly described it as a penalty play. That video is what I used for my model for the young man who, some years later, would cower in the basement with the rest of Congress. They were hiding from thousands of people sicced on them by the President to stop the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election.

For me this event is simply a potent metaphor. In sports refs miss fouls or ignore them in a game’s last minute so as not to stop play.

Look closely and you can see Pete and a St. Lawrence player exchange knowing smiles as they resumed play. Them’s the breaks.

But January Sixth was not a game.  When cowering Pete crawled out of his hiding place in the real world of an attempted coup he should have been thinking about 10 generations of Americans who fought and died to protect our nation’s democracy. Maybe he was.

For a day, dozens of Republicans, including Pete, did object – for about 10 minutes. How quickly bravery can evaporate.

Because courage died, America is paying the price for the lies Pete and most Republican congressman defended once they got their marching orders. Their abetment of treason will not be forgotten, by me, by our allies, by history or God before whom Pete pledged to defend democracy.

I once put the President into snow diapers as Baby New Year. That too was a metaphor. Not content with congressional spinelessness he has repeated his lie of a stolen election a thousand times. He is actively removing historical displays in the Smithsonian that tell the true story. He is trying to silence the news and scrub the Internet. He’s helping his billionaires buy the media and they are bribing him with tens of millions. He just violated Georgia’s state sovereignty by seizing the ballots from that Republican-led state. He will find the infamous and mythological 11,779 votes he claims were cast.

In his first term as President, his staff knew right from wrong. They found a thousand ways to dissuade him from making hash out of our nation. That was then.

Today no one dares to interfere with the President no matter how demented his decisions. In fact, now surrounded by grifters who have flattered the narcissist around their little fingers, America has been left breathless at his stunning indifference to law and order. 

Claiming to remove dangerous people from the streets, he is mostly transferring felons released from prison into the hands of ICE. No Renee Goods or Alex Prettis needed to have died at Trump’s hands to send these already imprisoned convicts away. No five-year-olds wearing blue bunny hats had to be shipped alone to a faraway children’s prison to keep our borders safe.

I grieve for a nation turning its eyes from justice, law and decency in deference to the economy, jobs and inflation. Such people cannot see that Trump’s corrupt lawlessness is the chief threat to our economy.

Trust and good will are its building blocks.

A couple days ago my better half heard a loud husky Ef You, Ef You, Ef You, Ef You. It came from a car stopped in front of my hockey player – or maybe it was in front of my memorial for Renee Good.
Afterwards, my wife suggested another back story for my hockey player. Because of it I resisted painting Pete’s old #21 on the snow player’s back. Claudia imagined the player simply as a Minnesotan rushing to the nation’s shaken Capital to set it to rights. That’s appropriate. What is more Minnesotan than a hockey player?

Across America today Minnesota is being looked on as a paragon of peaceful resistance to the vile injustices of Trump’s thoughtless cruelty. 

I blame Pete Stauber. He knows better. But there are innocents who have drunk Trump’s purple Kool-Aid. If Stauber had had the courage to be honest there would not be so many of them.

My challenge stands. Prove me wrong. Pete Stauber is a traitor.

I’ll meet anyone, anywhere, in front of their chosen audience but be prepared to be eaten alive. I might even kill them with kindness.

“Not Your Usual Republican,” Harry Welty. Google him.