Lesbian Congresswoman Becca Balint: I'll show Trump I'm not intimidated

U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, a progressive lesbian Democrat from Vermont, is attending Donald Trump’s inauguration to show she’s not intimidated.

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“My presence at the inauguration will be my way of saying ‘I see you and I know what you’re about. And I won’t be intimidated by you,’” Balint wrote a Friday commentary piece for Courier, a news service. “It will be a way to show Americans and viewers across the world that I respect the vote of the people, unlike Trump himself. Four years on, he’s still lying about the 2020 Election. And Republican leaders in both the House and the Senate are not just complicit in these lies; they facilitated them, and they are now trapped by them.”

“I will be sitting with other members of Congress to watch as Donald Trump is sworn in as the 47th President of the United States,” she wrote. “I won’t enjoy it. In fact, I fully expect the taste of bile to linger in my mouth. But I feel I need to be there.” But, she said, her presence and that of other Democrats will be an embodiment of these words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

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Trump didn’t attend President Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021 because he refused to acknowledge that Biden won the election, she noted. “I will be there as a reminder that in our democracy we don’t only attend the peaceful transfer of power when our candidate wins,” she said.

She is aware of the threat Trump poses to democracy, and she will oppose Trump-backed policies that are bad for Americans, such as “massive tax giveaways to billionaires,” she continued. “I will face the next four years with clarity, a clear conscience, and a deep commitment to doing whatever I can, whenever and wherever I can, to shore up our delicate, ailing democracy,” she concluded. “And to do meaningful, consequential work on behalf of my constituents to make life better for them and for Americans across the nation.”

Balint is Vermont’s sole member of the U.S. House of Representatives. She is the first woman and first out LGBTQ+ person elected to that post. She is beginning her second term.