Month: January 2021

There’s a very good chance that he did:

President Donald Trump’s deep-diving social media operation would have made him aware that plans for his supporters to try to storm and occupy the US Capitol were in the works long before he took to the stage at last week’s “Save America” rally, former campaign and White House officials say.  

In the months leading up to Twitter executives banning him from using his preferred social media platform, the president’s nearly 90 million followers were on the receiving end of a firehose of content from conspiracy theorists, white nationalists, and adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory. Especially after his loss to President-elect Joe Biden, Trump’s feed was a consistent source of retweets for accounts promoting various baseless theories which purported to explain his failure to win re-election as the work of a shadowy cabal.

Such synergies played a major role in bring together the Washington DC riots that shocked the world on 6 January, according to Jared Holt, a visiting research fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab who tracks far-right extremists and propaganda.

“A big reason that a lot of extremist groups and individuals were present on the ground on Wednesday… [is] that for two months, President Trump’s social media feeds were echoing the same kind, if not the exact same disinformation that animates these extremist movements,” Holt said.

Much of those efforts to curate what was a steady stream of disinformation that experts say radicalized many of his followers was the work of one of the few remaining 2016 campaign veterans still in Trump’s orbit: Dan Scavino Jr, the onetime Trump golf caddy who now serves as the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications.

According to one person with knowledge of the relevant period of Trump’s life and the events therein, Scavino was never really in Trump’s inner circle until 2015, when he offered to handle the reality TV star-turned-presidential candidate’s social media presence.

[…]

… Scavino occupied a rarefied place in the president’s orbit as one of the only people with access to what was once the most powerful Twitter account in the world, a megaphone which could change the world’s conversations in 280 characters or less.

“He’s the president’s online eyes and ears,” said one former White House staffer, who described Scavino’s work curating Trump’s personal Twitter feed as “like a one-man band” even though he also sat atop the organizational chart of the Trump administration’s social media team.

That team, another former White House and Trump campaign official said, has “their fingers on the pulse of any and everything that is unfolding [online] in Trumpworld.”

The ex-White House and campaign insider, who has known both Scavino and the president for years, said there was no way that Scavino and the Trump social media operation would not have been aware of plans circulating online to storm the Capitol. That’s because the operation closely monitored the web’s darkest corners, ranging from mainstream sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit, to fringe message boards like 4chan and 8chan (now called 8kun) to TheDonald.win, an offshoot from a banned Reddit community dedicated to rabidly supporting all things Trump.  

“He has a full staff that supports his efforts, so he has a full digital team at the White House, a full digital team at the RNC… and the PACs, and don’t forget the Trump family still has on staff digital folks that he trained…. so he has at his disposal 18 to 22 people to work with him,” they explained.

Holt, the online extremism researcher, noted that it is unlikely that Trumpworlders who curate the president’s feeds could go looking for the sort of content they routinely promoted and at the same time remain unaware of plans for last week’s riot.

“If they are in these communities. I don’t know how they could have missed this chatter. It was all over the place,” he said.

The former White House and campaign official, who has known the president and many in his inner circle for years, said Scavino “has the president’s ear” and as such would undoubtedly have passed what he was learning online.

If this is true then it means Trump gave that speech knowing very well what was planned at the Capitol. His incitement was obvious. But they are even worse in light of this.

“It’s just not okay. It’s not okay what we’re doing to each other.
These families should not be going through this. No family should be going through this.” pic.twitter.com/iGVUdjGgYF

— Kai Kupferschmidt (@kakape) January 12, 2021

I know we are not allowed to shame anti-maskers and people who are screaming that the virus is a hoax because they just see things differently and shaming doesn’t help anything etc, etc. But really, anyone who isn’t doing that bare minimum to protect other people from this disease, which they may very well be shedding without knowing it, should be ashamed. Very ashamed.

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A conservative Republican staffer on the House Armed Services Committee resigned today and his letter is worth sharing since it shows what traditional conservatives could be saying today if they had any integrity:

Ranking Member Rogers and Members of the House Armed Services Committee,

All who serve this nation swear an oath to defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same. Republican members of the House Armed Services Committee have led Congressional efforts to defend the nation and its Constitutional principles from foreign enemies since the establishment of the committee.

Year after year, under Republican and Democratic Chairs, the committee has set aside factious contemporary events in the name of national defense. This is a legacy that I am extremely proud to have supported.

The sad, incontrovertible truth is that the people who laid siege to the Capitol were and continue to be domestic enemies of the Constitution of the United States. A poisonous lie that the election was illegitimate and should be overturned inspired so called “patriots” to share common cause with white supremacists, neo-Nazis and conspiracy theorists to attack the seat of American government.

Anyone who watched those horrible hours unfold should have been galvanized to rebuke these insurrectionists in the strongest terms. Instead, some members whom I believed to be leaders in the defense of the nation chose to put political theater ahead of the defense of the Constitution and the Republic.

The decision to vote to set aside legitimate electors harmed the ability of every service member, intelligence officer, and diplomat to defend the nation and advance American interests. How are they to effectively defend American democratic ideals when the entire world saw so many member disregard those same ideals for cynical political purposes?

Regardless of the motivations behind the vote, these members bear the consequences that the men and women in harm’s way will face for many years to come. I cannot imagine any series of events more damaging to the already fragile US led post-World War II order that has brought more peace and prosperity to the world than at any other time in history. These self-inflicted wounds are a gift to autocrats who seek a diminished America and are fundamentally inconsistent with the responsibility to provide for the common defense.

Foreign intelligence services were likely on the scene and will certainly capitalize on the crisis it has caused – our people will pay a steep price. Congressional enablers of this mob have made future foreign conflict more likely, not less.

Going forward, the Committee must play a role in the accounting of this horrible chapter in our history. It is very disturbing that currently serving members of the armed forces participated in this. It is vitally important that the Committee hold the Department of Defense accountable for bringing an participants to justice. These extremist influences are a grave threat to our ability to defend the nation, and they must be expelled from the force immediately. I deeply regret some members may no longer have the credibility needed to accomplish this work.

All of our words and actions in the coming weeks and days will reveal those who believe in defending the Constitution, and those who stand only for self-interest and sectarianism. There can be no reconciliation and healing without accountability. While it is my hope the Committee finds a way yet again to legislate in a bipartisan way for the men and women in uniform in the 117th Congress and beyond, the failure of so many Republican members of the Committee to put the nation ahead of electoral politics compels my resignation from the staff.

It has been the honor of a lifetime to serve the men and women in uniform, their families, and the civilians who also serve the Nation. I am proud of the things we have accomplished on their behalf, and the work we have done to strengthen national defense.

In Service,

Jason Schmi

Before Trump came along, I thought there were a lot more Republicans like this. I disagreed with them on virtually everything. But even when they used spurious rationales for advancing their agenda, we lived in the same reality. And when push came to shove I believed we were equally committed to some basic values around life, liberty and equality even if we furiously disagreed about to how to go about securing those values. One thing we would have all agreed upon was that storming the Capitol during a joint session to threaten and intimidate members of congress into overturning an election was an act of sedition and insurrection. at the very least.

It turns out they are very rare birds these days. The Never Trumpers in the conservative intelligentsia became apostates years ago. But in national office there was only one in each house of congress: Justin Amash and Mitt Romney. We found a few more in this election aftermath in the courts and the states. But they are very hard to find even now after this violence that was perpetrated on the US Capitol. Sane Republicans are almost extinct.

I watched many of the summer protests, violent and otherwise. I don’t think we saw anything like this, anywhere:

An officer was hit with a bat. Another was struck with a flagpole. A third was pinned against a statue. A fourth was clobbered with a wrench. One became stuck between two doors amid a frenzied mob. Many were hit with bear spray.

The number of injuries suffered by police as they attempted to fend off supporters of President Trump who seized the U.S. Capitol last week runs long. They include swollen ankles and wrists, bruised arms and legs, concussions and irritated lungs.

How those injuries occurred is varied: pushed down stairs, trampled by rioters, run over in a stampede, punched with fists.

More than 58 D.C. police officers and an unknown number of U.S. Capitol Police officers were injured in the hours-long riot and assault on Wednesday as lawmakers were formalizing the election victory for Joe Biden as president. It was a battle in which police were outnumbered. One Capitol Police officer died in circumstances that remain unclear.ADVideo shows officer being crushed against door by mob storming CapitolA pro-Trump mob clashed with police inside an entrance to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, pinning an officer against a door and removing his mask in the process. (Status Coup via Storyful)

“I’ve talked to officers who have done two tours in Iraq, who said this was scarier to them than their time in combat,” acting D.C. police chief Robert J. Contee III said Monday after speaking to an officer who was discharged from the hospital after being beaten and injured with a stun gun.

“He’s obviously very shaken, very appalled, very angry,” Contee said, adding that rioters stole items from the officer and, he thinks, tried to get his firearm.

Videos circulating on the Internet show horrific scenes, including one of an officer, identified by the police union as from the D.C. force, being dragged down stairs outside the Capitol and beaten by people with clubs, a crutch and a pole with an American flag attached. The officer was rescued by other officers swinging batons.

Police officer dies after assault on Capitol

Another video, first shown on CNN, shows a D.C. officer pinned between two doors in a Capitol vestibule, screaming in pain as rioters try to push his gas mask over his head as he was being crushed between colleagues and demonstrators in the narrow entryway. Some rioters wrested away the officers’ shields and used them to push back against the police.AD

It was not a brief moment. A longer version of that video shows hundreds of rioters pushing for more than 30 minutes against D.C. police officers, who had rushed to help their colleagues on the Capitol force. Rioters shouted en masse, “Heave ho,” as they pushed in coordinated waves, screaming and cheering.

“It makes me sick to my stomach to see that video,” Contee said. “That officer, obviously, he was afraid for his life.”

D.C. police said Monday that one District officer remained hospitalized. They described many of the injuries as sprains and bruised arms and legs, but many others appear far more serious and caused by repeated blows from sticks, poles and clubs and laser pointers shined into officers’ eyes.

The Capitol Police, which had 1,400 officers at the building, also have members who suffered injuries. A number was not available, but Eva M. Malecki, a spokeswoman for the agency, said injuries ranged from concussions to scrapes and bruises. She said no Capitol Police officers remain hospitalized.

In a statement the day after the riot, then-Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, who resigned Friday, said officers were attacked with metal pipes, chemical irritants and other types of weapons. Several Capitol Police officers were hospitalized with serious injuries.

Three people among the demonstrators died during what police have described as “medical emergencies.” Authorities said a Capitol Police officer, Brian D. Sicknick, died of injuries sustained in the assault. Another Capitol Police officer who had been at the Capitol during the riot took his own life Saturday.

Greggory Pemberton, head of the D.C. police union, called the riot “a nightmare.” He said one officer suffered an apparent heart attack after he was hit six times with a stun gun, and another lost the tip of his right index finger, possibly when it was crushed.

He said many rioters came prepared, with enhanced versions of munitions carried by police. Bear spray, for example, is a highly concentrated version of OC spray, also referred to as tear gas, that is stronger than the version police use to tame violent demonstrations.

“It has a really nasty effect,” Pemberton said, noting it can burn lungs. He said that although all but one injured D.C. officer are out of the hospital, many face an extended recovery period.

Trump doesn’t seem to be bothered by this. And I’d guess some of his MAGA cops aren’t either. Which is truly awful.

This kind of violence being meted out to police by right wingers is not something I expected to see in the US. They are most often on the same side. But that was a mistake. Once the police started protecting their enemies, it is clearly a different story …

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After lying about a speech in which he encouraged rioters, Trump pivots to whataboutism, says "if you look at what other people have said — politicians at a high level — about the riots during the summer, the horrible riots in Portland and Seattle … that was a real problem." pic.twitter.com/kciarq1Nm0

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 12, 2021

I feel confident that the person he’s referencing who looked at what he said and concluded that it was fine is Rudy Giuliani and possibly some other MAGA lawyers. He’s reportedly terrified that he’s going to be prosecuted. I don’t know if that’s true (I hope so) but I would bet money he’s going to be personally sued by some of the victims of that insurrection. And it could cost him a whole lot of money.

This is just grotesque:

Trump on impeachment: "For Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to continue on this path, I think it's causing tremendous danger to our county and it's causing tremendous anger. I want no violence." pic.twitter.com/YfHnaogOql

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 12, 2021

Don’t make me hurt you again…

Brian Kilmeade again says Dems shouldn't pursue impeachment because Republicans are threatening mass violence

"We see what's happening around this country, how 50 state houses are being threatened on Inauguration Day, this is the last thing you want to do" pic.twitter.com/LS1DOfEWkR

— Lis Power (@LisPower1) January 12, 2021

What he really means is that the country should bend the knee to these violent thugs and give them everything they want because they are very upset they didn’t get their way. I wonder if Kilmeade felt that way about the terrorists on 9/11. I doubt it. But then on 9/11 he didn’t identify with the terrorists.

Here are the “appropriate” words the president spoke before he sent his crowd down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol:

Trump urged his supporters to ‘fight much harder’ against ‘bad people’ and ‘show strength’ at the Capitol.

“Republicans are constantly fighting like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back. It’s like a boxer. And we want to be so nice. We want to be so respectful of everybody, including bad people. And we’re going to have to fight much harder. …

“We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them, because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.”

The president’s speech was riddled with violent imagery and calls to fight harder than before. By contrast, he made only a passing suggestion that the protest should be nonviolent, saying, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”FRANK BRUNI: A less conventional take on politics, cultural milestones and more from Frank Bruni.Sign Up

During Mr. Trump’s impeachment last year, one of his defenses was that the primary accusation against him — that he abused his power by withholding aid to Ukraine in an attempt to get its president to announce a corruption investigation into Mr. Biden — was not an ordinary crime, so it did not matter even if it were true. Most legal specialists said that made no difference for impeachment purposes, but in any case that argument would not be a defense here. Several laws clearly make it a crime to incite a riot or otherwise try to get another person to engage in a violent crime against property or people.

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Trump told the crowd that ‘very different rules’ applied.

“When you catch somebody in a fraud, you are allowed to go by very different rules. So I hope Mike has the courage to do what he has to do, and I hope he doesn’t listen to the RINOs and the stupid people that he’s listening to.”

Whipping up anger against Republicans who were not going along with his plan for subverting the election, like Vice President Mike Pence, Mr. Trump told the crowd that “different rules” now applied. At the most obvious level, the president was arguing that what he wanted Mr. Pence to do — reject the state-certified Electoral College results — would be legitimate, but the notion of “very different rules” applying carried broader overtones of extraordinary permission as well. (“RINO” is a term of abuse used by highly partisan Republicans against more moderate colleagues they deem to be “Republicans in Name Only.”)

Trump insinuated that Republican officials, including Pence, would endanger themselves by accepting Biden’s win.

“I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so, because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. … And I actually — I just spoke to Mike. I said: ‘Mike, that doesn’t take courage. What takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage.’”

“I also want to thank our 13 most courageous members of the U.S. Senate, Senator Ted Cruz, Senator Ron Johnson, Senator Josh Hawley. … Senators have stepped up. We want to thank them. I actually think, though, it takes, again, more courage not to step up, and I think a lot of those people are going to find that out. And you better start looking at your leadership, because your leadership has led you down the tubes.”

Mr. Trump twice told the crowd that Republicans who did not go along with his effort to overturn the election — Mr. Pence as well as senators like Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, who did not join in the performative objections led by Mr. Hawley and Mr. Cruz — were actually the ones being courageous. In context, the president’s implication is that they were putting themselves at risk because it would be safer to go along with what he wanted. During the ensuing riot, the mob chanted “Hang Mike Pence.”

Trump suggested that he wanted his supporters to stop the certification of Biden’s electoral win, not just protest it.

“We will never give up. We will never concede. It doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved. Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore, and that is what this is all about. And to use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with, we will stop the steal. …

“You will have an illegitimate president. That is what you will have, and we can’t let that happen. These are the facts that you won’t hear from the fake news media. It’s all part of the suppression effort. They don’t want to talk about it. They don’t want to talk about it. …

“We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

Two months after he lost the election, Mr. Trump repeatedly told his followers that they could still stop Mr. Biden from becoming president if they “fight like hell,” a formulation that suggested they act and change things, not merely raise their voices in protest.

As he dispatched his supporters into what became deadly chaos, Trump falsely told them that he would come, too.

Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we’re going to walk down, and I’ll be there with you.… We are going to the Capitol, and we are going to try and give — the Democrats are hopeless, they are never voting for anything, not even one vote, but we are going to try — give our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones don’t need any of our help, we’re try — going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”

As he sicced his supporters on Congress, Mr. Trump assured them that he would personally accompany them to the Capitol. In fact, as several of his followers and police officers were being injured or dying in the ensuing chaos, the president was watching the violence play out on television from the safety of the White House.

Willingness to get vaccinated via Gallup poll:

83% Democrats
77% college degree
74% over 65 years old
67% men
67% White adults
66% under 45 years old
65% All Americans
64% women
62% non-White adults
60% no college degree
59% independents
45% Republicans

Originally tweeted by Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) on January 12, 2021.

We have a problem. That is tens of millions of people.

Maybe they will change their minds. Or maybe they’re just blowing smoke because that’s the kind of people they have become. But if this is true, or even partly true, we’re going to have to continue to take major precautions to protect vulnerable people who can’t take the vaccine.

*sigh*

As long as corporations, banks and wealthy individuals thought Trump was the frontrunner for the 2024 they were willing to continue currying favor with him. He promised to be a powerful political force for some time to come and it made sense to stay on his good side. Apparently his latest atrocity changed their minds:

In the span of four days, President Trump’s family business has lost its online store, the buzz from Mr. Trump’s promotional tweets about its luxury resorts and bragging rights as host to one of the world’s most prestigious golf tournaments.

The mob attack on Congress last week by Mr. Trump’s supporters has spurred a reckoning for the Trump Organization by businesses and institutions, at a scale far greater than his previous polarizing actions.

And the Trump brand, premised on gold-plated luxury and a super-affluent clientele, may not fully recover from the fallout of his supporters violently storming and vandalizing the U.S. Capitol, hospitality analysts say and some people close to the business acknowledge. Other companies linked with the Trumps, including Deutsche Bank, the president’s largest lender, and Signature Bank, are also seeking distance from him and his business.

The backlash is part of a broader shunning of Mr. Trump and his allies unfolding in the wake of the deadly assault on the Capitol. Schools stripped the president of honorary degrees, some prominent Republicans threatened to leave the party and the New York State Bar Association announced it had begun investigating Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, which could lead to his removal from the group.

As House Democrats introduced an article of impeachment on Monday, more than a dozen big businesses vowed to withhold certain political donations. Coca-Cola said it would pause donations from its political action committee, saying in a statement that “these events will long be remembered and will factor into our future contribution decisions.” Marriott, the giant hotel chain, said it would pause donations from its political action committee “to those who voted against certification of the election,” a reference to the congressional Republicans who joined Mr. Trump’s false claims of election fraud. Morgan Stanley and AT&T said they, too, would suspend contributions to those lawmakers.

The Trump Organization had already been facing considerable financial challenges. Many of its golf and resort properties had been losing money, and the pandemic had forced it to close some restaurants and bars and drastically reduce hotel occupancy, including at its hotel a few blocks from the White House. And with more than $300 million in debt coming due in the next few years that the president has personally guaranteed, there had been some urgency for the company to line up new deals.

While such an array of challenges would spell doom for just about any hospitality brand, executives of the Trump Organization said they planned on cashing in on Mr. Trump’s global fame with overseas branding deals.

“There has never been a political figure with more support or energy behind them than my father,” Eric Trump, the president’s son, who helps run the family business, said in a statement on Monday.

The family is also already considering starting a media outfit that would cater to Mr. Trump’s tens of millions of supporters, an effort that gained some urgency last week when Twitter and Facebook barred the president from their platforms.

“There will be no shortage of incredible opportunities in real estate and beyond,” Eric Trump said.

Before becoming president, Mr. Trump had cycled through many lines of business, including casinos, an airline and reality television. Some ventures were wildly successful, while others were colossal failures. But they revealed his ability to camouflage his wares and capitalize on opportunities, even when his name appeared irreparably tarnished.

This time, the challenges are steeper. The fallout began on Thursday, when the e-commerce provider Shopify said it had terminated online stores affiliated with the president.

The biggest blow came on Sunday, when the P.G.A. of America announced it would strip Mr. Trump’s New Jersey golf club of a major tournament.

Mr. Trump was said to be “gutted” by the P.G.A. decision, according to a person close to the White House, as he had worked personally for years to push the tournament executives to hold events at his courses.

In a statement that hinted at a potential legal challenge, the Trump Organization called the decision “a breach of a binding contract,” adding that “they have no right to terminate the agreement.”

The P.G.A. Championship, scheduled for May 2022, was the ultimate golf-world trophy for the Trump brand, which over the last two decades has assembled an international collection of golf courses and resorts that now collectively represent about a third of the company’s revenue, according to the most recent financial disclosure report.

The tournament itself is not a major source of profit, but hosting an internationally recognized event is enormously valuable for marketing. It also would have bestowed greater legitimacy on Mr. Trump and his brand, which includes 16 golf clubs around the world.

“It has become clear that conducting the P.G.A. Championship at Trump Bedminster would be detrimental to the P.G.A. of America brand,” Jim Richerson, the P.G.A. of America president, said in a video statement.

The loss associated with the cancellation is difficult to calculate, but it could be very large and last for years in terms of missed future revenues, said Jay Karen, chief executive of the National Golf Course Owners Association.

“You have millions of avid golfers who have a proverbial bucket list,” tied to major tournaments like the P.G.A. Championship, he said. “If you had a major coming to you and it was pulled from you, that would certainly sting.”

In an email to members on Monday, the golf club said, “We have had a wonderful partnership with the P.G.A. of America and share your disappointment on their decision.”

The damage is expected to continue as various companies and industries reassess their relationship with Mr. Trump and his family business.

Mr. Trump’s hotels, like the Trump National Doral near Miami, had already lost many of the major corporate conferences after he made disparaging remarks about Muslims and Mexicans, among others, during his first presidential campaign, and his comments after a deadly rally by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 suggesting that “there is blame on both sides.”

But the fallout from the attacks last week will be steeper and longer lasting, analysts and people familiar with the company said. Some members of the president’s golf clubs are reassessing whether to keep their memberships because of possible protests and vandalism, one of the people said.

David J. Sangree, a hotel industry consultant from Ohio, said that Mr. Trump’s role in the attack on the Capitol would further undermine the company’s efforts to appeal to affluent customers who were not Trump supporters.

“This is a big negative,” Mr. Sangree said. “There’s no question they’re going to lose more events because many groups are saying, ‘We don’t want to be associated with this brand.’”

That became even clearer on Monday night when the New England Patriots’ coach, Bill Belichick, said he would refuse the Presidential Medal of Freedom because of the “tragic events of last week.” The president had planned to give Mr. Belichick the award on Thursday.

Even plans to launch a Trump media platform will face obstacles. If Mr. Trump seeks to forge a new conservative news network, or join an existing one like OAN or Newsmax, corporate advertisers are hardly guaranteed to support him.

“There’s only so much that My Pillow guy can subsidize,” said Jon Klein, the former president of CNN U.S., referring to Mike Lindell, the chief executive of My Pillow who is an outspoken supporter of the president. “It’s suddenly a lot more daunting a proposition than it was a week ago for OAN and Newsmax.”

What a sad, sad stort.

Apparently, the big alternative is to do a subscriber newsletter. Seriously:

Instead, Mr. Trump might find more success in generating a newsletter — embedded with a link to a streaming channel — for millions of paid subscribers, said Mr. Klein, who is chairman of TAPP Media, a subscription streaming service. “He has ignited the passions of his tribe and subscription services are all about tribalism.”

Why not? The man sold Trump steaks and bottled water. It’s not as if he really ever had a “luxury” brand. It was a celebrity brand — a C-list Celebrity brand at that.

The most important part of this is the banks allegedly not want wanting to do business with him anymore. He’s got a lot of debt he’s going to need to renegotiate very soon. At this point the only ones who may want to help him with that problem are unsavory financial institutions owned by foreign governments that may be in the market for some information an ex-president might be able to provide. Does anyone think he wouldn’t do it?

Terry Bouton, a historian of the American Revolution, was on hand Jan. 6 to observe what QAnon, MAGA, Proud Boys, and self-styled militia groups hoped would be a second revolution. The University of Maryland, Baltimore County associate professor recounted his experience in a Twitter thread Sunday afternoon. As a veteran D.C. protest observer, Bouton had a rich background for comparison. Take special note of his Point 4.

My wife and I attended the “Stop the Steal” Trump Insurrection on Wednesday (as observers, NOT participants) and there are FIVE big take-aways from what we witnessed and heard outside the Capitol that I'd like to share. (We took all the pictures below). 1/22 pic.twitter.com/NTV7JTUXZa

— Terry Bouton (@TerryBoutonHist) January 10, 2021

Jubilation and anger

1) This insurrection wasn’t just redneck white supremacists and QAnon kooks. The people participating in, espousing, or cheering the violence cut across the different factions of the Republican Party and those factions were working in unison. 2/22

Preppy looking “country club Republicans,” well-dressed social conservatives, and white Evangelicals in Jesus caps were standing shoulder to shoulder with QAnon cultists, Second Amendment cosplay commandos, and doughy, hardcore white nationalists. 3/22

We eavesdropped on conversations for hours and no one expressed the slightest concern about the large number of white supremacists and para-military spewing violent rhetoric. Even the man in the “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt wasn’t beyond the pale. They were all “patriots.” 4/22

I’m sure there were Republicans there who were horrified by what was happening. But the most common emotions we witnessed by nearly everyone were jubilation at the take over and anger at Democrats, Mike Pence, non-Trump supporting Republicans, and the Capitol Police. 5/22

Capitol purposefully understaffed

2) There is no doubt the Capitol was left purposefully understaffed as far as law enforcement and there was no federal effort to provide support even as things turned very dark. This contrasts sharply with all of other major protests we have attended. 6/22

A lot has been made of the contrast to the overwhelming police presence at Black Lives Matters protests in the fall, and this is certainly true. But there was also A LOT more federal law enforcement presence at every single previous protest we have attended in DC. 7/22

Most of these protests involved tens of thousands of mostly white, middle-aged people (meaning race wasn’t the only reason for the disparate police presence). Even the March for Science had far more police for a non-partisan event featuring “Bill Nye the Science Guy.” 8/22

By contrast, there was a tiny federal police presence at “Stop the Steal” despite weeks of promises of violence spread on social media by well-known far-right radicals, many of whom had long histories of inciting violence. 9/22

When we arrived, the only forces present were the clearly overwhelmed Capitol Police. The only reinforcements that arrived were other Capitol Police. There were a handful of DC Metro police, but they had accompanied the ambulances to take away the injured. 10/22

The only other federal law enforcement presence was an FBI Swat team of about eight officers who arrived to provide cover for the Capitol Fire and EMTs there to extract Ashli Babbitt, the QAnon radical who was shot inside the Capitol Building. 11/22

Once the FBI team got Babbitt out, they left and no other federal officers arrived in the more than two hours that followed. The small Capitol Police force was left to deal with the chaos by themselves. 12/22

The crowd reviled police

3) The Trump rioters only supported law enforcement as long as they believed law enforcement was supporting them. Rioters, many carrying Thin Blue Line flags, seemed convinced that the Capitol Police would turn against the government and join them. 13/22

Numerous rioters shouted at the police, saying some version of “we had your back, now you need to have ours.” All of the Capitol officers we saw—Black, white, Latino, male, female—seemed alarmed by what was happening and continued to try to do their job faithfully. 14/22

And the crowd reviled them for it. They booed the police and FBI swat team, calling them traitors and murderers. A man on the back Capitol steps ripped up a Thin Blue Line flag, the torn stripes fluttering down over a crowd briefly chanting “fuck the police.” 15/22

No clear crowd rules

4) There were also no clear crowd rules imposed for Stop the Steal like there were for all the other protests we have attended. All of the “liberal” protests of the last four years we attended had a long list of things you could not bring that were enforced at the Capitol. 16/22

At these protests, there were no poles or sticks, no backpacks, no weapons or body armor, etc. There were sometimes security check points to go through to get onto the mall or Capitol grounds. 17/22

None of these standard rules applied to Stop the Steal. There were poles and flags and backpacks and body armor EVERYWHERE. We didn’t see any guns or knives. But there were certainly people brandishing flag poles as if they were weapons. 18/22

https://twitter.com/JonLemire/status/1348982825412919296?s=20

Blood lust

5) These people are serious and they are going to keep escalating the violence until they are stopped by the force of law. There were many, many people there who were excited by the violence and proud and excited about the prospect of more violence. 19/22

And it wasn’t just the white nationalists, Second Amendment radicals, and QAnon boneheads. I can’t adequately describe the blood lust we heard everywhere as we walked over the Capitol grounds, even from mild-mannered looking people. 20/22

The most alarming part to me was the matter-of-fact, causal ways that people from all walks of life were talking about violence and even the execution of “traitors” in private conversations, like this was something normal that happened every day. 21/22

I am convinced that if Congress doesn’t act to do something about this quickly, these people are going to keep going and the unrest and violence will get more widespread and more uncontrollable. This is a crisis. It’s real. It’s happening. It must be taken seriously. 22/22

Greg Sargent’s Friday reporting validates Bouton’s take:

For the loose network of groups and lone actors that carried out Trump’s calls for violent disruption of the lawful conclusion of the election, it’s becoming clear that the siege was a huge and momentous success, a propaganda coup that will energize them for a long time to come.

“Make no mistake: Wednesday was a watershed moment for the far-right extremist movement in this country,” Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, told me.

“By all measurable effects, this was for far-right extremists one of the most successful attacks that they’ve ever launched,” Jared Holt, who tracks far-right groups for the Atlantic Council, added. “This will be lionized and propagandized on likely for the next decade.”

Trump will be gone or in jail. But the unrest will persist.

Former Ada County, Idaho commissioner Diana Lachiando had to rush home to her twelve-year-old from a public health meeting in December when protesters began beating on the door of her home. Such protests and last week’s insurrection have roots in the sagebrush rebellion simmering for decades in the West, NPR reports this morning. Lachiando believes the violence stems from a misguided notion of freedom with regard for no one else:

“Now we see that nationally, people have adopted this sort of ethos, whether they are aligning with the Proud Boys or the Three Percent [militia],” Lachiando says.

That “no one else” includes a growing nonwhite population that does not look like George Washington or Samuel Adams to militant, self-described patriots. That “misguided notion of freedom” means white extremists’ freedom from sharing power in this country with anyone who does not look or think like them.

Copernicus proposed that the Earth was not the center of the cosmos in the early 16th century. Yet for promoting a heliocentric model of the universe deemed heresy, the Roman Catholic Inquisition held Galileo under house arrest from 1633 until his death in 1642. That nonwhite Americans deserve equal standing with whites, especially white males, is the modern heresy driving the Trump Insurrection. They are having none of it.

In the aftermath of the QAnon/Stop-the-Steal insurrection, perhaps it is time to revisit a story I told about a Satanic cult conspiracy from decades ago:

In the misty past before the dawn of the internet (1980?), I was visiting the home of a friend who told me with some alarm that I should never buy any more products from the Procter & Gamble company of Cincinnati, Ohio. Its president, she said, was on the Phil Donahue Show and said the company gave money to the Church of Satan. As proof she told me, you could look on their packaging and see a small crescent moon and stars symbol, a “satanic symbol.”

“When did you see this?” I asked.

Oh, well, she had not seen it. A friend had told her about it. Except, of course, her friend had not seen it either, because it never happened. But because the news came from a friend and confirmed her darkest fears about how the world worked, she never questioned it.

Today Alex Jones makes a fortune marketing such insanity. Donald Trump and the entire Republican Party promote the belief that any elections they lose they lost because Those People stole them. QAnon teaches that the government is secretly controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophile cannibals. More Those People.

But how does Hillary Clinton elude the Secret Service detail that has been protecting her for decades when she sneaks out to devour children at a District pizza joint? Where are the skeletons in shallow graves? Where are the missing children reports, the profiles of distraught parents? Believers have no incentive for questioning allegations that “confirm” the worst about people they already believe are PURE EVIL.

To get caught up in conspiracy theories is not a matter of “ignorance” or “stupidity,” writes John Ehrenreich at Slate. The professor of psychology at the State University of New York–Old Westbury explains:

Conspiracy theories arise in the context of fear, anxiety, mistrust, uncertainty, and feelings of powerlessness. For many Americans, recent years have provided many sources for these feelings. There’s been employment insecurity, stagnating wages, and thwarted social mobility. For some, technological leaps and social progress—expanding views of sexuality, and racial unrest—can feel destabilizing. Then 2020 brought a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, deep economic recession, widespread street protests, and a bitterly contested election. Any of these, taken alone, is enough to trigger anxiety, mistrust, and uncertainty. Americans are facing all of them simultaneously. For those who feel that everything is spinning out of control, a narrative that explains their feelings and encloses them within a safe community of believers comes as a soothing relief.

That’s a polite way of saying they need someone to blame for why bad things happen. It gives them a sense that if the badies could only be outed and overthrown, all would be right with the world. America could be great again (emphasis mine):

What does predict belief in conspiracy theories? A cocktail of personality traits. Those who believe these theories typically show high levels of anxiety independent of external sources of stress, a high need for control over environment, and a high need for subjective certainty and, conversely, a low tolerance for ambiguity. They tend to have negative attitudes to authority, to feel alienated from the political system, and to see the modern world as unintelligible. Conspiracy theory believers are often suspicious and untrusting, and see others as plotting against them. They struggle with anger, resentment, and other hostile feelings as well as with fear. They have lower self-esteem than nonbelievers and have a need for external validation to maintain their self-esteem. They may have a strong desire to feel unique and special, and an exaggerated need to be in an exclusive in-group. Belief in conspiracy theories often also goes along with belief in paranormal phenomena, skepticism of scientific knowledge, and weaknesses in analytic thinking. Proneness to belief in conspiracy theories is also associated with religiosity, especially with people for whom a religious worldview is especially important. These traits are hardly universal among or exclusive to conspiracy theorists, but they help create a vulnerability to belief.

The Wall Street Journal has a profile of one such believer named Doug Sweet. Michael M. Phillips and Jennifer Levitz spoke with him after he appeared on a police arrest list:

Mr. Sweet is a man who dipped his toe in the pool of wild and false conspiracies during the Barack Obama administration and is now up to his neck in it, wallowing in resentment and anger that others can’t see how the elites are scheming to destroy America the way he can.

“I’m not going to go open a court case saying [Ms. Clinton] eats children,” Mr. Sweet says. “But I can believe that she might eat children.”

Sweet gets his news from pro-Trump networks plus Newsmax, One America News, and from Alex Jones. On Jan. 6, Sweet found himself entering a ransacked Capitol after checking with God “three times” that it was okay. Donald Trump had already given his blessing.

In Mr. Sweet’s world of false conspiracies, Financier George Soros is both a Nazi and a Communist who pays leftist activists to burn and loot American cities. QAnon, a conspiracy-theory group that believes Mr. Trump is under assault by devil worshipers, speaks the truth. A Washington pizza parlor serves pies made of children’s blood to Satanists who know to order off-menu. The U.S. military invaded Afghanistan to seize control of the heroin trade. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and House Speaker Pelosi drink children’s blood in a quest for eternal youth.

“I’m not going to go open a court case saying [Ms. Clinton] eats children,” Mr. Sweet says. “But I can believe that she might eat children.”

There is that weakness in analytic thinking mixed with religiosity again. My friend with the Church of Satan story decades ago exhibited a similar mix. In smaller doses vulnerability to belief can be relatively harmless. But it makes such people easy prey for hucksters, faith healers, and cult leaders. Donald J. Trump is two out of the three. Fox in the henhouse? Social media means there is no door on it … and no henhouse … to keep the unscrupulous and/or the insane from infusing millions with conspiracy brain worms.

A Data for Progress/Vox poll released Monday finds that 63 percent of Americans believe Trump is to blame for the insurrection and 51 percent support a second impeachment. Yet 47 percent of people blame Antifa, including 29 percent of Democrats and 68 percent of Republicans. Republican lawmakers and conservative pundits spread the rumor even before the dust settled. And those prone to believe believed.

Lot of really important polling out tonight from @DataProgress and @voxdotcom, but want to draw your attention to something that should scare the hell out of everyone.

*47%* of Americans believe last week's insurrection was caused by "Antifa."

FOURTY-SEVEN PERCENT OF AMERICANS https://t.co/VFTuq6f0dC pic.twitter.com/leQesge9Nr

— McKenzie Wilson (@McKenzieAWilson) January 12, 2021

Consider: Nearly half surveyed believe ragtag, scrawny, 20-something lefties who live in their parents’ basements and never protest without hiding their faces showed up to storm the Capitol, unmasked, posing as beefy, middle-aged white men in expensive tactical gear and organized in teams. Or else posing as beefy white men who beat police with American flags.

NEW FOOTAGE: a long, disciplined line of men in body armor moves as a unit up the #CapitolBuilding steps.

We need to identify this group.

Grateful to @lehudgins for the find.
Source: https://t.co/1CQlT5Sqa7 pic.twitter.com/Omdva2SiUS

— John Scott-Railton (@jsrailton) January 10, 2021

“Death is the only remedy for what’s in that building.”

Twitter sleuths have dubbed him #Caveman. He was seen on now-viral video beating a cop with an American flag.https://t.co/EkMcvbIfAm pic.twitter.com/a6yEMm4v5T

— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) January 12, 2021

The turmoil of the Trump years, if it has an upside, is that between an impeachment and nationwide Black Lives Matter protests, Americans’ knowledge of basic civics has improved somewhat. The Annenberg Public Policy Center found in September just over half of Americans (51%) could name the three branches of government, up from thirty-nine percent in 2019. But teaching civics in schools is not going to build henhouses with doors around Americans’ minds. For that and for the health of the republic, we need to teach analytical thinking itself. Not just for the mental health benefits but as a matter of national security.

Naturally, predators who like their chickens easy to pluck will resist.

It really is painful to read how Lindsay Graham, Kellyanne Conway, Chris Christie and the rest of the gang try like hell to deflect from their own culpability in enabling the January 6 Putsch. As if they didn’t egg Trump on, over and over again. One sickening example from Ms Alternative Facts herself :

Conway immediately called a close personal aide who she knew was with the president, and said she was adding her name to the chorus of people urging Trump to speak to his supporters. He needed to tell them to stand down and leave the Capitol, she told the aide.

Translated,: Don’t blame any of us! We did what we could.

Oh, don’t get me started….