Marjorie Taylor Greene hates face masks, but she sure has quite the collection. There was the much-parodied “CENSORED” one she wore while dissenting against impeachment—quite a claim, since the speech was broadcast on nearly every major news network.
The QAnon conspiracy theorist promoted the alt-right slogan “Molon Labe” (ancient Greek for “Come and take it”) on one mask, and owns another that screams “Free Speech.” So for all of her posturing on liberal tyranny and muzzling mandates, Greene understands how to wield messaging and deflect accountability through her masks. She’s not the only one.
Representative Tom Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, posted a photo on Twitter in a mask that read, “I’m just wearing this so I won’t get fined.” Similar styles are available on Amazon, and cost around $5 to $12. (Representatives for Massie declined The Daily Beast’s request for an interview.)
.@SenSherrodBrown: "I would like to ask Senator Paul, in front of everybody, to start wearing a mask on the Senate floor like the entire staff does all the time…I wish Senator Paul would show the respect to his colleagues to wear a mask." pic.twitter.com/c8qEETZ403
Missouri congresswomen Cori Bush also asked Greene to wear a mask while the Georgia rep was on Instagram live. “I wanted it to be on the live stream that we are saying, ‘Put your mask on,’ and then her team turned around yelling, ‘Stop inciting violence with Black Lives Matter,’” Bush said in a follow-up interview on MSNBC. “What does BLM have to do with this? Put on a mask and save lives.”
Look, I think these people are jerks. Wearing a mask is not a big deal and the idea that their personal liberty is being usurped is ridiculous. I’m sure they don’t question wearing pants and going bottomless doesn’t even kill people.
But if putting an obnoxious message on the mask will get them to wear them I say fine. We do have free speech in this country and it is an excellent warning system that you re in the presence of an asshole. If they it curtails their “freedom” to spread COVID all over the place then more power to them.
He knew what he was doing when he sent the tweet calling Pence a coward as his rabid Red Hats hunted the halls of the Capitol looking for him.
Donald Trump posted a tweet attacking his own vice president for lacking “the courage” to overturn the election for him ― enraging his Jan. 6 mob even further ― just minutes after learning that Mike Pence had been removed from the Senate chamber for his own safety.
Newly elected Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) told reporters Wednesday night, following the second day of the former president’s impeachment trial, that Trump had called for his help in delaying election certification the afternoon of the U.S. Capitol attack but he had told Trump that Pence had just been taken from the Senate and he couldn’t talk just then.
“He didn’t get a chance to say a whole lot because I said, ‘Mr. President, they just took the vice president out. I’ve got to go,’” Tuberville said.
According to video footage from that day, Pence was removed from the Senate at 2:14 p.m. after rioters had broken into the Capitol, meaning that when Trump lashed out at Pence at 2:24 p.m., he already knew Pence’s life was in danger.
“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution,” Trump wrote in his tweet.
Videos shown by Democratic House members presenting their impeachment case document that rioters were aware of Trump’s tweet. Some had erected a gallows outside the Capitol. Others roamed the halls, chanting, “Hang Mike Pence.”
The exact time Pence was taken from the Senate following the breach of the Capitol by the mob Trump had incited to try to overturn the presidential election was known the day of the attack, as was the time of Trump’s tweet. What was not known until Tuberville’s statement was whether Trump was aware of the danger Pence was in at the time he posted his tweet.
Did he think his mob might kill Pence? It almost certainly crossed his mind. The man is obsessed with vengeance. He admits it.
QOTD, David Schoen, Trump’s lawyer, on the House manager’s case:
“I think they’re making a movie. They haven’t in any way tied it to Donald Trump. And I think it’s offensive, quite frankly, it’s antithesis the healing process to continue to show the tragedy that happened here that Donald Trump has condemned, and I think it tears at the American people, quite frankly.”
If there’s one thing Donald Trump cannot abide it’s divisiveness.
I think I may have mentioned that shamelessness is their superpower?
The mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol may have been a fringe group of extremists, but politically motivated violence has the support of a significant share of the U.S. public, according to a new survey by the American Enterprise Institute.
The survey found that nearly three in 10 Americans, including 39% of Republicans, agreed that “if elected leaders will not protect America, the people must do it themselves, even if it requires violent actions.”
That result was “a really dramatic finding,” says Daniel Cox, director of the AEI Survey Center on American Life. “I think any time you have a significant number of the public saying use of force can be justified in our political system, that’s pretty scary.”
The survey found stark divisions between Republicans and Democrats on the 2020 presidential election, with two out of three Republicans saying President Biden was not legitimately elected, while 98% of Democrats and 73% of independents acknowledged Biden’s victory.
The level of distrust among Republicans evident in the survey was such that about 8 in 10 said the current political system is “stacked against conservatives and people with traditional values.” A majority agreed with the statement: “The traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.”
The survey found that to be a minority sentiment — two out of three Americans overall rejected the use of violence in pursuit of political ends – and Cox emphasized that the finding reflected “attitudes and beliefs” rather than a disposition to do something.
“If I believe something, I may act on it, and I may not,” Cox says. “We shouldn’t run out and say, ‘Oh, my goodness, 40% of Republicans are going to attack the Capitol.’ But under the right circumstances, if you have this worldview, then you are more inclined to act in a certain way if you are presented with that option.”
The AEI survey found that partisan divisions were also evident along religious lines. About 3 in 5 white evangelicals told the pollsters that Biden was not legitimately elected, that it was not accurate to say former President Donald Trump encouraged the attack on the Capitol, and that a Biden presidency has them feeling disappointed, angry or frightened.
On all those questions, Cox says, white evangelicals are “politically quite distinct.” Majorities of white mainline Protestants, Black Protestants, Catholics, followers of non-Christian religions and the religiously unaffiliated all viewed Biden’s victory as legitimate.
The AEI survey found that white evangelicals were especially prone to subscribe to the QAnon movement’s conspiracy theories. Twenty-seven percent said it was “mostly” or “completely” accurate to say Trump “has been secretly fighting a group of child sex traffickers that include prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites.” That share was higher than for any other faith group and more than double the support for QAnon beliefs evident among Black Protestants, Hispanic Catholics and non-Christians.
“As with a lot of questions in the survey, white evangelicals stand out in terms of their belief in conspiracy theories and the idea that violence can be necessary,” Cox says. “They’re far more likely to embrace all these different conspiracies.”
The violence is a problem. And I am increasingly sure that we’re going to see more of it. But there is also a conservative evangelical problem. I have no idea how anyone in this political climate can even broach that. It should be up to conservative evangelical leaders but I suspect they’re all in.
I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn which Party believes the other Party are enemies:
As former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial begins, a 56%-majority of Americans would like the Senate to vote to convict him, and the same percentage say he encouraged violence at the Capitol — views that are still somewhat linked to Americans’ presidential votes in 2020, reflecting ongoing partisan division.
To those in favor of conviction, this trial is described as holding Mr. Trump “accountable” and “defending democracy.” To those Americans (mostly, Republicans) opposed to it, the trial is “unnecessary” and a “distraction.”
In fact, amid the recent focus on the congressional GOP’s direction now, under one in five rank-and-file Republicans favor a conviction, while most still broadly value loyalty to Mr. Trump. Many current Republicans say they might even join a new party headed by Mr. Trump if he were to start one. And while almost all call violence unacceptable, most Republicans feel that efforts by Mr. Trump and some Republicans to overturn the 2020 results were justified.
To the extent there’s any split among Republicans over the way forward vis-a-vis Mr. Trump — both in terms of impeachment, specifically, and loyalty to the ex-president more generally — it’s a lopsided one in favor of the more ardent Trump backers. By more than two to one, Republicans call any GOP Senate vote to convict disloyal versus those who’d call it principled. By three to one, Republicans say it’s at least somewhat important to them the party remains loyal to Mr. Trump, generally, rather than not.
Then, just over two-thirds of self-identified Republicans today say they might even join a new Trump political party separate from the GOP, including a third who’d say yes to that idea right now. (For those Republicans who say loyalty to Mr. Trump is very important, that “yes” to joining rises to a majority.) And two-thirds of Republicans still echo Mr. Trump’s claims following the election and still do not consider President Biden the legitimate winner.
Across party lines, views on the trial and conviction largely match views on whether or not the former president encouraged the violence. Those who think he did encourage violence favor conviction, and that’s true among independents too.
We also took a look at how partisans see each other, in the wake of recent events, in whether you think the other side are enemies — and a threat to one’s entire way of life — or merely political opposition, just differing on policy. And that divide is as stark as any partisan one. More Republicans describe Democrats as enemies right now than as merely political opposition, a view that rises even higher among Republicans who most want the party to be loyal to Mr. Trump.
Democrats are somewhat more inclined to view Republicans as political opposition instead of enemies.
But taken together, this helps define a divide in America in approach to politics as much as partisanship — between those partisans who see the other side as the enemy, and the remainder who simply don’t go that far.
House manager Jamie Raskin discussed the assault on the Michigan Capitol last spring in his presentation today., portraying it as the precursor to what happened on January 6th. Here’s a story from NBC’s Brandy Zadrozny from April:
When President Donald Trump tweeted “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” on Friday morning, some of his most fervent supporters in far-right communities — including those who have agitated for violent insurrection — heard a call to arms.
The tweet was one of three sent from the president’s account, along with “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!”
Trump’s tweets came after small protests by Trump supporters broke out in a handful of states, many of which were fueled by anti-vaccination and anti-government groups. Anti-government sentiment has percolated among far-right extremists in recent weeks over the stay-at-home orders governors have issued to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
Trump’s tweets, however, pushed many online extremist communities to speculate whether the president was advocating for armed conflict, an event they’ve termed “the boogaloo,” for which many far-right activists have been gearing up and advocating since last year.
There were sharp increases on Twitter in terms associated with conspiracies such as QAnon and the “boogaloo” term immediately following the president’s tweets, according to the Network Contagion Research Institute, an independent nonprofit group of scientists and engineers that tracks and reports on misinformation and hate speech across social media.
Posts about the “boogaloo” on Twitter skyrocketed in the hours after the president’s tweets, with more than 1,000 tweets featuring the term, some of which received hundreds of retweets.
“We the people should open up America with civil disobedience and lots of BOOGALOO. Who’s with me?” one QAnon conspiracy theorist on Twitter with over 50,000 followers asked.
“Boogaloo” is a term used by extremists to refer to armed insurrection, a shortened version of “Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo,” which was coined on the extremist message board 4chan.
Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington condemned Trump’s tweets in his own Twitter thread in which he warned the president about encouraging violence.
“The president is fomenting domestic rebellion and spreading lies – even while his own administration says the virus is real, it is deadly and we have a long way to go before restrictions can be lifted,” Inslee wrote.
The president is fomenting domestic rebellion and spreading lies – even while his own administration says the virus is real, it is deadly and we have a long way to go before restrictions can be lifted. 2/7— Governor Jay Inslee (@GovInslee) April 17, 2020
A Twitter spokesperson said the president’s tweets didn’t violate the site’s policies against content that poses a risk to health or well-being around the coronavirus outbreak.
The use of “liberate” in the tweets is too vague to be actionable, according to the Twitter spokesperson.
Law enforcement officials have previously identified “boogaloo” domestic extremists as a legitimate threat. A report released by the Network Contagion Research Institute about the term “boogaloo” being used to ironically mask violent overthrow attempts had “gone viral” within law enforcement and intelligence communities in February, Homeland Security Advisory Council member Paul Goldenberg told NBC News in February.Get breaking news and insider analysis on the rapidly changing world of media and technology right to your inbox.
The president’s tweets came just minutes after Fox News aired a segment featuring coverage of a Facebook event called “Liberate Minnesota.” Although only a few hundred people expressed interest in the event on Facebook, local news sites and conservative blogs drove attention to the event Thursday, one day before the president’s tweets.
“Minnesota citizens now is the time to demand Governor Walz and our state legislators end this lock down!” the event’s Facebook page reads. “Thousands of lives are being destroyed right now. It is not the governor’s place to restrict free movement of Minnesota citizens! Gov. Walz you work for the citizens of this state!”
A few hundred protesters had gathered outside Gov. Tim Walz’s residence in St. Paul, Minnesota, by Friday afternoon, packed in tight crowds along the sidewalk. They chanted “USA” and carried signs with pro-Trump, anti-Walz messaging. One sign read, “If ballots don’t free us bullets will.”
The Minnesota protest followed several others in different states including Ohio, New York, North Carolina, Kentucky and Michigan, in which demonstrators have demanded governors end shutdowns enacted to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
The protests have been a unifier of anti-government and conspiracy-minded subcultures, bringing anti-vaccination activists, anti-government militia groups, religious fundamentalists and white supremacists together at state capitols.
While focused on their respective states, the groups are organizing expressly to call for people to violate the policies that Trump has supported at daily news briefings.
Ohio had one of the first national rallies. On April 9, about 70 protesters gathered on the lawn of the state Capitol. Chanting “Free Ohio Now!,” they carried signs and bucked guidelines for maintaining 6 feet of social distancing. Videos of the event were livestreamed in popular anti-vaccination Facebook groups.
On Wednesday, in an action dubbed “Operation Gridlock,” thousands in Lansing, Michigan, protested from their cars outside the state Capitol. The crowd included a variety of conservative and far-right icons, including “Don’t Tread on Me” banners, Trump campaign flags and at least two Confederate flags. Some people brought their assault weapons. The crowd also chanted “Lock her up,” referring to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat who has often been criticized by Trump. The chant was popularized during Trump campaign rallies as a call to jail then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
The event was organized by two Michigan conservative nonprofits, but heavily attended by more extreme groups.
One anti-vaccination activist and anti-government “sovereign citizen,” a reference to a movement that believes taxation is unconstitutional, was arrested in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Tuesday at a similar “reopen” rally where over 100 people gathered in their cars to honk every 15 minutes in protest of the state’s stay-at-home order.
Each of the events had been organized on Facebook.
Though the protests were reasonably small, they were lauded by members of the conservative media, including most evening Fox News hosts.
One host, Laura Ingraham, voiced her support for the Michigan protests Wednesday, with a tweet that read, “Time to get your freedom back.”
There’s more. It is not debatable that Trump spent his entire term fomenting violence. And this insurrection trial run showed him exactly what he could do in DC.
In the days after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the phone lines and websites of local election officials across the country were jumping: Tens of thousands of Republicans were calling or logging on to switch their party affiliations.
In California, more than 33,000 registered Republicans left the party during the three weeks after the Washington riot. In Pennsylvania, more than 12,000 voters left the G.O.P. in the past month, and more than 10,000 Republicans changed their registration in Arizona.
An analysis of January voting records by The New York Times found that nearly 140,000 Republicans had quit the party in 25 states that had readily available data (19 states do not have registration by party). Voting experts said the data indicated a stronger-than-usual flight from a political party after a presidential election, as well as the potential start of a damaging period for G.O.P. registrations as voters recoil from the Capitol violence and its fallout.
Among those who recently left the party are Juan Nunez, 56, an Army veteran in Mechanicsburg, Pa. He said he had long felt that the difference between the United States and many other countries was that campaign-season fighting ended on Election Day, when all sides would peacefully accept the result. The Jan. 6 riot changed that, he said.
“What happened in D.C. that day, it broke my heart,” said Mr. Nunez, a lifelong Republican who is preparing to register as an independent. “It shook me to the core.”
The biggest spikes in Republicans leaving the party came in the days after Jan. 6, especially in California, where there were 1,020 Republican changes on Jan. 5 — and then 3,243 on Jan. 7. In Arizona, there were 233 Republican changes in the first five days of January, and 3,317 in the next week. Most of the Republicans in these states and others switched to unaffiliated status.
Does this add up to anything? I don’t know. But polling seems to show about 20-25% of Republicans unhappy with the even more radical turn of the party. No wonder Mitch keeps trying to signal that Republicans can “follow their conscience” in the impeachment trial. Some of them are facing re-election in 2022 in states with a purple hue. They can’t afford to lose any more voters.
And then there’s this, which could cause some other problems if it gets any traction:
Dozens of former Republican officials, who view the party as unwilling to stand up to former President Donald Trump and his attempts to undermine U.S. democracy, are in talks to form a center-right breakaway party, four people involved in the discussions told Reuters.
The early stage discussions include former elected Republicans, former officials in the Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Trump, ex-Republican ambassadors and Republican strategists, the people involved say.
More than 120 of them held a Zoom call last Friday to discuss the breakaway group, which would run on a platform of “principled conservatism,” including adherence to the Constitution and the rule of law – ideas those involved say have been trashed by Trump.
The plan would be to run candidates in some races but also to endorse center-right candidates in others, be they Republicans, independents or Democrats, the people say.
Evan McMullin, who was chief policy director for the House Republican Conference and ran as an independent in the 2016 presidential election, told Reuters that he co-hosted the Zoom call with former officials concerned about Trump’s grip on Republicans and the nativist turn the party has taken.
Three other people confirmed to Reuters the call and the discussions for a potential splinter party, but asked not to be identified.
Among the call participants were John Mitnick, general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security under Trump; former Republican congressman Charlie Dent; Elizabeth Neumann, deputy chief of staff in the Homeland Security Department under Trump; and Miles Taylor, another former Trump homeland security official.
The talks highlight the wide intraparty rift over Trump’s false claims of election fraud and the deadly Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol. Most Republicans remain fiercely loyal to the former president, but others seek a new direction for the party.
The House of Representatives impeached Trump on Jan. 13 on a charge of inciting an insurrection by exhorting thousands of supporters to march on the Capitol on the day Congress was gathered to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory.
Call participants said they were particularly dismayed by the fact that more than half of the Republicans in Congress – eight senators and 139 House representatives – voted to block certification of Biden’s election victory just hours after the Capitol siege.
Most Republican senators have also indicated they will not support the conviction of Trump in this week’s Senate impeachment trial.
“Large portions of the Republican Party are radicalizing and threatening American democracy,” McMullin told Reuters. “The party needs to recommit to truth, reason and founding ideals or there clearly needs to be something new.”
Gor for it. If former Republicans are uncomfortable in the Democratic Party then maybe they do need a third party. And it will be the third party because Trump’s GOP isn’t going anywhere.
Asked about the discussions for a third party, Jason Miller, a Trump spokesman, said: “These losers left the Republican Party when they voted for Joe Biden.”
There you have it. Republicans who voted for Biden are losers who left the party. Are the losers listening? I hope so.
Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent remind readers that the Democrats’ House impeachment managers have made a strategic decision not to focus on Republicans’ complicity in events leading to the Trump Insurrection of January 6th. The likelihood they can persuade 17 Republicans to vote to convict Donald John Trump of inciting it is slim. Even slimmer if they insist (or even imply) Republican senators accept their share of responsibility:
But the result is this: At the highest-profile reckoning we’ll ever see into this months-long effort to overthrow U.S. democracy, a large part of the story simply isn’t being told. The role in this whole saga of the GOP’s ongoing radicalization, and its increasing comfort with anti-democratic tactics, openly authoritarian conduct and even political violence, is largely going unmentioned.
During Trump’s pre-election efforts to undermine confidence in the 2020 election outcome, his enablers remained silent. Republicans in the states attempted to block efforts to enable voting by mail, once a G.O.P. election mainstay. Republicans in Congress watched as Trump’s postmaster general instituted service changes that slowed mail delivery across the country. They said nothing as Trump predicted he would lead in the vote count on Election Day but fall behind in vote counting as states processed mailed-in ballots that take more time.
Then, when Biden did win, most of them wouldn’t even say explicitly that Biden won for many weeks. It wasn’t until six weeks after the election that Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) finally admitted Biden was the victor. He and other Republicans delayed for the cynical purpose of keeping GOP voters energized for the Senate runoff elections in Georgia.
And then, even after the attack, more than 130 House Republicans voted to invalidate Biden electors, carrying forward Trump’s effort to overturn the election and keep himself in power illegitimately.
E.J. Dionne argues conversely that House impeachment managers “quietly but passionately” have sealed the off ramps for Republican senators:
Those who vote to acquit the former president will now own it all: The incendiary speech that made the nation’s capital a killing ground but also the months of incitement and lying that built up to the violence.
“His words became their actions,” Rep. Joaquin Castro, Democrat of Texas, said of the Trump-insurrectionist axis. The riot occurred because Trump “ran out of nonviolent options to maintain power,” said Democrats’ lead impeachment manager Rep. Ted Lieu of California.
Dionne may be convinced those arguments are persuasive, but Waldman and Sargent judge Republicans by their actions and inaction, not by Democrats’ legal arguments.
“It doesn’t matter that Trump castigated them for not doing enough,” the pair write. “They did do an extraordinary amount — through sins of commission and omission alike.” They are unlikely to own them now.
House impeachment managers are bending over backwards to let Republicans separate themselves from Trump’s worst behavior and Republicans are totally uninterested
There is no “come to Constitution” moment in their future even if impeachment managers manage to coax a few more G.O.P. senators from the dark side. They have been radicalized. They have welcomed it. They cannot separate themselves from Trump or white nationalist radicals without risking their offices or even their lives. If Republican electeds did not know it before Jan. 6, they know it now.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican who voted for impeachment writes, “If the GOP doesn’t take a stand, the chaos of the past few months, and the past four years, could quickly return. The future of our party and our country depends on confronting what happened — so it doesn’t happen again.” Kinzinger warns, “The further down this road we go, the closer we come to the end of America as we know it.”
They eschewed every chance to take the off ramps. Besides, accountability is not their style is it?
When Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah pitched a hissy fit at the end of Trump impeachment trial proceedings Wednesday night, he drew attention to a small detail from the Jan. 6 insurrection that might have gone less noticed.
There was chaos in the chamber when ahead of adjournment last night a “visibly outraged” Lee objected to testimony that cited him as a source for a conversation between Trump and Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama:
In the final hour of arguments on Wednesday, Representative David Cicilline, Democrat of Rhode Island and one of the impeachment managers, spoke of Mr. Trump mistakenly calling Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, in an effort to reach Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama. In describing the call, which was detailed in news reports, Mr. Cicilline asserted that Mr. Lee had stood by as Mr. Trump asked Mr. Tuberville to make additional objections to the certification of President Biden’s electoral votes.
“This is not what happened,” Lee wrote in large letters on a notepad. He demanded the anecdote be struck from the record, perhaps referring to testimony identifying him as the source for the actual content of the call. Lee did not say.
After some intense huddles on the floor, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the leading impeachment manager, agreed to withdraw the statement. He reserved the option to raise the issue again later.
Tuberville told reporters afterwards that he wished Cicilline’s statement “had been correct” (Politico):
“I don’t know if you’ve ever talked to President Trump. You don’t get many words in, but, he didn’t get a chance to say a whole lot because I said ‘Mr. President, they just took the vice president out, I’ve got to go,’” Tuberville said in an interview.
Lee had traded some text messages about the wrong number with Bryan Schott of the Salt Lake Tribune the evening of the insurrection. “Moments after the proceedings in the Senate were halted by the Capitol Police,” Lee said Trump had called him by mistake while trying to contact Tuberville. Senators had already been relocated to a temporary holding room. Lee walked over and handed his phone to Tuberville, Schott reported in his newsletter.
The call between Trump and Tuberville lasted “five or ten minutes,” according to Lee.
WOW — @JoaquinCastrotx plays video of the insurrectionist on the right reading through a bullhorn the Trump tweet on the left, attacking Pence as the riot raged. pic.twitter.com/G1fgaKe14h
So it is the timing of the five-or-ten-minute Tuberville call and Trump’s tweet lashing out at Pence that S.V. Date of Huffington Post found interesting late Wednesday (emphasis mine):
According to video footage from that day, Pence was removed from the Senate at 2:14 p.m. after rioters had broken into the Capitol, meaning that when Trump lashed out at Pence at 2:24 p.m., he already knew Pence’s life was in danger.
“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution,” Trump wrote in his tweet.
[…]
The exact time Pence was taken from the Senate following the breach of the Capitol by the mob Trump had incited to try to overturn the presidential election was known the day of the attack, as was the time of Trump’s tweet. What was not known until Tuberville’s statement was whether Trump was aware of the danger Pence was in at the time he posted his tweet.
Trump spokesperson Jason Miller did not respond to HuffPost queries late Wednesday.
Saying nothing more is probably Trump’s best move at this point. Raskin and his impeachment team are sure to come back to build a case around the Tuberville call more explicitly.
The timing is tight. Rioters breached the Capitol around 2:11 p.m. ET. Security removed Pence from the Senate chamber at 2:14 p.m. Trump called Lee “moments” later. The call lasted “five or ten minutes.” Trump tweeted against Pence at 2:24 p.m.
It is possible that even knowing Pence’s life was in danger, Trump amped up pressure on Pence, the mob’s outrage, and the danger to members of Congress, their staffs, and to anyone working inside the Capitol. Anyone who watched Trump over the prior four years knows it is not possible that Trump cared.
As people died and over a hundred officers were injured, some seriously, Trump sat for hours watching the riot unfold on television and did nothing to stop it.
Advisers to former President Donald Trump say he still has not expressed remorse for the siege at the US Capitol, which could end up being important for Senate jurors to consider after House impeachment managers on Wednesday released new video of the violent mob’s assault on January 6.One of the new clips show then-Vice President Mike Pence and his family being hustled away by Secret Service as the siege was under way.
That affirms what Pence aides told CNN in the days following the deadly insurrection. Some of those aides were outraged with Trump and believed he had put his own vice president in danger.Pence, who plans to keep laying low during the impeachment trial, has not quite patched up his relationship with Trump after what happened, according to a source familiar with the situation.
The source said Pence and Trump “discussed everything” that happened on January 6. But at the time, the source said, both men were more focused on just getting to January 20 — Inauguration Day.”He got his point across at the meeting afterward,” the source said of Pence, noting there were some lingering hard feelings. Trump did not express remorse for putting Pence in a harrowing situation at the meeting, the source added.
“That’s not his style,” the source said.
No, it’s not his style. He is also not sorry. He’s glad Pence was put in that situation and I have no doubt he loved hearing that “hang Mike Pence” chant. It shows that the Red Hat thugs knew who their daddy was.
The article goes on to say that they expect Trump and Pence to mend their fences and I’d guess that’s true. After all, Trump only tried to have Pence executed by an angry insurrectionist mob. They’ll get past it.
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