Grateful for this note. Point I was making on @ReliableSources was that in crises like past month in Afgh, three duties of press:
First, cover the news/ *humanize* the news. Allowing for all imbalances and omissions, this has been greatest strength of recent (brave) reporting
@JamesFallows, you were superb on @ReliableSources today. Outlining the 3 “jobs” of the media and how you castigated the media for breaking the bond/oath on #3 (Keep things in Perspective) was brilliant. @CNN is among the guilty…”not so reliable” sources.
Second, begin process of *accountability.* In case of this month’s news, that means: civilian and military; US, Afgh, Pakistan, and other; Immediate, and longer-term — decades in past.
This has barely begun (and immediate over-reaction was “Biden’s failure!”)
Third, offer *perspective*. Put this moment on a scale with other crises and failures. “See things steady and see them whole.”
This was area where immediate US press reaction was least useful. It’s *not* like Fall of Saigon. Help public understand diff and similarities. /end
Summary on “Fall of Saigon” front:
-April 1975: actual urban warfare w shelling, gunfire, mass casualties. US airplanes couldn’t land
-US helicopters evac’ed fewer than 10k people
-1 million “boat people” left by sea; 100k drowned
Seriously, people need to read some history. If they think this evacuation was a bad as Saigon they are extremely misinformed. Refusing to provide perspective, context and historical insight to this situation has led to the worst media performance I’ve seen in years.
Meanwhile, the media should heed Fallows’ wise words about how to balance the coverage:
.@JamesFallows: "A challenge for us in the media is to try to keep multiple things in view… There is a famous line adopted from Matthew Arnold, 'See things steady and see them whole.' We can't always do that because, essentially, what's on TV commands attention right now." pic.twitter.com/pzXEWSqJRu
It seems newsworthy that the frontrunner for 2024, who ran in 2016 and 2020 promising to end all the forever wars, is now saying that he would re-invade Afghanistan.
I must have written a hundred pieces about the fatuousness of Trump’s stated position. He only took the position he did because he thought it was popular and it compared him favorably with other Republicans. It was inevitable that he would take the opposite position once his rival successfully carried out his plan.
By the way: Most of the equipment he’s talking about was held by the Afghan military, not the US. He’s on record saying that he knew the Taliban would win power. What did he think would happen to the military equipment?
[W]eapons cannot simply be used in perpetuity by their new owners. In general, the more complex a weapons system is, the more onerous its maintenance requirements are. Simple weapons, like rifles, can last decades (or longer) in rough conditions and with minimal maintenance. Likewise, basic vehicles – pickup trucks, for example, which are the building blocks of armed mobility for many irregular forces worldwide – can be kept running with ingenuity and a degree of mechanical knowledge. But systems such as aircraft, computerized sensor systems, modern armored vehicles and so on all require specialized parts, complex maintenance procedures and – increasingly – regular software updates to keep them effective, or even functional.
Apparently, the US did destroy a lot of computer equipment and electronics and took much of it back to the US so Trump is, as usual, full of shit.
As usual, Trump is totally ignorant. He spent that last year of his administration trying to get re-elected and his already miniscule interest in anything but himself waned to zero. He’s watching OAN now and that’s where he’s getting his information.
This is why we are where we are. Nothing is more important to the Republican establishment than tax cuts and judges and they got what they wanted. The devastation caused by their petty will to power is of no interest.
McConnell enabled Trump and the right wing nihilism that inspired this rejection of science. He went along with all the conspiracy mongering, the racist hate and after a mild rebuke over January 6th has shrugged his shoulders at the ongoing threat of violence from his own voters. (He doesn’t think criticizing people serves any purpose — unless they are Democrats.)
This crisis is as much his doing as it is Trump’s.
I’m not sure I’m totally on board with everything in this essay but it’s past time that somebody said it. My feeling is that the military and the administration no doubt could have done some things better with the withdrawal but that there was no way to control events and the any decisions in that holy mess were likely to have unintended consequences. The media was always going to have a full blown hissy fit over any violence that took place, whether before the Taliban took over or after. They were lying in wait.
Anyway, here’s Dave Rothkopf in the Atlantic. There’s a reason the last three presidents didn’t get this done. It was destined to be awful. It took a lot of guts for Biden to just plow ahead and do it. And I too think he deserves credit for that.
America’s longest war has been by any measure a costly failure, and the errors in managing the conflict deserve scrutiny in the years to come. But Joe Biden doesn’t “own” the mayhem on the ground right now. What we’re seeing is the culmination of 20 years of bad decisions by U.S. political and military leaders. If anything, Americans should feel proud of what the U.S. government and military have accomplished in these past two weeks. President Biden deserves credit, not blame.
Unlike his three immediate predecessors in the Oval Office, all of whom also came to see the futility of the Afghan operation, Biden alone had the political courage to fully end America’s involvement. Although Donald Trump made a plan to end the war, he set a departure date that fell after the end of his first term and created conditions that made the situation Biden inherited more precarious. And despite significant pressure and obstacles, Biden has overseen a military and government that have managed, since the announcement of America’s withdrawal, one of the most extraordinary logistical feats in their recent history. By the time the last American plane lifts off from Hamid Karzai International Airport on August 31, the total number of Americans and Afghan allies extricated from the country may exceed 120,000.
In the days following the fall of Kabul earlier this month—an event that triggered a period of chaos, fear, and grief—critics castigated the Biden administration for its failure to properly coordinate the departure of the last Americans and allies from the country. The White House was indeed surprised by how quickly the Taliban took control, and those early days could have been handled better. But the critics argued that more planning both would have been able to stop the Taliban victory and might have made America’s departure somehow tidier, more like a win or perhaps even a draw. The chaos, many said, was symptomatic of a bigger error. They argued that the United States should stay in Afghanistan, that the cost of remaining was worth the benefits a small force might bring.
Former military officers and intelligence operatives, as well as commentators who had long been advocates of extending America’s presence in Afghanistan, railed against Biden’s artificial deadline. Some critics were former Bush-administration officials or supporters who had gotten the U.S. into the mess in the first place, setting us on the impossible path toward nation building and, effectively, a mission without a clear exit or metric for success. Some were Obama-administration officials or supporters who had doubled down on the investment of personnel in the country and later, when the futility of the war was clear, lacked the political courage to withdraw. Some were Trump-administration officials or supporters who had negotiated with and helped strengthen the Taliban with their concessions in the peace deal and then had punted the ultimate exit from the country to the next administration.
They all conveniently forgot that they were responsible for some of America’s biggest errors in this war and instead were incandescently self-righteous in their invective against the Biden administration. Never mind the fact that the Taliban had been gaining ground since it resumed its military campaign in 2004 and, according to U.S. estimates even four years ago, controlled or contested about a third of Afghanistan. Never mind that the previous administration’s deal with the Taliban included the release of 5,000 fighters from prison and favored an even earlier departure date than the one that Biden embraced. Never mind that Trump had drawn down U.S. troop levels from about 13,000 to 2,500 during his last year in office and had failed to repatriate America’s equipment on the ground. Never mind the delay caused by Trump and his adviser Stephen Miller’s active obstruction of special visas for Afghans who helped us.
Never mind the facts. Never mind the losses. Never mind the lessons. Biden, they felt, was in the wrong.
Despite the criticism, Biden, who had argued unsuccessfully when he was Barack Obama’s vice president to seriously reduce America’s presence in Afghanistan, remained resolute. Rather than view the heartbreaking scenes in Afghanistan in a political light as his opponents did, Biden effectively said, “Politics be damned—we’re going to do what’s right” and ordered his team to stick with the deadline and find a way to make the best of the difficult situation in Kabul.
The Biden administration nimbly adapted its plans, ramping up the airlift and sending additional troops into the country to aid crisis teams and to enhance security. Around-the-clock flights came into and went out of Afghanistan. Giant cargo planes departed, a number of them packed with as many as 600 occupants. Senior administration officials convened regular meetings with U.S. allies to find destinations for those planes to land and places for the refugees to stay. The State Department tracked down Americans in the country, as well as Afghans who had worked with the U.S., to arrange their passage to the airport. The Special Immigrant Visa program that the Trump administration had slowed down was kicked into high gear. Despite years of fighting, the administration and the military spoke with the Taliban many times to coordinate passage of those seeking to depart to the airport, to mitigate risks as best as possible, to discuss their shared interest in meeting the August 31 deadline.
The process was relentless and imperfect and, as we all have seen in the most horrific way, not without huge risks for those staying behind to help. On August 26, a suicide bomber associated with ISIS-K killed more than 150 Afghans and 13 American service members who were gathered outside the airport. However, even that heinous act didn’t deter the military. In a 24-hour period from Thursday to Friday, 12,500 people were airlifted out of the country and the president recommitted to meeting the August 31 deadline. And he did so even as his critics again sought to capitalize on tragedy for their own political gain: Republicans called for the impeachment of Biden and of Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Within hours of the attack at the airport, America struck back, killing two terrorists and injuring another with a missile launched from a drone. A separate drone strike targeted a vehicle full of explosives on Sunday. In doing so, Biden countered the argument that America might lack the intelligence or military resources we would need to defend ourselves against violent extremists now that our troops are leaving.
The very last chapter of America’s benighted stay in Afghanistan should be seen as one of accomplishment on the part of the military and its civilian leadership. Once again the courage and unique capabilities of the U.S. armed services have been made clear. And, in a stark change from recent years, an American leader has done the hard thing, the right thing: set aside politics and put both America’s interests and values first.
I’m surprised this appeared in the Atlantic which has been overwhelming hostile on this subject. But maybe it’s a sign that the press is starting to calm down a little bit after their initial hysteria and is taking a more balanced view of the situation.
Along those lines, I urge you to take a look at this fantastic essay about the “savvy journalism” that has been reanimated over this Afghanistan story. It’s one of the best analyses I ever read about this phenomenon which keeps repeating itself over and over again. It’s well worth your time.
Update: The press is even more agitated than they were before judging by the WH briefing. Yesterday a Category 4 Hurricane hit New Orleans, Lake Tahoe is under evacuation orders and is currently in danger of being overrun by wildfire, the EU just banned all but essential American travel because of our out of control pandemic and the press has spent the entire briefing asking the same hostile questions about Afghanistan over and over and over again.
They want to nail Biden so badly that it’s painfully obvious. Maybe he should come out there and scream “Fake News” and call them liars. They seemed to like that a lot.
Here's the video of Trump on Greg Gianforte body slamming Ben Jacobs: "Any guy that can do a body slam, he's my kind of guy." pic.twitter.com/8tWxLXE6Jx
At a rally in Montana, Trump celebrated Republican Rep. Greg Gianforte, who body-slammed a reporter in May 2017, telling the crowd, “Any guy who can do a body-slam … he’s my guy.”
Gianforte assaulted journalist Ben Jacobs after Jacobs asked him a question about the GOP health care bill, on the day before Gianforte won election. He ultimately apologized (after his spokesperson first denied the assault) and pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault. Gianforte was sentenced with 40 hours of community service, 20 hours of anger management, and a $300 fine along with an $85 court fee, in addition to a deferred 180-day jail sentence.
Gianforte is now the Governor of Montana.
We all know what happened on January 6th when Trump and his henchmen incited a violent mob to storm the Capitol during a joint session of congress and try to hunt down the Speaker of the House and the Vice President.
And now the violent right wing establishment is now openly threatening violence against elected officials:
PA GOP Gov candidate Steve Lynch today: “Forget going into these school boards with freaking data. You go in to these school boards to remove them. I’m going in with 20 strong men and I’m gonna give them an option – they can leave or they can be removed.” pic.twitter.com/A0M6SsOldI
That is a literal threat of violence. Of course, it isn’t the first to come from a Republican leader threatening officials over public health efforts:
President Donald Trump targeted Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia in tweets Friday calling for officials to “liberate” the states amid protests over stay-at-home orders aimed at stemming the spread of COVID-19.
Trump first tweeted “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” Then, a minute later, the president tweeted “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!”
Minutes after that, he added in another message, “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!”
I am not one to blame the grotesque degradation of the GOP only on Donald Trump. It was a long time coming and the Republican establishment took full advantage of the radicalization by right wing media that was indoctrinating their voters. But I don’t recall Republican politicians routinely and openly advocating political violence until Trump.
It is an understatement to say there is a lot going on right now. The two biggest stories over the weekend were the winding up of the dangerous airlift out of Afghanistan and the arrival of an epic hurricane hitting the Gulf Coast on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
Now is a dangerous time — but judging from the news coverage, I don’t think we’ve fully grasped just how much danger Americans are actually in.
In a number of states, this latest COVID-19 surge, driven by the lethal Delta variant, has now surpassed the deadly surge of last winter. In two hard-hit states, the massive hurricane is coinciding with an equally massive surge in hospitalizations, making for an extremely volatile situation.
According to LAIlluminator, which covers Louisiana state and local government, hospitals have been at capacity for weeks, as have all the other hospitals throughout the region, causing the authorities to make the frightening decision not to evacuate patients. There was nowhere for them to go. Temporary shelters had to be kept at lower numbers because of the COVID risk and nursing homes residents who would normally be transferred to hospitals due to serious medical conditions were told to shelter in place.
The Illuminator reports that while Louisiana has had a rough go with this round of COVID, it was thought to be turning the corner last week. On Friday COVID hospitalization was below 2,700. That is 300 fewer than the week before but the positivity rate is still very high and people not able to follow precautions during the emergency will cause more of the virus to circulate, likely leading to another surge. Nobody knows what will happen to the inevitable victims of injuries and accidents in the aftermath.
Louisiana’s Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards, reintroduced an indoor mask mandate weeks ago and has been exhorting people to get vaccinated but many of his rural constituents have refused to comply. The state has only a 40% vaccination rate, much lower than the national average. Like many others, they managed to get most elderly patients the shot, but younger folks just haven’t seen the need. The cultural and political pressure among Republicans in the state to defy the health professionals, and their Democratic governor, is enormous.
The Mississippi coast took a battering from the hurricane as well, but its COVID surge is far more life-threatening to many more people in the state. The New York Times reported that Mississippi was “uniquely unprepared” for this latest onslaught of COVID patients:
The state has fewer active physicians per capita than any other. Five rural hospitals have closed in the past decade, and 35 more are at imminent risk of closing, according to an assessment from a nonprofit health care quality agency. There are 2,000 fewer nurses in Mississippi today than there were at the beginning of the year, according to the state hospital association.
The Times characterizes this as a combination of “poverty and politics” but really, it’s just politics — that’s what’s at the heart of the poverty and everything else.
The state is never very generous when it comes to benefits, which they tend to see as going to “the wrong people” (if you know what I mean). But by rejecting the Medicaid expansion that came with the Affordable Care Act, they willfully deprived themselves of the money that would have allowed them to alleviate many of the current deficiencies in their system. And Mississippi’s Republican governor has basically given up, the Mississippi Free Press reports:
I’m no Biblical scholar but I do seem to recall something about the Lord helping those who help themselves.
This summer’s Delta surge has hit all the states but has been particularly virulent in the Southern states, the epicenter of anti-vax activity.
And yes, there are a number of reasons why people haven’t gotten vaccinated in the last few months when they’ve been (mostly) easily accessible, free and very effective. Many young people erroneously believe they aren’t in danger of serious illness and some people of color are just generally leery of government edicts to take vaccines because of America’s woeful history of using those populations for experimentation. But the largest cohort of people who are winding up in the hospital are those who are refusing for irrational political reasons. The vast majority of deaths could have been avoided if the victims had gotten vaccinated.
And just as they did during the first surges, they are not only adamantly against vaccine mandates, they are protesting all mitigation measures such as requiring masks in schools despite the fact that children under 12 are unable to be vaccinated so there is also a surge of kids getting sick and being hospitalized. And following their leader, Donald Trump, they are still perversely willing to take dangerous, untried snake oil cures while refusing to take the vaccine which has been received by hundreds of millions of people all over the globe with only minor side effects.
Even the COVID deaths of a spate of high-profile anti-mask protesters and flamboyantlyanti-vax right-wingmedia stars don’t seem to have changed the minds of the hardest core, true believers. It seems that the only time any of them change their minds is when they are on their own deathbeds and it’s too late.
There have been millions of words written about the American right-wing’s hostility to science over many decades. Cynical politicians in the pockets of wealthy interests have worked hard to exploit it. But this weekend has illustrated both the long and short-term threat of this insensate attitude. The ongoing rejection of the dangers of climate change and the resulting warming of ocean waters is fueling the new devastating pattern of monster storms that we are seeing more and more often. The hostility to public health measures and life-saving vaccines during this pandemic has extended this crisis to the point that we are now endangering children and killing thousands of people who didn’t have to die.
In the states along the Gulf of Mexico this weekend two existential emergencies collided and it didn’t have to happen. It’s terrifying to contemplate but unless we are able to figure out a way to change the hearts and minds of the rigid and stubborn minority of science deniers in this country, this is just the beginning.
A poster (unconmfirmed) on a local FB thread reports 126 new covid admissions here last week. “At Wake Forest last week Mom went on for emergency surgery (not covid) and incubated patients were filing the hallways. HALLWAYS. let that sink in.”
Yes, we’re all a bit stir crazy, but that’s what exercising outdoors and streaming TV are for.
Via epidemiologist Eric Feigl-Ding, nearly one in ten concert-goers who attended a recent the Boardmasters music festival in Newquay, England two weeks ago have contracted the Delta variant of Covid-19:
A senior official working on pandemic response in the south-west of England said many of the infections among young people in the region had been identified as coming directly from the festival in Newquay, which now has the highest rate of infection in England at more than 2,000 per 100,000 people.
The source told i: “It was traced because they can identify where it came from by genetic changes in the code.”
2) “It was traced because they can identify where it came from by genetic changes in the code.” While it is being referred to among hospital staff in Devon and Cornwall as the “festival variant”, it is believed to be a new strain of Delta rather than an entirely new variant.”
I stopped counting dead ministers 15 months ago after my count hit 50. It ain’t over. But the pods have “done their research.”
Woman wearing a “MAMA” tshirt at the Encinitas school board meeting says her “cubs” will refuse to wear masks this week. “We’re done asking you for permission. The pandemic is over. We are declaring our freedom.”Then she says she and her friends are running for school board. pic.twitter.com/Q5yoLqvLwP
Death before dishonor. Pistols at dawn with the Delta variant. Our lunatics are defiant and threatening violence if nature won’t surrender.
At protest in Santa Monica today before the vote on mask-mandate, Jason Lefkowitz has the home addresses of each LA City Council member on his sign. He says they are going to the homes of whoever votes for it, and if it passes, it’s “civil war, get your guns.” From @chadloderpic.twitter.com/QICGpuT2sc
They won’t acknowledge that in elections, sometimes you lose. They don’t even bother using the word democracy Vizzini-like anymore. Democracy means heads they win, tails you lose. Or they go to guns.
PA GOP Gov candidate Steve Lynch today: “Forget going into these school boards with freaking data. You go in to these school boards to remove them. I’m going in with 20 strong men and I’m gonna give them an option – they can leave or they can be removed.” pic.twitter.com/A0M6SsOldI
“If you don’t care about the rest of us – why should we are about you?” asked Jonathan Capehart. These people “mewling about their freedom” are the kinds that believe in laying down their lives for freedom in the abstract, just not to protect themselves, their families, and their neighbors from a deadly enemy if they can’t shoot it.
David Daley need not convince us here that “North Carolina has become a laboratory to subvert democracy.” Since the 2010 election, followed by a decade of gerrymandering and redistricting fights, we’ve lived as the GOP’s lab rats. How do Republicans hate democracy? Let Daley count a few ways (Salon):
Voter ID bills that surgically suppressed the Black vote, a brazen power grab over the state judiciary and election administration boards, an assault on academic freedom in the state university system, a 2016 lame-duck session that neutered the authority of incoming Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. This version of political hardball provided the playbook for Republicans in other states across the country, including Wisconsin, Michigan, Texas and Arizona.
Former Rep. David Lewis became the face of the rigging effort with his admission that he had drawn the state’s congressional districts to lock in 10 seats for Republicans and three for Democrats because he could not figure out how to draw them to get 11-2.
But it was the late Thomas Hofeller’s work behind the scenes that drove the gerrymandering effort. That, plus his proposal to rig the 2020 census by adding a citizenship question intended to to drive down minority response to the advantage of Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.
Federal authorities finally caught up with Lewis for diverting $365,000 in campaign money to his personal use through a scheme worthy of an internet scammer.
Daley explains what came of Lewis and NC Republicans fighting a decade’s worth of election lawsuits:
This week, Lewis received a slap on the wrist for this illegal financial behavior: No prison time and a $1,000 fine. It pays to be well-connected. Indeed, those without fancy lawyers and professional acquaintance with the judge would almost certainly have earned serious prison time for matters involving much smaller amounts.
It hardly seems enough, not for Lewis’s abrogation of public trust, and not for his larger sins against democracy which have ruined lives and damaged public institutions. But in the end, North Carolina Republicans essentially got away with that too. When courts overturned the GOP maps as unconstitutional partisan or racial gerrymanders, the party had infamous partisan loyalists like Hofeller on speed-dial to replace them with new maps that were just as obviously rigged, allowing Republicans to hold supermajority power even when the two parties closely divided the vote. And even when the state supreme court overturned Hofeller’s handiwork in 2019, the maps went back to the legislature for tweaking and still favored Republicans in 2020, just a little less.
The GOP got away with a decade’s worth of illegally drawn districts in North Carolina. All it took was dragging out court procedings and stonewalling judges’ orders to fix them when they lost in court. Republicans here were Trumpist before Trumpism was a thing.
Having gotten away with it for the last ten years, they are even now preparing to do it for another ten.
“The disease is metastasizing,” Daley writes. “Lewis’ petty corruption generated only the most tepid response.” As for their “bulldozing of competitive elections, the perversion of public policy? For that, there never seem to be any consequences at all.”
As I have saidrepeatedly, this is the GOP’s M.O.: 1) Find the line. 2) Step over it. 3) Dare anyone to push them back. No pushback? New line to overstep. The way water slowly erodes mountains, the GOP is eroding democracy. And damned pleased with themselves for getting away with it.
I knew you’d want to hear about the latest from the people who are trying to kill as many people from COVID as they can. Here are Tucker Carlson and Alex Berenson, two of the worst, courtesy Media Matters:
Berenson and Carlson are waging a fear campaign against the vaccines, exploiting two different points of argument: noting that vaccines are not 100% effective, even at their most successful levels; and seemingly attributing any illnesses that occur in some individuals directly to the vaccine, despite a lack of any direct evidence.
Actually, Israel’s rollout shows that the vaccine works
Israel has administered at least a first dose of vaccine to 5 million citizens, including nearly 3.8 million who have received a second dose. Among the fully vaccinated population, The Times of Israel reported this week, only 0.2% have developed any COVID-19 symptoms at all, and less than 1% have tested positive for the virus.
But on the March 8 edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight, Berenson claimed that Israel had demonstrated that the vaccines were not as effective as has been touted — and he appeared to echo online conspiracy theories claiming that the vaccines were themselves causing serious harm.
Berenson’s comments followed a discussion on how “pure mask theater” was making air travel more dangerous for commercial pilots and air traffic controllers, despite a lack of evidence of real-world accidents that would have resulted from this purported danger.
The rhetorical trick: Connecting any negative health event to the COVID-19 vaccines
Conspiracy theories have circulated online for well over a month, claiming that the vaccine rollout in Israel had led to deaths. Reuters fact-checked this in early February, finding “no evidence the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine has caused any fatal reactions among recipients in Israel,” and reporting that nearly all coronavirus-related deaths from the previous month had occurred in people who had not been vaccinated.
Reuters also determined that a web site collecting stories of deaths that supposedly happened as a result of the vaccines “do not offer evidence of a causal link between vaccination and death; they offer a personal timeline of a vaccination dose being given, and a death that occurred afterwards.”
However, Berenson appears to be alleging on Twitter that governments are covering up a surge in negative health events among the vaccinated population.
In many cases, conspiracy theorists have latched onto stories about illnesses that might have happened anyway, and removed them from any context. For example, a series of viral online posts back in December focused on four cases of Bell’s palsy, a condition that causes facial paralysis, among the vaccine test subjects. However, these cases were found to have been “consistent with the expected background rate in the general population,” and thus unlikely to have been linked to the vaccine at all.
Another Murdoch media property, the New York Post, promoted stories in December and January about a 75-year-old Israel man who had a heart attack as well as the deaths of two nursing home residents in Norway after being vaccinated, though in each case there was no evidence linking the causes of their deaths to the vaccines.
The fact is that the rare side-effects are being reported, monitored and treated. Berenson is simply full of it on this. But millions of people watch Tucker Carlson and read this loon’s twitter feed and believe it. Well, actually, they will no longer readberenson’s twitter feed because he has finally been kicked off of Twitter for spreading these lies. Unfortunately, that’s likely to make him an even more regular guest on right wing media.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi authorized a Bipartisan Commission to look into January 6th that would have allowed the Republicans equal voice in the investigation and they turned it down en masse. When they refused, she called for the Bipartisan January 6th Committee, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy named Trump minion Jim Jordan and some other MAGAs to the committee which she responsibly vetoed. They had given up their chance to salt the investigation with Trump’s henchmen.
One good reason to deny Jordan the committee assignment was because he was intimately involved with the White House (non) response to the Insurrection. And now we know he was on the horn with Trump throughout. Politico reported:
MORE THAN ONE JAN. 6 TRUMP-JORDAN CALL — We know that DONALD TRUMP and Rep. JIM JORDAN spoke once on the day of the Capitol riot, but the Ohio Republican has said he doesn’t remember when their conversation took place. We have some new details that could help clear up that timeframe — including confirmation of at least one more phone conversation between Jordan and the then-president during the siege.
After a group of lawmakers were evacuated from the House chamber to a safe room on Jan. 6, Jordan was joined by Rep. MATT GAETZ (R-Fla.) for a call during which they implored Trump to tell his supporters to stand down, per a source with knowledge of that call. The source declined to say how Trump responded to this request.
Jordan, when asked about whether Gaetz participated, said he’d “have to think about it,” citing many conversations he had during the frenetic attack. He also said phone calls to Trump happened more than once on that deadly day.
“Look, I definitely spoke to the president that day. I don’t recall — I know it was more than once, I just don’t recall the times,” Jordan told our Olivia Beavers. He later said that “I’m sure” one of the Trump-involved calls took place in the safe room “because we were in that room forever.” (For safety reasons, we are not disclosing the specific room where members were evacuated to, but that is the room Jordan is referencing.) Jordan would not get into the specifics of what he discussed with the president, though he said that like everyone, he wanted the National Guard to get involved.
A spokesperson for Gaetz, who has supported Trump’s decisions on Jan. 6, said: “Congressman Gaetz speaks with President Trump regularly and doesn’t disclose the substance of those discussions with the media.”
Jordan has previously disclosed that he spoke to Trump on Jan. 6, but not the existence of more than one call on the day — a rare piece of new information on the former president’s moves during the riot at a time when House Republicans are loath to discuss such specifics. Trump-Jordan discussions are likely to be of keen interest to the Democrat-led select committee on Jan. 6, which is expected to soon seek phone records of members of Congress themselves in its probe.
Even his top henchmen allegedly tried to get him to call off the mob. When he finally found it in himself to do it, he gently asked them to go home, said how much he loved them and how great they were and told them to remember the day forever.
