This piece by Benjy Sarlin on January 7, 2021 illustrates just how shallow Republican principles really are.
Rick Perry tried to warn voters of the dangers of Donald Trump.
In a speech ahead of the 2016 Republican presidential contest in which both men would compete, the former Texas governor framed Trump as an unchecked demagogue and chose a striking historical image to illustrate his point: A mob attack on Washington.
Perry described an 1854 assault on the nation’s capital in which members of the nativist Know-Nothing movement accosted a guard and destroyed slabs of marble that were meant to complete the Washington Monument. Their goal was to thwart an imagined conspiracy about the Pope taking over the government.
“These people built nothing, created nothing. They existed to cast blame and tear down certain institutions. To give outlet to anger,” Perry said. “Donald Trump is the modern-day incarnation of the Know-Nothing movement.”
Trump, of course, was elected president that year and Perry would serve as energy secretary in his administration.
But like many of Trump’s former rivals, Perry seemed to know something like Wednesday’s deadly insurrection at the Capitol was a risk if Trump became president. We know they knew, because they told us so.
He did tell us so, in no uncertain terms. And then he joined the administration. You really don’t need to know anything more about Rick Perry. But it gets worse!
Fast forward to November 2020:
Members of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol believe that former Texas Governor and Trump Energy Secretary Rick Perry was the author of a text message sent to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows the day after the 2020 election pushing an “AGRESSIVE (sic) STRATEGY” for three state legislatures to ignore the will of their voters and deliver their states’ electors to Donald Trump, three sources familiar with the House Committee investigation tell CNN.A spokesman for Perry told CNN that the former Energy Secretary denies being the author of the text. Multiple people who know Rick Perry confirmed to CNN that the phone number the committee has associated with that text message is Perry’s number.
The cell phone number the text was sent from, obtained from a source knowledgeable about the investigation, appears in databases as being registered to a James Richard Perry of Texas, the former governor’s full name.
The number is also associated in a second database as registered to a Department of Energy email address associated with Perry when he was secretary. When told of these facts, the spokesman had no explanation.
The House Select Committee declined to comment on the author of the text.The Nov. 4, 2020, text message from Perry’s phone garnered a great deal of attention this week; it was included in a tranche of roughly 6,000 documents Meadows turned over to the House Select Committee.
Here’s the text message:
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that we have voluminous records of Perry’s doings over the past decade and a half. He’s always been a piece of work.
It’s Happy Hollandaise time here at Hullabaloo. If you’d like to drop a little something in the old Christmas stocking you can do so here: