Ari Melber’s great interview with Trump aide Peter Navarro should not be missed:
"what digby sez..."
Month: January 2022
Note the date:
Jan. 5, 2021, 4:07 PM
Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Collins
Online forums popular with conservatives and far-right activists have been filled in recent days with threats and expectations of violence ahead of a planned protest in Washington on Wednesday to coincide with congressional certification of the election.
In anticipation of possible violence, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser has asked residents to stay away from the downtown area where protesters will be marching. Every city police officer will be on duty, and the National Guard has been mobilized.
“In regards to the protests planned for January 6th, the violent rhetoric we’re seeing online is at a new level,” said Daniel J. Jones, president of Advance Democracy Inc., a global research organization that studies disinformation and extremism. “There are endorsements of violence across all of the platforms.”
A new report from Advance Democracy chronicled a wide variety of posts about the protests, including many that anticipated violence from other groups and called for people to arm themselves.
On Twitter, QAnon-related accounts posted conspiracy theories alleging that Black Lives Matter and antifa activists were going to kill supporters of President Donald Trump at the protest and suggested that protesters arm themselves Wednesday, calling it “Independence Day.”
On TikTok, several videos with hundreds of thousands of views promoted violence at the rally. A user with a militia-related avatar told viewers to carry guns even though firearms are prohibited in the areas of the city where the demonstrations are taking place.
“Take your motherf—ing guns. That’s the whole point of going,” the person said.
Threats have also been posted to Parler, a Twitter alternative favored by conservatives and users who have been banned from larger platforms for hate speech, misinformation or other policy violations. Thousands of posts included hashtags associated with a second civil war.
On TheDonald, a far-right message board that formed after its community was banned from Reddit, moderators were promoting some calls for violence.
Calls for violence were among the top five comments on more than half of the posts discussing congressional certification of votes, while 12 percent “explicitly endorsed violence in the main post itself,” according to the Advance Democracy report.
A representative comment suggested that people “travel in packs and do not let them disarm someone without stacking bodies.”
Half of the top posts about the Electoral College certification on TheDonald’s landing page included unmoderated calls for violence, according to the report.
The online threats target both Democrats and Republicans, identified as “traitors” for acknowledging the election results, Jones said.
“Much of the anger behind the violent rhetoric online is based on the false belief, propagated by President Trump and echoed by his most ardent supporters in the House and Senate, that there was widespread election fraud in November,” Jones said. “This false narrative only seems to be gaining momentum. Our concern, of course, is that the violent online rhetoric resulting from the president’s false claims produces real-life violence.”
While spreading near-constant misinformation about the election and false claims that he actually won, Trump has also been promoting the protest for weeks, tweeting about it at least six times and suggesting that he would make an appearance.
The threats of violence have online extremism experts concerned.
“The threats are coming from what seems like every direction, so it’s hard to triangulate and evaluate everything,” said Megan Squire, a computer science professor at Elon University who tracks white nationalists online.
“I’m getting a strong ‘last stand’ vibe from some of these groups,” Squire said. “I hope they go quietly, but it seems like that is not what they want to do.”
Yeah.
I suspect that a lot of people anticipated this meant there was going to be fighting in the streets between Trumpers and Antifa or something. That was the result of all the ridiculous fearmongering by the likes of Bill Barr. There was no discussion of mass counter protests on January 6th. They were just buying into the right wing bullshit.
SOME HINTS THAT THE JOB MARKET IS BOOMING AND INFLATION IS MODERATING
Obviously this is a dangerous thing to say, but the recent data has some good signs on both the labor market and inflation and it might explain what we’re seeing in the market right now
Labor market:
— ADP was strong.
— Initial claims remaining very low
— ISM Labor component accelerating
— Paychex survey ending the year on a high noteMeanwhile, compare the anecdotal responses in the ISM Manufacturing report in December (left) vs. November (right).
The message still seems to be: things are very tight, but improving marginally.
Originally tweeted by Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) on January 5, 2022.
His comments track with what Krugman wrote yesterday.
We need to hope that this winter of discontent lifts quickly in the spring so that the Democratic party can come off the defensive and go after the Republicans for doubling down on their anti-democratic extremism in the wake of January 6th. For instance hey need to warn people about this:
They need to run against GOP extremism and if the economy is rolling and the pandemic feels like it’s in the rearview mirror they have a much better chance of doing that.
That’s assuming they will bother. I’m hopeful that they will.
That would be … Mitch McConnell?
McConnell objects to Democrats’ plans to change filibuster rules to pass democracy/election legislation. “Make no mistake about it, this is genuine radicalism,” he says. “They want to turn the Senate into the House. They want to make it easy to fundamentally change the country.”
Mitch McConnell: “Why would any legislature in America want to overturn the counting of votes? … The notion that some state legislature would be crazy enough to say to their own voters—’We’re not gonna honor the outcome of an election’—is ridiculous.”
Originally tweeted by Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) on January 4, 2022.
Totally cool to refuse to hold hearing or a vote on a Supreme Court Justice in the Democratic president’s final term yet rush one through in the final days of a Republican’s term, though. Nothing “radical” about that. And, needless to say, he had no compunction about changing the filibuster rules for Supreme Court judges in order to facilitate his racialism.
McConnell could hardly suppress his belly laugh as he said that I’m sure. It may be the most absurd thing he’s ever said.
Here are some more keeper quotes from January 6th and the immediate aftermath:
On the morning of Jan. 6, HUGH HEWITT predicted on MEGYN KELLY’s podcast that DONALD TRUMP’s final weeks in office would be much ado about little, and a peaceful transfer of power would just happen. He told Kelly, who agreed, “I would just say to everybody: It will be fine. Everything’s going to be fine.”
Trump’s former Defense Secretary James Mattis, delivered a full-throated indictment:
“His use of the Presidency to destroy trust in our election and to poison our respect for fellow citizens has been enabled by pseudo political leaders whose names will live in infamy as profiles in cowardice,” he added. “Our Constitution and our Republic will overcome this stain and We the People will come together again in our never-ending effort to form a more perfect Union, while Mr. Trump will deservedly be left a man without a country.”
Trump’s own loyalists turned against him. For a moment.
Former Attorney General William Barr says President Donald Trump’s conduct as a violent mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol was a “betrayal of his office and supporters.”
Cabinet members bailed. Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao resigned abruptly.
“I had planned on serving through the end of your term in office,” she wrote. “But after yesterday’s events at the U.S. Capitol, I will resign as U.S. Secretary of Transportation, effective Monday, January 11, 2021 to provide a short period of transition.”
She was even more direct on Twitter, calling Jan. 6 “traumatic and entirely avoidable” saying it “deeply troubled me in a way that I simply cannot set aside.”
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos also resigned the day after the assault on the Capitol and wrote to Trump, “There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me.”
Former WH COS Mick Mulvaney, who had been serving as a special envoy to Northern Ireland, also resigned.
{F]ollowing the Jan. 6 riots he announced during a live interview on CNBC he was stepping down. “I called [Secretary of State] Mike Pompeo last night to let him know I was resigning from that. I can’t do it. I can’t stay,” Mulvaney told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” Mulvaney said Trump was “not the same as he was eight months ago.”
“The folks who spent time away from our families, put our careers on the line to go work for Donald Trump, and we did have those successes to look back at, but now it will always be, ‘Oh yeah, you work for the guy who tried to overtake the government,’” Mulvaney said. “That legacy is gone as of yesterday and that’s extraordinarily disappointing to those of us who work for him.”
That was then. As Politico points out, none of them have spoken out since. “One year after the Jan. 6 riot, the voices of those who broke with Trump over that day have mostly been muted, moved on, or, in certain instances, come to embrace Trump all over again.”
Back then, even right-wing think tanks were appalled. Kay C. James, who was then the president of the Heritage Foundation put out a scathing statement:
Like many Americans, I watched in disbelief Wednesday as an angry mob stormed our U.S. Capitol. As members of Congress gathered to certify the electoral votes of the presidential election, a band of criminals decided to take matters into their own hands. As this horrible act is investigated, it will be determined exactly who they were, and they must be held accountable…
Violence should not be used as a tool to bring about change, and those who stormed the Capitol on Wednesday should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
James’s successor at Heritage is striking a very different note. On December 13, he issued a statement accusing the January 6 committee of “abusing its congressional authority with its latest attack on former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. This committee is comprised of politicians who are carrying out a partisan fishing expedition intent on destroying the reputations of public servants in the Trump administration.”
Back then, one of the nation’s most prominent business organizations, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) urged Mike Pence to consider removing Trump via the 25th Amendment. The group’s statement was remarkable:
“Armed violent protestors who support the baseless claim by outgoing president Trump that he somehow won an election that he overwhelmingly lost have stormed the U.S. Capitol today, attacking police officers and first responders, because Trump refused to accept defeat in a free and fair election. Throughout this whole disgusting episode, Trump has been cheered on by members of his own party, adding fuel to the distrust that has enflamed violent anger. This is not law and order. This is chaos. It is mob rule. It is dangerous. This is sedition and should be treated as such.
The outgoing president incited violence in an attempt to retain power, and any elected leader defending him is violating their oath to the Constitution and rejecting democracy in favor of anarchy. Anyone indulging conspiracy theories to raise campaign dollars is complicit.
Vice President Pence, who was evacuated from the Capitol, should seriously consider working with the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to preserve democracy.
Judd Legum has been keeping track of businesses who initially pledged not to support GOP representatives who voted against certifying the election.
52 companies suspended all political contributions after January 6 and then sent PAC money to Republican objectors.
This group includes T-Mobile, which said that the “assault on the U.S. Capitol and on democracy was unacceptable” and, as a result, it would “reevaluate our PAC giving.” Since then, T-Mobile has donated $1,000 to one Republican objector, Congressman Hal Rogers (R-KY), and $30,000 to the NRSC.
In any case this week has probably finished him as a serious political figure. He has cost Republicans the House, the White House, and now the Senate. Worse, he has betrayed his loyal supporters by lying to them about the election and the ability of Congress and Mr. Pence to overturn it. He has refused to accept the basic bargain of democracy, which is to accept the result, win or lose.
It is best for everyone, himself included, if he goes away quietly.
By November, though, the WSJ published this piece, snarking that “The idea that the Capitol rioters threatened the American republic is a fantasy.”
Coup d’etat? What coup d’etat? Nothing to see here, folks. Move along …
There were so many times during the Trump reign that we thought the fever had broken and he was finished. The John Mccain insult, the Access Hollywood tape, the firing of James Comey and on and on and on. Certainly one would have thought that January 6th would finally do it. A lot of Republicans seemed to think so too:
Remember what Republican leaders said before amnesia set in. I took notes that night:
Mitch McConnell (Jan6): “The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people…They tried to disrupt our democracy, they failed…This failed insurrection.”Kevin McCarthy (Jan 6): The violence, destruction, and chaos we saw earlier was unacceptable undemocratic and unamerican. It was the saddest day I’ve ever had as serving as a member of this institution…We saw the worst of America this afternoon…”
Kevin McCarthy on Jan 13: “last week’s violent attack on the Capitol was undemocratic, un-American and criminal…those who are responsible for Wednesday’s chaos will be brought to justice…The President bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters.”
VP Pence on Jan 6: “Today was a dark day in the history of the United States capitol…We condemn the violence that took place here in the strongest possible terms…To those who wreaked havoc today, you did not win.”
Rep Steve Scalise on Jan 6: “Once you start taking violent actions against law enforcement you’re not a protestor anymore, you are an anarchist. Whether it’s anarchy or terrorism, they were trying to storm the Capitol and stop our democracy from working.”
Rep Stefanik (R) on Jan 6: “This has been a truly tragic day for America, and we all join together in fully condemning the dangerous violence and destruction…violence in any form is absolutely unacceptable, anti-American, and must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
Mike Gallagher (R) on Jan 6: “Mr. President. You have got to stop this. You are the only person who can call this off. Call it off. The election is over. Call it off. This is bigger than you. It is bigger than any member of Congress. It is about the United States of America”
Senator Lindsey Graham on Jan 7:
“When it comes to accountability the president needs to understand that his actions were the problem not the solution”Senator Rand Paul on Jan 6: “Chaos, anarchy. The violence today was wrong and un-American”
Rep Chip Roy (R) on Jan 6: “Today the people’s house was attacked, which is an attack on the republic itself…People need to go to jail… and the president should never have spun up certain Americans to believe something that simply cannot be.”
Senator Thune (R) on Jan 6: “I hope that the types of people who stormed the Capitol today got a clear message that they will not stop our democracy from moving forward…We need to get our work done and this kind of thuggery would not keep us from doing the people’s work”
Rep Dan Crenshaw (R) on Jan 7: “On Wednesday the Capitol of the most powerful nation the world has ever known was stormed by an angry mob. Americans surely never thought they’d see such a scene…It was a display not of patriotism but of frenzy and anarchy.“
Senator Ben Sasse (R) on Jan 6: “This building has been desecrated, blood has been spilled in the hallways…what happened today isn’t what America is…There are some who are trying to burn it all down, and we met some of them today.”
Senator Rob Portman (R) on Jan 6: “I condemn the violent and criminal acts that took place at the US Capitol today. These shameful actions to disrupt a session of Congress and vandalize the Capitol building should never happen in our great republic”
Senator Barrasso (R) on Jan 6: “The violence and destruction have no place in our republic.”
Senator Roy Blunt (R) on Jan 6: “The events unfolding at the Capitol are shameful. There is no justification for violence and destruction. It has to stop now. This is not who we are as a nation. Thank you to the Capitol Police who are keeping us safe.”
Senator Blackburn (R) on Jan 6: “These actions at the US Capitol by protestors are truly despicable and unacceptable. While I am safe and sheltering in place, these protests are prohibiting us from doing our constitutional duty. I condemn them in the strongest possible terms.”
Senator Cynthia Lummis (R) on Jan 6: “Call it what it is: An attack on the Capitol is an attack on democracy”
Senator Rick Scott (R) on Jan 6: “No one has a right to commit violence. What happened today at the Capitol is disgraceful and un-American. It is not what our country stands for.”
Rep Cathy Rodgers (R) on Jan 6: “What we have seen today is unlawful and unacceptable…I have decided I will vote to uphold the Electoral College results and I encourage Donald Trump to condemn and put an end to this madness.”
Senator Rubio on Jan 6: “There is nothing patriotic about what is occurring on Capitol Hill. This is 3rd world style anti-American anarchy”
Senator Rick Scott (R) on Jan 6: “No one has a right to commit violence. What happened today at the Capitol is disgraceful and in-American. It is not what this country stands for”
Senator McConnell: “Former President Trump’s actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty. There’s no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.”
These are their words from a year ago. Let’s not let them forget. If you know of other notable statements, reply below.
Originally tweeted by Andy Kim (@AndyKimNJ) on January 5, 2022.
Yeah. Where are they now? As far as I can tell, the only ones maintaining their integrity on this issue are Cheney and Kinsinger. The rest have just retreated back into cowardice and opportunism.
If I thought they cared one whit about hypocrisy (or the country) I’d think they would feel deeply ashamed of themselves over this. But shamelessness is their superpower. They sleep just fine at night.
This is the cruz of our problem. The Republican party is corrupt all the way down to its bones. And they represent almost half the country.
Tomorrow is the first anniversary of the Capitol insurrection and attempted coup of the U.S. government by former president Donald Trump. There was a time not long ago when everything about that sentence would have made us laugh at the sheer absurdity of it. Nobody’s laughing now.
Trump was apparently persuaded by his advisers to cancel his scheduled press conference for Jan. 6 after seeing that he would not get live coverage on all the networks to spread the Big Lie and excuse the violent mob that stormed the capitol a year ago vowing to hang Vice President Mike Pence. He promised to deliver that message to his loyal followers at a rally next weekend instead, drawing a huge sigh of relief from most Republican officials in Washington who just want to keep a low profile and put the unpleasantness behind them.
Unfortunately for them, however, it’s not going away.
Trump will be talking about this for the rest of his life and the January 6th committee is revving up for several months of public hearings. Even some MAGA Republicans on Capitol Hill are determined to try to muddy the waters by dusting off their Benghazi playbook and holding their own “investigation” into why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was derelict in her duties by allowing hundreds of rabid Trump-voting fanatics to breach the Capitol that day.
On Tuesday, committee chairs, Reps. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Liz Cheney R-Wy., released a letter they sent to Fox News host Sean Hannity in which they revealed that they had many text messages from him to high-level members of the White House staff in the run-up to January 6th. They ostensibly want Hannity to cooperate with the committee, but I doubt that there is any expectation that he will. This seemed more likely to be a notice to anyone who ever texted people in the White House during this period that the committee probably has them and intends to make them public. And it will almost certainly cause more dissension in Trumpworld. Meadows is already on thin ice. Now Hannity’s backchannel “concerns”, as Thompson and Cheney put it, about what Trump and his cronies were up to before and after January 6th leave him at odds with the president, who very likely had no idea that Hannity was pressing his staff to stop him from doing what he did.
Hannity’s lawyer issued a statement saying they were examining the letter and had First Amendment concerns. However, his texts indicate that he was acting as an adviser to the president and comparing what he said privately to what he was saying on the air at the time, it’s quite clear that he wasn’t acting as any kind of journalist. It will be interesting to see if his bosses at Fox News have a problem with one of their stars brazenly lying to their audience. (Yeah, never mind. They won’t.)
The committee homed in on just the period between December 31 and January 20th when Trump finally left office. They mention a text to Meadows in which Hannity said:
“We can’t lose the entire WH counsels office. I do NOT see January 6 happening the way he is being told. After the 6 th. He should announce will lead the nationwide effort to reform voting integrity. Go to Fl and watch Joe mess up daily. Stay engaged. When he speaks people will listen.”
It’s impossible to know for sure what he meant by “January 6th happening the way he is being told” but according to a number of accounts this was when Trump’s henchmen were hatching their plot to have Republicans in Congress object to the electoral count and have Pence throw the election to the House of Representatives where Trump would win despite losing through legitimate means. In other words, the coup was being planned. And apparently, the White House counsel’s office knew it was illegal and was threatening to quit en masse over it, or at least that’s the suspicion based upon what Hannity was texting.
Hannity was obviously very much in the loop inside the upper echelons of the White House and knew all about the discussions to put the heat on Pence. On January 5th he wrote to Meadows “Pence pressure, WH counsel will leave.” On the night before the insurrection he wrote, “I’m very worried about the next 48 hours” which prompted the committee to ask, “why?” — which is a very good question. Surely he couldn’t have foreseen the violent insurrection. But was Hannity worried that the entire administration would resign? Massive protests? It would be very interesting to know, although I doubt we ever will.
The letter suggests there are other texts which indicate that Hannity spoke with Trump personally that night as well as others. I have a sneaking suspicion that he didn’t express his “concerns” quite as openly with Trump. Nobody does that. No, this was Hannity wringing his hands with the chief of staff and others in the White House while he put on a happy face with Trump and his MAGA-crazed audience.
After Trump’s egregious performance on that day, which will live in infamy, and in the days after, Hannity once more proved that he was anything but a member of the press when he texted Meadows and Trump sycophant Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, worried about what Trump might do before the inauguration:
“Guys, we have a clear path to land the plane in 9 days. He can’t mention the election again. Ever. I did not have a good call with him today. And worse, I’m not sure what is left to do or say, and I don’t like not knowing if it’s truly understood. Ideas?”
Trump responded to that on Thursday night, telling Kaitlin Collins of CNN, “I disagree with Sean on that statement and the facts are proving me right.” Actually, they are not.
As I said, I don’t think Hannity will cooperate and there’s no doubt that there will be much shrieking and caterwauling about the freedom of the press and Hannity’s sources being revealed. But Meadows is the one who turned over the texts and Hannity never reported any of this. In fact, this was what he was sharing with his audience which he was clutching his pearls behind the scenes:
Every day we hear new evidence about the attempted coup and insurrection of January 6th and there’s every reason to believe that the next few months will offer even more. It is simply astonishing that this happened in America in 2021. But even more astonishing than that is the fact that after all that (and everything that came before) Donald Trump is still the most popular and influential Republican in the country and is overwhelmingly favored to win the nomination for president in 2024. The man plotted a coup and incited a violent insurrection and he didn’t lose any voters. No wonder he just keeps spewing the Big Lie. It works. And I have no doubt that Sean Hannity will be at his side helping him do it.
American audiences love a police procedural. So, I’m all about broadcasting the one the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack is about to tee up.
The House Committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol is considering holding televised hearings during prime evening viewing hours so that the public can have “the best opportunity” to hear testimony and evaluate evidence, the panel’s chairman said.
“Maybe a series of hearings,” Representative Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, said Tuesday in an interview. “The public needs to know, needs to hear from people under oath about what led up to Jan. 6th, and to some degree, what has continued after Jan. 6.”
The hearings could occur in late March or early April, but no date has been set, Thompson added. “We’re working toward that.”
Airing dirty laundry is sometimes liberating. Sunshine, disinfectant, etc. And this disinfectant you don’t have to drink.
Per Wikipedia, the 1973 Senate Watergate hearings “were broadcast live during the day on commercial television; at the start, CBS, NBC, and ABC covered them simultaneously, and then later on a rotation basis, while PBS replayed the hearings at night. Some 319 hours were broadcast overall, and 85% of U.S. households watched some portion of them.”
I watched plenty. “What did the President know, and when did he know it?” Nixon’s oleaginous henchmen: John Ehrlichman, H. R. Haldeman. Whistleblower John Dean’s four days of gobsmacking testimony. Folksy committee chairman Sam Ervin (from just east of here) became a national star.
The 41 days of televised Iran-Contra hearings (1987) allowed America to see how the Reagan White House skirted Congress to conduct its private war in Central America funded with secret arms sales to Iran.
Since then, social and partisan media has allowed Fox News, right-wing talk radio, and men like Donald Trump to feed talking points and “alternative facts” directly into the brains of their partisans, essentially, dissolving external reality for a sizeable portion of the country.
Instead of lamenting America’s loss of a shared reality since, major networks broadcasting prime-time Jan. 6 hearings could help break through the alternative-facts bubble the right has worked so long and hard to construct. They might not change minds of Trump’s cult-like followers, but televised hearings could firmly establish for the country, the world, and for posterity whose reality is reality.
The country and the world would be better for it.
The insurrectionists were armed and organized. Officer Moore could see one was armed carrying a gun, and some were carrying and using radios.
— from court brief in the lawsuit filed Tuesday by U.S. Capitol Police officer Marcus J. Moore against Donald J. Trump
In the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attacks, conservative commentators made much of an FBI statement that no guns were found among rioters. Jill Sanborn, assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, answered in the negative when asked by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) how many guns her agents had confiscated.
“There were no guns whatsoever,” Donald Trump told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo and her viewers.
“They called it an armed insurrection, and yet no guns were seized,” Bartiromo said, calling the description “misinformation.”
A USA Today fact check noted that outlets quoting Sanborn stripped the first part of her statement in which she said she could not speak for other law enforcement agencies present that day. The Department of Justice did in fact file weapons charges against at least two men present during the riot, and against a third who arrived late.
In his lawsuit over injuries he sustained, U.S. Capitol Police officer Marcus J. Moore stated he witnessed one rioter carrying a gun (quote above). The statement received too little attention. How many other officers on the scene saw what Moore did?
The Washington Post describes his lawsuit:
“The insurrectionist mob, which Trump had inflamed, encouraged, incited, directed, and aided and abetted, forced its way over and past [Moore] and his fellow officers,” the complaint said, “pursuing and attacking them inside and outside the United States Capitol.”
The lawsuit accuses Trump of aiding and abetting assault and battery, inciting a riot and conspiring to stage an attack on the U.S. Capitol. Moore requested Trump pay for the injuries the officer sustained, which include a condition that causes persistent ringing in Moore’s ears and trouble sleeping.
The lawsuit is similar to previous actions brought by other U.S. Capitol Police officers, who have argued that Trump and his confidants should be held responsible for the violent attack on officersworking on Jan. 6 and the physical and emotional trauma they suffer.
When Moore heard the gunshot that killed rioter Ashli Babbitt outside the Speaker’s Lobby, “he instinctively drew his service weapon and was certain he was going to end up in a gun battle,” the brief continues. Moore holstered the weapon again upon calculating “the risk that if he drew a weapon or fought back in the vestibule outside the House Chamber, it could cost him and his fellow officers their lives.”
It was chaotic. It was dangerous. Over a hundred officers were injured. People died that day while, as we now know, Trump sat watching his followers assault the seat of government on his behalf and at his instigation.
“To the list of infamous days, from Pearl Harbor to 9/11, we now have Jan. 6 — or J6, as right-wing activists have dubbed the insurrection,” writes Kathleen Parker in the Post:
We all know enough about mobs and combustible crowds to understand that it takes only one impatient troublemaker to turn a normal customer waiting line into a stampede or a peaceful gathering into a mob. Something clicks in one person’s brain, a shout goes out, a fever sets in, and the barbarians storm the gates.
Once contagion catches, there’s almost no turning back. At a certain point, even the angry become afraid, stimulating their fight or flight response and flooding all systems with adrenaline. Five people died as a result of Jan. 6, not counting the four officers who subsequently died by suicide. I think we all know we were lucky the number wasn’t higher.
I say it again: The president of the United States watched with delight what the rest of the nation watched with horror. And, still, they want him back?
Whatever has happened to our shared understanding of how things should be, Parker reflects, “we need to figure it out — now.”
With luck and justice, Trump will be held accountable for failing to honor his presidential vow to protect the U.S. Constitution. He didn’t, and he should pay for that. At the very least, he should never be allowed to hold public office again. Then, maybe the rest of us could get back to work pursuing and fulfilling the dream we once shared.
Next time, it will be worse. The insurrectionist movement will be better organized and better armed. People from Trump’s footsoldiers to Congress (likely) to the Oval Office committed crimes against the rest of us. Justice must be served as the deterrent they themselves call for against others.
Does it seem to you that people are taking this seriously enough? I honestly don’t think so. Sure, we talk about it and the media will do one year retrospectives tomorrow and we’ll all talk about the Big Lie but I just can’t see how this is going to be stopped.
I hope I’m wrong but it just feels like this train is leaving the station.