Americans in name only
Facts don’t matter until they bite.
Former Mark Meadows aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified Tuesday before an unscheduled hearing of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. Her backstory from inside Donald Trump’s West Wing on Jan. 6 set off a flurry of fact-checking and character assassination by Trump supporters and the culprit himself.
Gunsplainers turned to Beast-splaining. Republicans dismissed her testimony (rewatch it here) as hearsay that would not stand cross-examination, etc. Any discrepancy to knock down Hutchinson’s devastating narrative of criming and dereliction of duty in the White House.
Lost in the she-said, they-said is the utter moral rot at the center of Trump world and the Republican Party Trump’s undead spirit inhabits. During the Watergate affair, John Dean declared there was a cancer on the Nixon presidency. Cassidy Hutchinson revealed the Party of Trump as a shambling corpse bereft of moral impulse, driven only by a gnawing hunger for retaining power.
The White House knew some among the mob Trump had summoned to the Ellipse that morning — Proud Boys and Oath Keepers — had come armed. Rifles, pistols, tasers, knives, spears, bear spray. Trump was fine with that. He would direct an armed mob to the Capitol anyway. He was desperate to be there to egg on the assault.
Hutchinson’s testimony tied then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani to the coup plotters scheming at the Willard Hotel.
Meadows knew by Jan. 2 that violence was possible, telling Hutchinson “things might get real, real bad” on Jan. 6. Hutchinson talked him out of joining plotters at Willard “war room” meeting on Jan. 5. But he phoned in, she testified.
During Trump’s speech the next day, Meadows sat on his phone inside his vehicle for 20-25 minutes speaking with someone as the Capitol assault was already underway. He later sat in his office scrolling through his phone, Hutchinson testified. As Capitol and Metro police battled rioters calling for the vice president to be hung, and as Republicans at the Capitol and conservative media stars texted for him to get Trump to call off the mob, he did nothing.
Nor did Trump for hours.
Disgraced former National Security Advisor Gen. Michael Flynn invoked his Fifth Amendment rights when asked under oath whether he thought the violence was justified, morally or legally. The retired general would not answer even if he believed in the peaceful transfer of power in America.
“Why We Did It A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell” is former Republican operative Tim Miller’s account of how “they all encouraged the madness that has overtaken the party. The Trumpification of the American right was the inevitable result of a series of decisions made by people like Tim Miller over the past decade.”
Cassidy Hutchinson made some of those same decisions. As did virtually the entire Republican Party before and after Trump. They are making them even now. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is angling to be Trump 2.0, hoping to take the country to an even lower level of hell. Hutchinson is at least trying to climb out.
Trump, his enablers, and his supporters will contest the details of Hutchinson’s testimony. They will try to distract from the broader narrative that Trumpism is an extremist political faction that has not simply lost its way. These undead have lost their souls. Members violated their oaths and ignored their duty while wrapped in a flag whose meaning they repudiated in word, in deed, and in spirit.
Americans in name only.
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
Request a copy of For The Win, 4th Edition, my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us.
If in a position to Play to win in 2022 (see post first), contact tpostsully at gmail dot com