Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Morning Joe assembles the evidence

“Sir? How do you do it?” Trump fabulizes. His “sir” stories are legion, as Daniel Dale recounted in 2019:

Lots of people do call Trump “sir,” of course. But the word seems to pop into his head more frequently when he is inventing or exaggerating a conversation than when he is faithfully relaying one. A “sir” is a flashing red light that he is speaking from his imagination rather than his memory.

In poker parlance, it’s a tell.

The supercut assembled for “Morning Joe,” contrasts President Biden’s recent speech with another by Donald “91 felony indictments” Trump.

Biden talks democracy, Trump goes off the rails pic.twitter.com/OBZfWlciQ7

— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) January 8, 2024

“Sir? How do you do it? How do you wake up in the morning and put on your pants?”

First off, he doesn’t start with pants.

“We’re a failing nation,” says Trump, who actually does know something about failing.

President Biden, meanwhile, visits Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. today. In 2015, a white supremacist murdered nine Black churchmembers there during a Bible study:

According to his campaign, Biden will warn that MAGA Republicans, led by Donald Trump, are running on a dangerous agenda that is the polar opposite of American principles and will reiterate the stakes of the 2024 election when it comes to democracy and personal freedoms.

The address at the historic church, known as “Mother Emanuel,” comes just days after Biden kicked off the campaign year near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, criticizing Trump for his actions during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

“He’s willing to sacrifice our democracy, put himself in power,” Biden said.

The speech in Charleston will continue to drive that argument, an adviser said, drawing a line between the past and the present with Biden’s choice of the historic venue and linking the church’s history to what he sees as a struggle for the soul of the nation.

It helps that Biden actually has one.

Republicans fear running on empty

Republican control of the U.S. House was dramatically unproductive in 2033. The caucus spent more time mugging for cameras, stalling important bills, ousting their own speaker, and investigating Hunter and Joe Biden (with nothing to show for it) than they did legislating. They worry now it may come back to bite them in the fall elections (Washington Post):

“It’s been a tough year for us,” said Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), who as the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) is tasked with keeping the majority. “I think most people in Congress — Republicans and Democrats — ran to make a difference, to make the country better, not to come up here and have these kinds of disagreements. So it is frustrating, and it’s tiring.”

What their idea of making a difference is isn’t apparent.

“What a motormouth!” was how one relation described Rep. Elise Stefanik’s (R-N.Y.) “Meet the Press” appearance on Sunday. Stefanik set out to prove what an effective ventriloquist dummy she could be for Donald Trump as his vice president. She did everything in her audition but kowtow for him on camera.

Many of Stefanik’s colleagues see a congressional perch primarily as a platform for auditioning for a V.P. slot or a Fox News gig or a think tank sinecure. Governing earns little time in their schedules.

Many Republicans hope the new year brings with it a broad desire to govern and, in turn, prove to the public that they deserve another term in control of the House. But the question of how Republicans across the ideological spectrum define success is already primed to plague the conference as it starts the year with just three votes to spare to pass anything through its fragile majority.

One wonders if “many Republicans hope” is as vaporous as Trump’s “many people say.” The problem the G.O.P. House majority faces is its most vocally visible members are more interested in waging a grandstanding culture war for news hits than in governing.

The New York Times this morning examines how its contact with Trumpism has changed character of the evangelical movement:

“I voted for Trump twice, and I’ll vote for him again,” said Cydney Hatfield, a retired corrections officer in Lohrville, a town of 381 people in Calhoun County. “He’s the only savior I can see.” 

For others, the evangelical brand is now so tarnished that some believers who once embraced the label now reject it. Republicans in the House caucus have the same concern about themselves.

The Post again:

“We have to start governing. … Playing politics with every single issue is not helpful,” said Rep. David G. Valadao (R-Calif.), who represents a swing district. “We need to get to the point where we can start passing legislation and getting something to the president’s desk that actually solves problems for the American people.”

A majority of Republicans, more than a dozen of whom spoke to The Washington Post, agreed they need to pass bills that will allow them to draw policy contrasts with Democrats on the campaign trail. Buthard-liners are much more willingto shut down the government or risk the majority in an effort to ensure that their campaign promises — particularly to rein in federal spending and secure the U.S.-Mexico border — become law. Members of the House Freedom Caucus are particularly incensed over [House Speaker Mike] Johnson’s decision to previously support a short-term extension of federal funding levels — set by congressional Democrats in 2022 — to keep the government open, as well as their colleagues’ willingness to vote with Democrats rather than force conservative demands. Hard-liners have already sent warning shots in hopes of influencing Johnson and GOP leaders to use every opportunity to extract policy concessions from a Democratic-led Senate and White House.

The hardliners are ready again to instigate a partial government shutdown on Jan. 19 in a fight over border security. They’d rather have xenophobia as a wedge issue in November.

Though Republicans largely agree on policy objectives, they remain deeply divided on how to achieve united, partisan wins that could help them credibly argue that their party deserves to retainthe House majority and take back control of the Senate and White House. But even ideas on how to keep the majority are split: Hard-right lawmakers insist the MAGA agenda will help elect more like-minded hard-liners who can help enact laws that advance ultraconservative goals, while more pragmatic Republicans believe their chances of keeping the House rely on reelecting swing-district incumbents and other conservatives willing to compromise.

The NRCC is targeting 37 Democratic-held districts that they believe are within their grasp as Biden’s approval rating has reached all-timelows and polling has shown that voters prefer Republicans on key issues like the economy and public safety.

But as much as House Republicans fret over their nonperformance in 2023, they might worry more about the party’s underperformances in 2018, 2020, and 2022. The MAGA agenda is not terrible popular with the country as a whole even though they picked up some seats in 2020 when Trump famously lost his reelection bid. For his third attempt at the White House Trump is burdened with more chains than Marley’s ghost.

As for the top of the ticket — following a 2022 election in which many Senate and gubernatorial candidates endorsed by Donald Trump lost in key races — Republicans find themselves again most likely running with the embattled former president, who is facing dozens of felony charges in several criminal cases. Hudson said he is not going to tell Republicans “what they should do in the presidential” race and notedt hat House Republicans were still able to pick up 15 seats in 2020 when Trump was on the ticket and lost the presidency.

But 2020 was before the Dobbs decision put womens’s rights front and center. News out of the states since than has only made women’s health and autonomy a more fraught issue for Republicans.

The rest of the report is more of the same. Republicans’ worst enemies right now are other Republicans. That’s the kind of Blue Monday I can get behind.

Trump’s verbal incontinence was out of control this weekend in Iowa in so many ways. But his worst moments were making fun of Biden’s childhood stutter and John McCain’s injury sustained from being tortured during his Viet Nam captivity. The Washington Post reported the Biden comment this way:

“Did you see him? He was stuttering through the whole thing,” Trump said to a chuckling crowd on Friday in Sioux Center, Iowa. “He’s saying I’m a threat to democracy.”

“’He’s a threat to d-d-democracy,’” he continued, pretending to stutter. “Couldn’t read the word.”

The remark was not true; Biden said the word “democracy” 29 times in his speech, never stuttering over it. Trump’s comment also marked a particularly crass form of politics that he has exhibited throughout his career that places politeness and human decency at the center of the 2024 presidential election.

Good for them for reporting it honestly. I’ve seen too many cable shows apparently decideing not to show it because it would “come at a cost” to them to remind the American people of what a cretin Trump is.

The McCain thing illustrates the same point about his lack of human decency. Meghan McCain fired back:

My dad was an American hero. An icon. A patriot that will be remembered throughout history. I cannot buy a bagel without someone approaching me about how much they loved and miss him.

Trump is a piece of shit, election denying, huckster whose own wife won't campaign with him. https://t.co/f3RlWLqT9B

— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) January 7, 2024

I guess a lot of people are still enjoying this puerile commentary. But I have to wonder how many. There must be some Trump voters who are tired of this grotesque shit. Right?

He’s still a MAGA POS

Remember when we all thought that guy was a real threat? I always knew that Trump would be the nominee but it never occurred to me that the guy to whom everyone was singing hosannas as the greatest politician since Lincoln was actually one of the worst duds in history.

I think we all assumed that his strategy was to out-Trump Trump in order to win the nomination but it turns out he’s just another MAGA extremist along the lines of a Kari Lake or that weirdo from Pennsylvania Doug Mastriano:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has revealed that he’s “looking” into ways to block President Joe Biden from the 2024 primary ballot in Florida.

“This is just going to be a tit for tat and it’s just not gonna end well,” the GOP presidential candidate warned Friday alongside Rep. Chip Roy, R-TX, according to a video posted by CNN. “You could make a case — I’m actually looking at this in Florida now [if we] could we make a credible case” to block Biden from the ballot “because of the invasion of 8 million.”

Although DeSantis later added he doesn’t think “that’s the right way to do it.”

He lies as much as Trump and that’s saying something.

DeSantis frequently claims that 8 million illegal immigrants have flooded across the southern American border during the Biden administration. Most reputable statistics report a total of up to half that many immigrants have entered the U.S., the vast majority of them legally, since Biden became president.

Now that he’s been shown to be possibly the worst politician in America you’d think he’d back off the BS just a little bit. But clearly, it’s not in him. He probably hasn’t come to terms with that yet so he’s going to double down on being an asshole thinking he still has a future. He is mistaken.

Andrew Weissman takes up the issue of the “interlocutory” appeal that all the lawyers are talking about regarding Trump’s alleged immunity from prosecution. It could have major implications for the election and he does a good job explaining it to non-lawyers:

Last month, Judge Tanya Chutkan (correctly) rejected Trump’s motions to dismiss special counsel Jack Smith’s grand jury indictment on grounds including that he was immune from prosecution. In turn, Trump brought what’s known as an “interlocutory” appeal — meaning an immediate appeal before a final judgment in the lower court. With the agreement of both sides, Chutkan stayed “any further proceedings that would move this case towards trial or impose additional burdens of litigation” on Trump until the appeal is decided by the D.C. Circuit (and potentially the Supreme Court).

We understand why both parties want these underlying questions to be reviewed before trial, yet the default rule is that appeals courts must wait until the end of a trial to hear a case. It is the rare exception, not the norm, to accept an interlocutory appeal. But here, the D.C. Circuit has the power to reject Trump’s claims of presidential immunity — and simultaneously find that this appeal cannot be brought until the trial has been completed, and thus that the temporary stay should be removed.

There is strong Supreme Court precedent indicating that appellate courts do not have jurisdiction to hear Trump’s immunity appeal now. In Midland Asphalt Corp. v. United States, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for a unanimous court, said that a trial court’s decision is not immediately appealable unless the claim “rests upon an explicit statutory or constitutional guarantee that trial will not occur.” In 2010, future Justice Neil Gorsuch, then a judge on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, succinctly encapsulated the Midland Asphalt rule: “Only when a statutory or constitutional provision itself contains a guarantee that a trial will not occur — may courts of appeals intervene prior to a final judgment to review the defendant’s claimed ‘right not to be tried.’” 

In Midland Asphalt, the court identified only two constitutional guarantees against trial that had historically been considered explicit enough to warrant interlocutory appeal: the Speech or Debate Clause (unique protections expressly afforded to members of Congress) and the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment. By contrast, one of the court’s examples of a ruling not subject to interlocutory appeal was the denial of a claim of prosecutorial immunity. Chutkan’s denial of Trump’s claim of presidential immunity should be treated in the same manner. 

As a new amicus brief filed by American Oversight argues, Trump’s assertion of presidential immunity rests on no explicit constitutional or statutory guarantee against trial, and so the D.C. Circuit should end the appeal and lift the stay. (One of the authors, Sawyer, is the executive director of American Oversight.) The D.C. Circuit has repeatedly applied Midland Asphalt in dismissing interlocutory appeals of immunity claims, including in a case where a former Cabinet secretary argued that he was immune on “structural separation of powers grounds,” like those that Trump invokes as the basis of his own alleged immunity. 

A recent case in the 1st Circuit is particularly illuminating. In his D.C. Circuit brief, Trump equated his presidential immunity claim to judicial immunity. But in U.S. v. Joseph, the 1st Circuit held that an assertion of judicial immunity in a criminal case does not meet the Midland Asphalt standard for interlocutory appeal. Thus, under Trump’s own analogy, his immunity claim fails the test for interlocutory appeal. As Smith contends in his response to Trump’s brief, Trump’s presidential immunity claim is akin to judicial or prosecutorial immunity; contrary to Trump’s position, Smith persuasively argues that these two categories of immunity protect prosecutors and judges from civil liability, “but not from federal prosecution.” Notably, under any circumstance, neither have been found to fulfill Midland Asphalt’s criterion for interlocutory appeal. 

He goes on to explain why Trump’s fatuous back-up argument that because he was acquitted in the Senate impeachment trial he cannot be tried for it again should be a non-starter:

The Constitution’s impeachment clause provides that “the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgement and Punishment….” In other words, a president who is convicted in a Senate impeachment trial may later be prosecuted criminally — meaning that double jeopardy principles do not apply. Trump contends that the clause means that a criminal prosecution is only possible following Senate impeachment, and that one who is acquitted cannot be criminally prosecuted. But that is not what the explicit text says. It does not say conviction is a prerequisite for later prosecution. “Nevertheless” does not mean “only then.”

Trump also claims that “double jeopardy principles” are implicated by the Impeachment Judgment Clause. But Trump was never in jeopardy: the impeachment wasn’t a criminal trial, and the Double Jeopardy Clause only applies to criminal trials. Moreover, the Double Jeopardy Clause prohibits successive prosecutions regardless of whether the prior one resulted in acquittal or conviction. And the clause applies only when the same crime is charged successively, which is not true here. 

He further explains why none of this means that the court can’t address the underlying immunity questions:

[I]n order to preserve the March 4 trial date, and because the circuit court does not know how the Supreme Court may rule on the Midland issue, it should reach the merits of the immunity claim now. It can do so under D.C. law — the court has previously exercised hypothetical jurisdiction, which simply allows the court to rule on both the threshold jurisdiction question and consider the underlying merits of an appeal.

Therefore, the D.C. Circuit should find that Trump’s immunity appeal is premature and the trial must commence first, and also, alternatively, that presidential immunity does not exist. Doing so would prevent further unnecessary delay, in the event the Supreme Court believes that an interlocutory appeal is proper here — as there would already be an appellate ruling on the merits for the court to consider.

All defendants want to delay a trial as long as possible. But as Weissman says, “while Trump is entitled to no less process than any other defendant, he is not entitled to more,” there fore he should not be allowed any protracted delay. No one else would get this privilege and neither should he. He is not above the law just because he decided to run for president.

The immunity appeal will be argued before the DC Circuit on Tuesday. This thing is getting real. Buckle up.  

He apparently considers that his official duty

There’s interesting news on the Jack Smith front. Word has leaked out that his devoted manservant Dan Scavino testified before the Grand Jury and backed up the story that Trump did absolutely nothing during the insurrection despite pleas from everyone around him to take action to end it. And Scavino’s not the only one:

Special counsel Jack Smith’s team has uncovered previously undisclosed details about former President Donald Trump’s refusal to help stop the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol three years ago as he sat watching TV inside the White House, according to sources familiar with what Smith’s team has learned during its Jan. 6 probe.

Many of the exclusive details come from the questioning of Trump’s former deputy chief of staff, Dan Scavino, who first started working for Trump as a teenager three decades ago and is now a paid senior adviser to Trump’s reelection campaign. Scavino wouldn’t speak with the House select committee that conducted its own probe related to Jan. 6, but — after a judge overruled claims of executive privilege last year — he did speak with Smith’s team, and key portions of what he said were described to ABC News.

New details also come from the Smith team’s interviews with other White House advisers and top lawyers who — despite being deposed in the congressional probe — previously declined to answer questions about Trump’s own statements and demeanor on Jan. 6, 2021, according to publicly released transcripts of their interviews in that probe.

Sources said Scavino told Smith’s investigators that as the violence began to escalate that day, Trump “was just not interested” in doing more to stop it.

Sources also said former Trump aide Nick Luna told federal investigators that when Trump was informed that then-Vice President Mike Pence had to be rushed to a secure location, Trump responded, “So what?” — which sources said Luna saw as an unexpected willingness by Trump to let potential harm come to a longtime loyalist.

House Democrats and other critics have openly accused Trump of failing to do enough that day, with the Democrat-led House select committee accusing Trump of committing “an utter moral failure” and “a clear dereliction of duty.” But what sources now describe to ABC News are the assessments and first-hand accounts of several of Trump’s own advisers who stood by him for years — and were among the few to directly engage with him throughout that day.

Along with Scavino and Luna, that small group included then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, then-White House counsel Pat Cipollone, and Cipollone’s former deputy, Pat Philbin.

According to sources, when speaking with Smith’s team, Scavino recalled telling Trump in a phone call the night of Jan. 6: “This is all your legacy here, and there’s smoke coming out of the Capitol.”

Scavino hoped Trump would finally help facilitate a peaceful transfer of power, sources said.

In his wide-ranging indictment against Trump, announced this past August, Smith accuses the former president of trying to unlawfully retain power by, among other things, “spread[ing] lies” about the 2020 election and pressuring Pence to block Congress from certifying the results when it convened on Jan. 6. The former president has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

[…]

According to what sources said Scavino told Smith’s team, Trump was “very angry” that day — not angry at what his supporters were doing to a pillar of American democracy, but steaming that the election was allegedly stolen from him and his supporters, who were “angry on his behalf.” Scavino described it all as “very unsettling,” sources said.

At times, Trump just sat silently at the head of the table, with his arms folded and his eyes locked on the TV, Scavino recounted, sources said.

After unsuccessfully trying for up to 20 minutes to persuade Trump to release some sort of calming statement, Scavino and others walked out of the dining room, leaving Trump alone, sources said. That’s when, according to sources, Trump posted a message on his Twitter account saying that Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done.”

Trump’s aides told investigators they were shocked by the post. Aside from Trump, Scavino was the only other person with access to Trump’s Twitter account, and he was often the one actually posting messages to it, so when the message about Pence popped up, Cipollone and another White House attorney raced to find Scavino, demanding to know why he would post that in the midst of such a precarious situation, sources said.

Scavino said he was as blindsided by the post as they were, insisting to them, “I didn’t do it,” according to the sources.

Some of Trump’s aides then returned to the dining room to explain to Trump that a public attack on Pence was “not what we need,” as Scavino put it to Smith’s team. “But it’s true,” Trump responded, sources told ABC News. Trump has publicly echoed that sentiment since then.

At about the same time Trump’s aides were again pushing him to do more, a White House security official heard reports over police radio that indicated Pence’s security detail believed “this was about to get very ugly,” according to the House committee’s report.

As Trump aide Luna recalled, according to sources, Trump didn’t seem to care that Pence had to be moved to a secure location. Trump showed he was “capable of allowing harm to come to one of his closest allies” at the time, Luna told investigators, the sources said.

[…]

More than a half-hour after Trump was first pressed to take some sort of action, Trump finally let Scavino post a message on Trump’s Twitter account telling supporters to support law enforcement and “stay peaceful.” It was 2:38 p.m.

Minutes later, Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt was fatally shot when she tried to break through a barricaded entrance near the House chamber.

And the violence at the Capitol continued to escalate.

At least six close aides kept pushing him to do something. Mark Meadows confirmed that when Kevin McCarthy called to ask him to do something, he responded “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”

Apparently, it was Jared Kushner who persuaded him to do that silly video finally telling people to leave the Capitol in which he said, “We love you, you’re very special” after which he returned to the TV to watch the carnage he had instigated. Looking at the footage he apparently said, “this is what happens when they try to steal an election.”

He never expressed a word of contrition. Then:

According to the sources, shortly before 6 p.m. on Jan. 6, Trump showed Luna a draft of a Twitter message he was thinking about posting: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously and viciously stripped away from great patriots. … Remember this day for forever!” it read.

The message echoed what Trump had allegedly been saying privately all day.

Sources said Luna told Trump that it made him sound “culpable” for the violence, perhaps even as if he may have somehow been involved in “directing” it, sources said.

Still, at 6:01 p.m., Trump posted the message anyway.

This must be what Trump means when he says he should have immunity because he was just doing his job as president.

Has there ever been a more nakedly ambitious politician in history? I honestly don’t think so.

Orwell: “She had without exception the most stupid, vulgar, empty mind that he had ever encountered. She had not a thought in her head that was not a slogan, and there was no imbecility, absolutely none that she was not capable of swallowing if the Party handed it out to her.” https://t.co/C2unF7B3y8

— Eric Kleefeld (@EricKleefeld) January 7, 2024

Kristen Welker: "I don’t hear you committed to certifying the election results. Will you only vote to certify results if former President Trump wins?"

Elise Stefanik: "No, it means if they're constitutional. What we saw in 2020 was unconstitutional." pic.twitter.com/baZp4uyIoE

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) January 7, 2024

I still don’t think Trump is going to choose her for VP no matter how hard she licks his boots. She just isn’t out of central casting in his book. But she’s certainly giving a hell of an audition.

Jamelle Bouie writes in his newsletter about the shock of 2016 and how it led to the media obsessing over “the Trump voter” and what they were thinking:

One inadvertent consequence of this understandable bout of introspection was, I think, to validate Trump’s claim that he spoke for a silent majority of forgotten Americans. It was easy enough to look at the new president’s political coalition — disproportionately blue-collar and drawn almost entirely from the demographic majority of the country — and conclude that this was basically correct. And even if it wasn’t, the image of the blue-collar (although not necessarily working-class) white man or white woman has been, for as long as any of us have been alive, a synecdoche for the “ordinary American” or the “Middle American” or the “average American.”

You may remember the constant discussion, while Trump was in office, over the effect his chaos and corruption might have on voters. Would they care? Where this “they” often meant the blue-collar voters associated with Trump’s victory. And if they didn’t care, could we say with any confidence that the American people cared?

They did!

What’s been lost — or if not lost then obscured — in the constant attention to Trump’s voters, supporters and followers is that the overall American electorate is consistently anti-MAGA. Trump lost the popular vote in 2016. The MAGA-fied Republican Party lost the House of Representatives in 2018. Trump lost the White House and the Republican Party lost the Senate in 2020. In 2022, Trump-like or Trump-lite candidates lost competitive statewide elections in Georgia, Nevada, Arizona and Pennsylvania. Republicans vastly underperformed expectations in the House, winning back the chamber with a razor-thin margin, and Democrats secured governorships in Kansas, Michigan and Wisconsin, among other states. Democrats overperformed again the following year, in Kentucky and Virginia.

“Since 2016,” wrote Michael Podhorzer, a former political director for the A.F.L.-C.I.O., in a post for his newsletter last summer, “Republicans have lost 23 of the 27 elections in the five states everyone agrees Democratic hopes in the Electoral College and the Senate depend on.”

He continues:

When Trump was sworn in, Republicans held four of those five states’ governorships, and six of the ten Senate seats. Moreover, Republicans defied history by losing nearly across the board in those states last year, the only time anything like that has happened to a Party running against such an unpopular president in a midterm.

Too many commentators have spent too much time fretting over Trump’s voters — and how they might react to the effort to remove the former president from the ballot — and not enough time thinking about the tens of millions of voters who have said, again and again, that they do not want this man or his movement in American politics.

Because 2016 was not the only election that mattered. Trump’s voters are not the only ones who count. There’s been no shortage of critics of the disqualification effort who have asked us to consider the consequences for American democracy if Trump’s supporters believe he was cheated out of a chance to run for president a third time. It’s a fair point. But I think we should also consider the consequences for American democracy if the nation’s anti-MAGA majority comes to believe, with good reason, that the rules — and the Constitution — don’t apply to Trump.

He is so right. This fetish for the Trump voters is somewhat understandable because they are so — out there. I can’t help myself either. But this is bigger than that and the media really needs to consider what all their fretting over what they’re saying does to the rest of us. And covering that side of the aisle without acknowledging what the majority has been saying ever since 2016 is journalistic malpractice. The country has been sending a big message every single election and it isn’t “I love Trump.”

Trump did more than nothing

ABC News has a this tantalizing Jan. 6 story this morning:

Special counsel Jack Smith’s team has uncovered previously undisclosed details about former President Donald Trump’s refusal to help stop the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol three years ago as he sat watching TV inside the White House, according to sources familiar with what Smith’s team has learned during its Jan. 6 probe.

Many of the exclusive details come from the questioning of Trump’s former deputy chief of staff, Dan Scavino, who first started working for Trump as a teenager three decades ago and is now a paid senior adviser to Trump’s reelection campaign. Scavino wouldn’t speak with the House select committee that conducted its own probe related to Jan. 6, but — after a judge overruled claims of executive privilege last year — he did speak with Smith’s team, and key portions of what he said were described to ABC News.

[…]

Sources said Scavino told Smith’s investigators that as the violence began to escalate that day, Trump “was just not interested” in doing more to stop it.

Scavino and other close advisers including “then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, then-White House counsel Pat Cipollone, and Cipollone’s former deputy, Pat Philbin,” had interactions with Trump as the fighting raged inside and outside the U.S. Capitol.

According to what sources said Scavino told Smith’s team, Trump was “very angry” that day — not angry at what his supporters were doing to a pillar of American democracy, but steaming that the election was allegedly stolen from him and his supporters, who were “angry on his behalf.” Scavino described it all as “very unsettling,” sources said.

Trump sat with his arms folded watching the insurrection on TV in his private dining room just off the Oval Office:

After unsuccessfully trying for up to 20 minutes to persuade Trump to release some sort of calming statement, Scavino and others walked out of the dining room, leaving Trump alone, sources said. That’s when, according to sources, Trump posted a message on his Twitter account saying that Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done.”

Trump’s aides told investigators they were shocked by the post. Aside from Trump, Scavino was the only other person with access to Trump’s Twitter account, and he was often the one actually posting messages to it, so when the message about Pence popped up, Cipollone and another White House attorney raced to find Scavino, demanding to know why he would post that in the midst of such a precarious situation, sources said.

Scavino made a point of telling prosecutors he was blindsided by Trump’s tweet. As someone accustomed to posting Trump’s tweets, Scavino testified “I didn’t do it,” according to ABC’s sources.

Marcy Wheeler questions that account at emptywheel, reminding readers it comes from “people who chose to stick around — some of whom, including Scavino, continue to stick around — knowing that if Trump ever turns on them he wouldn’t stop short of using his mob to get them killed.”

Expert 3, with “knowledge, skill, experience, training, and education beyond the ordinary lay person regarding the analysis of cellular phone data, including the use of Twitter and other applications on cell phones” will sort out for jurors “when Trump’s phone was unlocked and using Twitter on January 6.”

Wheeler asks:

Why would Pat Cipollone confront Scavino about the Tweet if “Scavino and others walked out of the dining room” — implicitly, walked out together — “leaving Trump alone”? Cipollone would only confront Scavino if he had believed that Scavino were still there with Trump, as his testimony describes he had been until just before Trump sent the Tweet.

The warrant on Twitter — which would have shown whether it is really true that Scavino was the only other person with access to Trump’s Twitter account — is not the only way Jack Smith tested this claim, knew the answer to this claim before interviewing Scavino.

The “he” in “demanding to know why he would post that” could refer to Cipollone asking Scavino about Trump, not Scavino. ABC’s account makes it unclear. It comes via “sources” and through multiple reporters. But Wheeler’s point is that the stories told remain muddy.

Marcy advises:

As you read the rest of the ABC piece, keep two things in mind. This leaked testimony concentrates on other aspects of the claims made to Jack Smith about how Twitter was used that day, such as this description of Luna’s testimony, describing that he warned Trump before the then-President sent a Tweet making him look “culpable” the day of the attack.

According to the sources, shortly before 6 p.m. on Jan. 6, Trump showed Luna a draft of a Twitter message he was thinking about posting: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously and viciously stripped away from great patriots. … Remember this day for forever!” it read.

The message echoed what Trump had allegedly been saying privately all day.

Sources said Luna told Trump that it made him sound “culpable” for the violence, perhaps even as if he may have somehow been involved in “directing” it, sources said.

Still, at 6:01 p.m., Trump posted the message anyway.

That testimony — that Luna warned Trump the Tweet would make him look like he was responsible for the violence — will only strengthen the extent to which this Tweet was already going to be used to prove that Trump ratified the violence, effectively showing that Trump remained in a conspiracy with those who violently attacked the Capitol even after watching them do so.

Which brings me to the second point. Multiple people who gave this testimony — and probably the person or persons who shared it with ABC — claim to believe that they witnessed that Trump almost murdered his Vice President, someone who had been just as (or in Scavino’s case, almost as) loyal as they had been.

This trial cannot get underway soon enough for me.

Scenes from a slow civil war on women

Jeff Sharlet posted a long thread on Saturday reflecting on reporters’ initial reaction to his use of the the term “fascism” in “The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War.” One element dovetails with a post I’d already prepped from Jessica Valenti’s “Abortion, Every Day” substack.

When I launched THE UNDERTOW I did an event w/ a NYT politics reporter who scoffed at use of "fascism." When pressed, he didn't seem to know what it means. Here's my definition, informed by years of reading and… "fieldwork." With illustrations! A thread. 1/ pic.twitter.com/3KvuKLqIzX

— Jeff Sharlet (@JeffSharlet) January 6, 2024

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“The anti-abortion movement is launching a national campaign to trick women into carrying doomed pregnancies to term,” Vessica Valenti wrote in October in a post titled “Calculated Cruelty.” She summarized it in a followup post on Friday and cautions that the movement has moved upstream of abortion clinic protests to targeting prenatal testing that might reveal fatal fetal abnormalities:

The short version, though, is that a coalition of the most powerful anti-abortion groups in the country are working together to ban abortion in cases of fatal fetal abnormalities, and to do away with the prenatal testing that provides those diagnoses. They’re not just targeting legislation, but individual women—embedding themselves in hospitals, doctors’ offices and anywhere else patients might be getting bad news about their pregnancy.

Worst of all, these groups are calling it “prenatal diagnosis counseling” and perinatal hospice care*—manipulating women in their most vulnerable life moments under the guise of offering real help. That characterization is also politically strategic: it means that when Democrats oppose funding to anti-abortion groups that lie to women about their fetal diagnoses, the GOP can claim that they’re actually callously refusing women counseling and care.

Crisis pregnancy centers are going underground, Valenti suggests. Or rather, planting “moles” inside traditional medicine. The anti-abortion movement “has rejected ‘viable’ and ‘nonviable’, and is working to get legislators and medical professionals to do the same” to further sow confusion. But more than that.

“The goal isn’t just to confuse and mislead people about their pregnancies, but to divorce abortion from healthcare—bolstering the lie that abortion is never necessary to save someone’s health or life,” Valenti writes.

The cruelty of what this means in practice cannot be overstated. Because conservatives’ strategy to stop women from ending doomed pregnancies isn’t just legislative—it’s about ensuring individual patients never know the truth about their diagnoses in the first place.

Consider the heartlessness it takes to go to someone who has just been given the worst news of their life and then lie to them about what it means. Or to keep that information from them entirely: one of the goals of this initiative is to make it difficult, if not impossible, for pregnant women to get prenatal tests at all.

What does this look like?

This week, The Catholic Spirit spoke to Dr. Robin Pierucci, a neonatologist who works with Be Not Afraid, one of the groups behind this anti-choice campaign. I want you to read what she says to patients who have just found out that their pregnancies aren’t viable: “Congratulations.”

“I love reminding them that the first diagnosis is, ‘it’s a baby,’ and no other diagnosis ever negates diagnosis number one. The baby is inherently valuable and worthy of our love.”

I’m going to say this with all the restraint I have in my soul: I cannot believe someone hasn’t knocked this lady out. I mean really. Congratulations??

The effort is organized. They are drafting legislation and pushing for federal and state funding for “perinatal hospice nurses.”

Valenti cautions, “Republicans know what they’re doing. They know that their laws will hurt and kill women. And for all their rhetoric about saving babies, they also know that more infants will die as a result of this work.”

Don’t ever let people forget that Republicans are willing to watch women and babies suffer and die in service to their cause. And their cause has never, and will never, be us.

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Getting back to Sharlet, in addition to a “mythological past rooted in grievance,” several other myths are central to fascism: family, purity, whiteness, “cleverness” (transgressiveness as displays of courage), and “a reverence for violence as a purifying force, as an exhilarating, even titillating experience.” The recipe employs conspiracy theories as a binder.

Did I leave out misogyny?

Another feature that will be present if it’s fascism: misogyny, not just as a constant, but as an element of a purity-based nationalism. I call it gender nationalism.

Sharlet admits that in writing “The Undertow … I used to think full-fledged fascism wan’t possible in the U.S. Not because of democracy; because of fundamentalism. The missing ingredient, I thought, was cult of personality. We’d never switch out Christ for a man. I was wrong.”

Sharlet summarizes:

So, “fascism”: A “purity” myth. A nationalist myth. Misogyny. All concentrated in a cult of personality, sanctified thru violence deemed not only necessary but thrilling, a militant eroticism.

The point of “The Undertow” is that so much of this movement is operating below the radar. The New Apostolic Reformation, as Paul Rosenberg reminded Salon readers last week, does the same. Researcher Fred Clarkson warns that this is deliberate, “They are wily because they are worried that the rest of society will figure out who they are and what they are up to.”

Valenti might concur regarding funding anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers.