Speaker of the House? Take 2
Jim Jordan, the GOP nominee for Speaker of the House, has zero legislative accomplishments in 16 years in Congress and he tried to undermine the Constitution after the 2020 election.
This is really the best they’ve got?
Trump and His Documents
The Congressional Committee on January 6th voted unanimously to subpoena former President Trump to seek his testimony about the day of the Capitol Insurrection.
I’m sure Trump will fight the subpoena. The only sensible legal strategy is for Trump to exercise his rights under the 5th Amendment for every question. But sensible legal strategies are not a strong point for Trump.
On the plus side, he likes collecting government documents, so this gives him one more to take home with him.
187 Minutes
187 minutes. Over three hours. Trump watched on TV as the crowd he drew to DC, riled up, directed to the Capitol, and encouraged to stop the legitimate certification of the election stormed the Capitol building, violently attacked police, and chanted violent threats at the Vice President and Congress.
His aides tried to get him to say something to stop it. He tweeted about his disappointment in Pence. Pence’s security detail, meanwhile, was contacting their loved ones in case they didn’t make it out alive.
Congress people tried to get the President to stop the crowd. But many knew he wouldn’t disavow the rioters. And he wouldn’t. He said they were special. He wouldn’t even say the election was over the next day.
It was so bad that the acting Secretary of Defense was not getting orders from the President. He was getting orders from the Vice President, who’s not even in the chain of command. But they knew they couldn’t listen to the President at that time. He was dangerous and trying to subvert our democracy for his own power.
Trump just watched. For three hours. As our democracy hung by a thread. He wouldn’t act to stop it.
Even the Uvalde police didn’t wait that long to act.
It’s unfathomable to me that people can still support Trump.
Josh Hawley Running
Tonight’s January 6th Committee hearings presented a cornucopia of damning evidence about the fragility of our democracy.
It also gave us some awesome social media fodder to mock several people who encouraged the Big Lie and the rioters. And I’m all here for that.
Josh Hawley deserves every ounce of mockery heading his way.
Secret Service Text Messages
The Secret Service, too?? So now we are left to question the veracity of claims from the Secret Service. Text messages from the day of the January 6th insurrection are unavailable to the Congressional committee since they’ve been deleted. Allegedly during a phone migration.
Yet the Secret Service was told to retain those texts and records twice: once on January 16, again on January 25. Their phone migration started January 27.
Seems to be a pattern of lost information, whether it’s White House call logs from the day, confidential and top secret records that were taken to Mar a Lago, and now Secret Service communications.
No wonder the public continues to lose trust in the government.
Trump Knew
Trump knew. We learned that from yesterday’s very compelling testimony at the January 6th Committee hearings.
A person with direct contact to Trump’s top administration officials and Trump himself helped connect several dots.
Trump KNEW he lost in November 2020.
Trump KNEW there was no election fraud. And when he learned his Attorney General wouldn’t go along with his lies he threw his lunch at the wall, leaving staff to clean the ketchup dripping down the wall.
Trump KNEW there would be violence on January 6th (with his Chief of Staff saying ahead of time that it could get “real, real bad” on January 6).
Trump KNEW the rioters were armed and ordered his people to remove the metal detectors at his rally since, “They aren’t here to hurt me…. Let them march to the Capitol.”
Trump KNEW these armed people would march on the Capitol.
Trump KNEW they were chanting to hang Mike Pence and felt Pence “deserves it.”
Trump knew this was all going to happen and encouraged and invited it.
Trump knew. The writing is on the wall.
January 6th Committee
While I doubt it will result in important indictments or change the minds of many Trump supporters, we should all pay attention to the January 6th committee hearings. They’re laying out all the ways in which Trump and his people knew they were undermining American democracy.
Yesterday’s testimony included retired Judge J. Michael Luttig. Luttig served as counsel in the Reagan White House, Assistant Attorney General under George HW Bush, and was appointed by Bush 1 as a Judge on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. I’ll let his words speak for themselves:
“A stake was driven through the heart of American democracy on January 6, 2021, and our democracy today is on a knife’s edge… Knowing full well that he had lost the 2020 presidential election, the former president and his allies and supporters falsely claimed and proclaimed to the nation that he had won the election, and then he and they set about to overturn the election that he and they knew the former president had lost… The treacherous plan was no less ambitious than to steal America’s democracy.”
“Donald Trump and his allies are a clear and present danger to American democracy. To this very day, the former president, his allies and supporters, pledge that in the presidential election of 2024, if the former president or his anointed successor ... were to lose that election, that they would attempt to overturn that 2024 election in the same way that they attempted to overturn the 2020 election. I don't speak those words lightly. I would have never uttered one single one of those words unless the former president and his allies were candidly and proudly speaking those exact words to America.”
But Trumps supporters will just blow it off. After all, it’s not as bad as Hillary’s emails, right?
Pardon List
In the January 6 Committee hearings, it was revealed that John Eastman, Trump’s lawyer who worked alongside Trump to champion the theory that VP Pence could unilaterally reject electors, sought a presidential pardon in the aftermath of Jan. 6.
Eastman sent an email to Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani "a few days after" Jan. 6 seeking a pardon. "I've decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works," Eastman wrote.
More evidence that Trump and those around him were aware of the illegality of their plans to subvert American democracy.
Allowing for a quick repurposing of an old cartoon.
“Legitimate Political Discourse””…???
While I get people supporting conservative policies and limited government, I find it increasingly hard to understand how anyone supports the Republican Party.
In a resolution formally censuring GOP Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the Republican National Committee on Friday described the events surrounding the January 6, 2021 insurrection -- which have been at the center of a House probe -- as "legitimate political discourse."
The RNC tried to parse the language after the fact, but their resolution said the two lawmakers were "participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse" from their perches on the House select committee.
Sickening that they can characterize January 6 as legitimate political discourse. If they really condemn the violence of that day they’d want an investigation to dig into it more.
Just call the RNC the Trump Party and be done with it.
