“Donald Trump is a 76-year-old man. He is not an impressionable child. Just like everyone else in our country, he is responsible for his own actions and his own choices.”- Liz Cheney at seventh January 6th Select Committee hearing\\
The most searing and red alarm warning material of the January 6th Committee was presented Tuesday, as we learned how Trump and his minions came close to launching a civil war. This was by considering having the military seize voting machines in all the battleground states. And the preliminary step in doing this was to "weaponize the mob" as Chris Hayes put it in the wrap up Tuesday night. WaPo journalist Robert Costa in his CBS interview on the hearing this a.m., highlighted how Brad Pascale testified how Trump intended to bring the nation to the brink of civil war using the ploy of seizing voting machines. E.g.
Watch CBS Mornings: Analysis of day seven of the Jan. 6 hearing - Full show on CBS
Costa also warned that though the hearings have "memorialized" what has occurred we are still in danger, with the upcoming 2022 and 2024 elections. Given how many millions are not thinking clearly because of inflation (now at 9.1%) and all too willing to blame Biden and the Dems, there is every chance that in their misery and fury they could hand the reins to the traitorous Repukes in the fall. Let's hope that doesn't happen but the signs are not sanguine. In the meantime, there are these other voices to consider.
by William Rivers Pitt | July 14, 2022 - 6:09am | permalink
“Can I say a word about Vice President Pence? I think the vice president did the right thing, I think he did the courageous thing,” former White House attorney Pat Cipollone said via videotape before the January 6 House Select Committee yesterday. “I think he did a great service to this country. I suggested to someone he should get the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his actions.”
Thus was Donald Trump, Master Troll, himself trolled to the Oort Cloud and back, and by an in-house lawyer no less, right there on live television. Can you imagine the reaction? One of the slobs still hovering around Mar-a-Lago will write a book someday with a tidbit about how Trump turned into Armus from “Star Trek: The Next Generation” when he heard Cipollone suggest that medal for Pence. Of course Trump saw it, because of course he’s watching, because of course he is. Oh, the humanity.
by Heather Digby Parton | July 14, 2022 - 8:02am | permalink
— from The New Civil Rights Movement
U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack on Tuesday revealed then-President Donald Trump’s now-infamous December 19, 2020 tweet promoting January 6 as an important day for his supporters to come to the Capitol was received. “Be there, will be wild,” Trump had told them.
The Committee explained that Trump posted his “will be wild” tweet as a last-ditch effort to retain power, after being told for weeks by many, including his White House Counsel, that he had lost re-election and there were no legal avenues to stay in office.
In this video, the Committee features the responses to Trump’s tweet, from far-right extremists including Alex Jones. One declared January 6 would be a “Red Wedding,” a reference to “mass slaughter,” Rep. Jamie Raskin noted, from the HBO series “Games of Thrones.”
by Amanda Marcotte | July 13, 2022 - 7:31am | permalink
"President Trump is a 76-year-old man. He is not an impressionable child."
The seventh of the summer's public hearings for the January 6th committee opened with Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., issuing a blunt rebuttal of what has become a popular denial of Donald Trump's responsibility for the Capitol insurrection: Trump is just too dumb to have known what he was doing.
The argument is that all of the lies about the election were not, as they seem, a deliberate attempt to incite an insurrection. That all of his links to extremist groups who stormed the Capitol are just a remarkable coincidence. That all of his behavior was merely an incoherent tantrum of an idiot man-child who was just unfortunately misinterpreted by his loyal supporters. That Trump is merely an innocent victim of the rioters who took things too far.
But, as Cheney's opening statement made clear, the committee is asserting the opposite. Trump is a sinister cult leader who knowingly exploited his gullible followers into rioting on his behalf.
What the committee hearing on Tuesday made clear is that Trump viewed his supporters as mere instruments in his quest for illegally obtained power. He cared not one whit how much damage he inflicted on his supporters.
"These Americans did not have access to the truth," Cheney said of the Big Lie believers. "They put their faith, their trust, in Donald Trump ... he deceived them."
To be sure, there's a genuine tension there. Painting Trump as a mastermind who knows what he is doing, but portraying his followers — or a good chunk of them, anyway — as mere dupes feels like a contradiction. If the Big Lie is so obviously false that Trump didn't believe it, then why would his followers believe it? Or, conversely, if his followers convinced themselves the Big Lie was real, then why couldn't Trump have done the same? Isn't it simpler to just view Trump and his followers as like-minded liars, people who collectively agree on falsehood in order to achieve their political ends?
Of course, there's a political reason for drawing a distinction between Trump-the-knowing-liar and his duped followers. Over 74 million Americans voted for Trump. Dismissing them all as irredeemable fascists is not good politics, especially when the goal is to counter the civil war-style political rhetoric that Trump and his allies have engaged in. As committee Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., noted, "We settle our differences at the ballot box." That is a much easier proposition to return to if Trump voters are allowed an offramp narrative about how they never meant to back a fascist revolt against democracy.
But it's also fair to say that the committee made a decent case for this story about a lying Trump sending his sheeplike followers to the slaughter.
So far, the hearings have presented overwhelming circumstantial evidence suggesting that Trump was actively conspiring with far-right leaders like Steve Bannon and groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers to plan the Capitol riot. The committee presented direct evidence that Trump spent a good amount of time plotting the march on the Capitol, as well. They showed evidence that such machinations were being hidden even from much of the White House staff.
by Robert Reich | July 13, 2022 - 7:21am | permalink
— from Robert Reich's Substack
Here are five things that struck me as particularly important in today’s hearing of the Special Committee on January 6:
1. Long before the attack on the Capitol, Trump appears to have known about the extremist groups who led it. Soon after the election, Trump confidantes Michael Flynn and Roger Stone were in close contact with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. Both continued their contacts. On January 5, Flynn told extremists gathered near the White House: “Tomorrow we the people are going to be here, and we will not stand for a lie.” On Jan 6, Stone was guarded by two Oath Keepers. Katrina Pierson, former campaign spokesperson for Trump, warned Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, about the “crazies” who were coming to Washington. Meadows told her “he likes crazies,” who Meadows defined as “people who will viciously defend [Trump] in public.”
2. Trump was seeking any possible justification for asserting the election was stolen, no matter how wild.
3. Thwarted by the facts and the law, Trump apparently then turned to fomenting violence on January 6.
4. Trump knew he was fueling the violence that occurred on January 6.
5. Trump’s instruction to his followers gathered on the Ellipse on January 6 rally to “march to the Capitol” was not spontaneous.
The picture that emerges from today’s hearing is not dramatically different from what we’ve learned before — an unhinged man willing to do anything to maintain power, even at the cost of lives, law, and our democracy. But it fills in crucial details, making it all the more imperative that the Justice Department begin criminal proceedings against him.
‘Unhinged’: The White House meeting that preceded Trump’s ‘will be wild’ tweet
For hours, the group tried to persuade Trump to take extraordinary, potentially illegal action to ignore the election results and try to stay in power. And for hours, some of Trump’s actual White House advisers tried to persuade him that those ideas were, in the words of one lawyer who participated, “nuts.”
There was shouting, insults and profanity, former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann testified to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Herschmann said he nearly came to blows with Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser who was part of the Trump’s group of impromptu visitors.
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