Trump waited hours to tell his supporters to stop attacking the Capitol. There’s a reason for that

Posted on by Laura Clawson

On January 6, one prominent Republican after another called Donald Trump or the people near him, begging him to take decisive action to protect the U.S. Capitol from his mob of supporters, including by sending the message only he could effectively send convincing the mob to stand down. But Trump, transfixed by what he was watching on live television, didn’t respond for hours. In fact, early on, he tweeted an incitement to violence against Mike Pence. 

According to The Washington Post, Trump “didn’t appear to understand the magnitude of the crisis” and was “not initially receptive” to the idea that he needed to do something to tamp down the violence. Gee, why could that be? 

”He was hard to reach, and you know why? Because it was live TV,” according to one adviser. “If it’s TiVo, he just hits pause and takes the calls. If it’s live TV, he watches it, and he was just watching it all unfold.” That’s presumably why Fox News spent long stretches quoting a litany of Trump-supporting Republicans begging him to take action—in an attempt to get him to pay attention. But something else was going on here, and it needs to be said, and said again: Trump didn’t want the attack on the Capitol to stop. He was hoping it would succeed.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, who, trapped inside the Capitol, called Ivanka Trump to ask her to get her father to send a strong message to his supporters, urging them to go home. “It took him awhile to appreciate the gravity of the situation,” Graham told the Post. “The president saw these people as allies in his journey and sympathetic to the idea that the election was stolen.”

Despite knowing in a very personal way that Trump did not want to stop the domestic terrorists terrorizing Congress in his name, Graham is still opposing impeachment, because “It is past time for all of us to try to heal our country and move forward.” And to Republicans, the way to move forward is by emboldening the people who did this and letting them know there will be no consequences.

Trump did not want to tell his followers to back down, and at some point, responsible people have to say out loud that it was because he was waiting and hoping the terrorists would succeed in the coup they were attempting on his behalf. He’s a grown man. “He didn’t understand” cannot stand as an excuse for standing by while his supporters trashed the Capitol, threatened Congress to keep it from doing its constitutional duty, and killed a police officer. No matter how transfixing that live TV was, Trump was watching terrorism and violence, and didn’t want to put a stop to it.

Say it. Make the Republican members of Congress whose lives were at risk understand it, and understand that the way to get out from under the fear is not to cave and cave again but to make sure this terrorism doesn’t happen again. Donald Trump was willing to risk the lives of his supporters in Congress as he actively aimed a mob at Pence in retaliation for Pence once, in more than four years of subservience, saying no.

Members of the National Guard were seething in frustration as they watched the scene play out, waiting to be called in to protect the Capitol, and Trump’s Defense Department is trying to pass off responsibility—which should not be allowed to happen. The sergeants at arms of the House and Senate and the chief of the Capitol Police are all resigning over their failures. The Pentagon needs to undergo the same kind of house-cleaning for the willingness of its leaders to sit back and watch and say “not our responsibility.” There needs to be accountability everywhere. But one place most of all.

In the final analysis Trump is the first and most responsible—for spending months convincing his supporters the election was stolen, then for spending weeks building up the January 6 event, and, on the day itself, urging the crowd to march on the Capitol with rage as their guiding instinct. He rebuffed pleas from Ivanka and from his closest aides to do what he needed to do. Because doing the thing that was right and necessary was not in line with his goal: a successful coup.

Trump’s Pentagon officials look increasingly complicit in a deadly serious coup attempt

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Last Wednesday’s storming of the U.S. Capitol looked really, really bad as it was happening. Over the weekend, as more videos and information came out, it looked worse and worse. From video of the Trump-supporting terrorists beating a police officer with flag poles and crushing an officer in a door to the authorities’ refusal to hold a briefing to tell the nation what they know about what happened, how many people are injured, and what they’re doing to prevent this from happening again, the assault on the Capitol increasingly looks like an organized and serious coup attempt with some level of complicity in Congress and at the Pentagon. That’s one reason it’s so important for the House to impeach Donald Trump now, first, right away—because there’s good reason to believe other shoes are going to drop. When that happens, Democrats need to be ready to move.

House Democrats are planning to introduce an article of impeachment Monday morning: “incitement of insurrection.” That’s good—but it would have been better to do it over the weekend, in line with the urgency of the moment. We know now how close we came to members of Congress being publicly beaten to death by a mob whipped up by Trump. Even allowing for the trauma members of Congress are dealing with, that’s not a “take a weekend off” situation.

Wednesday we saw pictures of bros milling around giving thumbs up and grinning as they put their feet on a desk in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office or carried away a lectern. Since then, we’ve seen more evidence of how many were wearing tactical gear and moving in coordinated ways, of members of hate groups in the Capitol, of preparation for serious violence.

“That was a heavily trained group of militia terrorists that attacked us,” a Black officer who has been in the Capitol Police for more than a decade told Buzzfeed. “They had radios, we found them, they had two-way communicators and earpieces. They had bear spray. They had flash bangs ... They were prepared. They strategically put two IEDs, pipe bombs, in two different locations. These guys were military trained. A lot of them were former military.”

Every detail that emerges shows how serious this was, and how seriously the government should be taking it. That is not what’s happening, with Trump-appointed Pentagon officials giving the coup a name that actively downplays it and—it cannot be emphasized enough—law enforcement not having given one briefing of the sort that would be absolutely standard after any significant event.

One Republican member of Congress who did condemn the coup attempt claimed some of his Republican colleagues voted to overturn the election results out of fear for themselves and their families. “One of the saddest things is I had colleagues who, when it came time to recognize reality and vote to certify Arizona and Pennsylvania in the Electoral College, they knew in their heart of hearts that they should've voted to certify, but some had legitimate concerns about the safety of their families. They felt that that vote would put their families in danger,” Rep. Peter Meijer said.

But even if that’s true, it’s a reason to act firmly now, before things get worse. They won’t have less to fear if they allow Trump’s insurrection to continue growing.

The weekend also brought news of yet another attempt by Trump to coerce an official into overturning Georgia's election results. But one amazing thing about this weekend was that, following Trump’s permanent Twitter suspension on Friday night, we didn’t get a blow by blow of Trump’s moods and whims all weekend. It’s kind of weird and disorienting, to be honest, but also freeing and wonderful.

Millions in COVID-19 aid has gone to right-wing groups that usually oppose government aid

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Conservative groups have long railed against government assistance, including even against economic stimulus during the coronavirus pandemic, but—surprise!—that hasn’t stopped many of them from taking millions in the aid themselves, an analysis conducted as part of Accountable.US's CovidBailoutTracker.com project shows.

Back in May, a long list of right-wing groups signed a Conservative Action Project letter opposing “federally funded bailouts for states and local governments.” At least eight of those groups were just fine with federally funded bailouts for their own bank accounts, though: They collectively took more than $2.25 million in CARES Act aid, with three taking money both from the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program. (Disclosure: Kos Media received a Paycheck Protection Program loan.) (But Kos Media wasn’t a giant hypocrite about it.)

Overall, at least 75 conservative organizations took COVID-19-related aid, most of it from the PPP, but with at least 14 organizations also getting EIDL money, for a combined amount of more than $18 million. Not all of them had specifically spoken out against the CARES Act or other coronavirus-related relief, but for instance, in March Liberty Counsel complained that “the $2 trillion-dollar spending bill is still being written as members of Congress are being pressured to pass it. Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Minority Whip Chuck Schumer have inserted funding totally unrelated to the virus.” The organization then went on to get a $428,100 PPP loan, followed by another one for $10,000.

Just as the Trump and Kushner family businesses got PPP loans, so too did a lot of right-wing groups with deep Trump ties. Like Jay Sekulow’s group, the American Center for Law and Justice, which provided some of Donald Trump’s impeachment lawyers and has been paid more than $250,000 by the Republican National Committee in recent years—it got $1.23 million. The Remembrance Project, which specializes in providing Trump events with victims of crimes committed by immigrants, got $75,000 from the EIDL and $15,600 from the PPP.

American Majority and American Majority Action trained legions of tea partiers to rail against government aid, back in the tea party era. In the COVID-19 era they took a combined $130,000 in government aid.

“It’s always fascinating to see people who’ve made careers out of bashing what they see as ‘big government’ being among the first in line for a taxpayer handout during a crisis,” said Jeremy Funk, spokesman for Accountable.US, the nonpartisan government watchdog that put together the COVID Bailout Tracker. “They wave their finger at federal relief spending for local governments and working families, but don’t seem to mind when it benefits them. But this goes way beyond hypocrisy. These groups join the long list of rich and well-connected supporters of Donald Trump who were allowed to take millions from a program intended for struggling small businesses. It’s an insult to all the mom-and-pops in communities of color that couldn’t access a penny from the PPP under the Trump administration’s poor design and management.”  

That may not be the worst of it, though—$4.8 million in PPP and EIDL money went to 25 organizations designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Lame-duck Trump is determined to execute as many people as he can before Inauguration Day

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Donald Trump and William Barr got the go-ahead for capital punishment last summer, and they are not going to let a little thing like a presidential transition interrupt their killing spree. On Thursday night, Brandon Bernard became the second person executed since Election Day, with four more executions planned before Inauguration Day, including one on Friday, just a day after Bernard.

Bernard’s killing is particularly attention-getting because five of the jurors who voted for the death penalty and even one of the prosecutors who argued for it on appeal had changed their positions, saying he should be allowed to live. Bernard was sentenced for his role, at 18 years old, in the 1999 killing of Todd and Stacie Bagley. Though he did not kill the Bagleys—the man who shot them, Christopher Vialva, was executed in September—Bernard then lit the car they were in on fire. Because the murder occurred at Fort Hood, it was a federal crime.

Since his conviction, Bernard had by all reports been a model prisoner, working with at-risk youth. His case drew the attention of Trump impeachment lawyers Alan Dershowitz and Kenneth Starr, who asked the Supreme Court for a delay in his execution so they could get up to speed on the case. The court rejected that request, clearing the way for his execution Thursday night.

“‘I’m sorry,” Bernard said in the moments before he was killed by the government, according to an Associated Press pool report. “That’s the only words that I can say that completely capture how I feel now and how I felt that day.”

President-elect Joe Biden has called for a moratorium on the death penalty, so Trump and Barr are ensuring that they clear out federal death row as much as possible between now and January 20.

Hundreds of thousands joined group aiming to overturn election results before Facebook cracked down

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Facebook apparently took down a “Stop the Steal” group accusing Democrats of trying to “nullify Republican votes” and steal the election—but not until the group had gotten hundreds of thousands of members, directing them to an outside page to maintain strength when Facebook did shut it down.

What’s more, the takedown didn’t come until after there were multiple thinly veiled calls to violence and after Mother Jones reported the group’s ties to Republican operatives, making it look a whole lot like an astroturf operation.

That outside website that “Stop the Steal” used Facebook to funnel people to was registered by a conservative digital consulting firm, Liberty Lab. Stop the Steal’s website and Facebook page also suggest links to the group “Women for America First,” which is led by the former chief executive of the Tea Party Express. Women for America First was started to protest Trump’s impeachment.

Facebook’s policy on post-election claims would seem to bar Stop the Steal on multiple grounds, and apparently the company did conclude that it couldn’t host that. Just not until the group had hundreds of thousands of members. In moments like these, it’s always worth remembering that Joel Kaplan, Facebook's vice president of global public policy, was a key participant in the 2000 Brooks Brothers riot.

Desperate Trump campaign trots out Melania to make partisan attacks

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Yet another indication that Team Trump is nervous about next Tuesday’s elections: Melania Trump emerged for a rare campaign event—her first solo event of 2020—on Tuesday and took a much more partisan tone than usual. In her remarks in Pennsylvania, Melania directly attacked Joe Biden (using official campaign talking points, nothing new to see) and attacked Democrats for … being divisive and not leading on COVID-19. She even tried to link her husband’s disastrous coronavirus response to impeachment.

“No one should be promoting fear of real solutions for purely political ends,” Melania said. Which, fair in a vacuum, but context matters. “The Democrats have chosen to put their own agendas over the American people's well-being. Instead, they attempt to create a divide. A divide in something that should be non-partisan and non-controversial. A divide that causes confusion and fear instead of hope and security. That is not the leadership,” she said, in as pure an example of Republican projection as you can probably find.

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Oh, my. Putting a partisan agenda above the American people’s well-being and instead trying to divide and govern through confusion and fear … gosh, how dare those dastardly Democrats do such a thing!

"Let us also not forget what the Democrats chose to focus on when COVID-19 first came into our country,” Melania offered. “While the President was taking decisive action to keep the American people safe, the Democrats were wasting American taxpayer dollars in a sham impeachment.” 

Um. Let’s turn to the timeline, shall we? 

The Senate’s vote on Trump’s impeachment trial was on February 5, three days after Trump restricted travel from China, a restriction that came later than other nations and was incomplete, rather than “decisive action.” At the time, Trump said, “Well, we pretty much shut it down coming in from China. … We can’t have thousands of people coming in who may have this problem, the coronavirus. So we’re going to see what happens, but we did shut it down, yes.”

Trump continued downplaying the threat of the virus—intentionally, as it turned out, with full knowledge that it was a serious danger—for more than a month. For example, February 12, a week after Senate Republicans acquitted him: “We have a very small number of people in the country, right now, with it. It’s like around 12. Many of them are getting better. Some are fully recovered already. So we’re in very good shape.”

February 25: “I think that’s a problem that’s going to go away.”

February 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

February 28: “Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. … And this is their new hoax.”

March 5, one month after the Senate vote: “With approximately 100,000 CoronaVirus cases worldwide, and 3,280 deaths, the United States, because of quick action on closing our borders, has, as of now, only 129 cases (40 Americans brought in) and 11 deaths.”

March 7: “We’re doing very well and we’ve done a fantastic job.”

By contrast, Joe Biden warned, “We are not prepared for a pandemic. Trump has rolled back progress President Obama and I made to strengthen global health security. We need leadership that builds public trust, focuses on real threats, and mobilizes the world to stop outbreaks before they reach our shores”—before the coronavirus emerged in China. 

On January 27, he responded to the news of the emerging outbreak, writing “The outbreak of a new coronavirus, which has already infected more than 2,700 people and killed over 80 in China, will get worse before it gets better. Cases have been confirmed in a dozen countries, with at least five in the United States. There will likely be more,” and detailing preparedness measures that should have been taken.

Senate Minority Leader Schumer called on Trump to declare a national emergency on January 26. Sen. Elizabeth Warren released a plan for combating the outbreak on January 28. 

Democrats were responding early—yes, even during the impeachment process, walking and chewing gum at the same time—while Trump continued downplaying the threat for weeks and bragging that his too-little-too-late China travel restrictions had done all that needed to be done. That’s what Melania continues to brag about, despite the facts. Because otherwise, they have to admit they have nothing.

Trump expected splashy Wall Street Journal coverage of Hunter Biden’s emails. He was disappointed

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Rudy Giuliani’s ridiculous waterlogged laptop story wasn’t supposed to be the way the public learned about an alleged trove of Hunter Biden emails. It was supposed to come from a much more reputable Rupert Murdoch-owned publication. Not even Fox News, which passed. No, some ostensibly more reputable Trumpsters were trying to sell the email story—minus the laptop angle—to The Wall Street Journal. 

Eric Herschmann, the former Trump impeachment lawyer turned White House adviser, former deputy White House counsel Stefan Passantino, and a public relations person who’s buddies with Don Jr. met with WSJ reporter Michael Bender in early October, The New York Times’ Ben Smith reports. At that meeting, they handed over Hunter Biden emails—including some of the same ones Giuliani supposedly got from the laptop—and put his former business partner, Tony Bobulinski, on speaker phone to make allegations that Joe Biden had profited from Hunter’s corrupt use of the family name. That effort to sell the story ran into one big problem: The Wall Street Journal took its time investigating and decided there wasn’t a lot of there there.

While that investigation was ongoing, Giuliani got the New York Post to run his laptop story, which quickly came under question. (Questions like “Are you f’ing kidding me?” and “So Rudy’s basically a Russian asset now, right?)

But Donald Trump knew that The Wall Street Journal was supposedly going to be doing a story on the emails, and he was excited, telling aides that an “important piece” was coming in the paper. While “The editors didn’t like Trump’s insinuation that we were being teed up to do this hit job,” a reporter told Smith, the investigation into the emails continued. But it didn't go on Team Trump’s schedule, which called for a major, splashy article before last week’s debate. Instead, the eventual WSJ article came after Bobulinski went to the press himself, and Trump tried to make him an issue in the debate. The headline of the short article eventually published? “Hunter Biden’s Ex-Business Partner Alleges Father Knew About Venture.”

That’s not exactly what the White House lawyer and former White House lawyer were looking for—they wanted the New York Post insinuations laundered through the respectability of the WSJ. And of course the whole story is further discredited by having multiple overlapping sets of Hunter Biden emails being pushed around by different parts of Team Trump. The laptop story is dubious enough on its own—man from California delivers laptop to Delaware repair shop where blind Trump-supporting owner can’t identify him as Hunter Biden but figures it out from Biden-related sticker on the laptop, etc etc etc, improbability stacking upon improbability—but when you know that that wasn't the only set of supposed Hunter Biden emails, well, it really screams Russian influence campaign. And it screams Trump desperation for any game-changer in the campaign, however illegitimate.

Add ‘Can Donald Trump pardon himself?’ to the list of questions Amy Coney Barrett refuses to answer

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Amy Coney Barrett went out on a limb far enough to agree with Sen. Patrick Leahy that “no person is above the law.” But agreeing that a president should not and cannot pardon himself was a bridge too far for her. Barrett fell back on her tried and true excuse that she can’t offer any view on any legal issue unless she has gone through the full process of deciding litigation on it.

This is, of course, not a hypothetical question. “President Trump claims he has an absolute right to pardon himself. Now, for 200 years the Supreme Court has recognized the common law principle that no one can be a judge in their own case,” Leahy said. That being the case, “would you agree, first, that nobody is above the law, not the president, not you, not me?”

“I agree, no one is above the law,” Barrett replied. Wow, bold stance! If only we could believe that she really believes it.

“Does a president have an absolute right to pardon himself for a crime? I mean, we heard this question after President Nixon’s impeachment,” Leahy followed up.

“Sen. Leahy, so far as I know, that question has never been litigated, that question has never arisen,” Barrett answered. “That question may or may not arise, but it’s one that calls for legal analysis of what the scope of the pardon power is, so because it would be opining on an open question when I haven’t gone through the judicial process to decide it, it’s not one on which I can offer a view.”

“But you are willing to say that no person, not you, not me, is above the law,” Leahy pointed out. “I find your answer somewhat incompatible, but those are your answers, you have the right to say what you want.”

The bottom line is this: Barrett refused to say that Donald Trump can’t pardon himself for his crimes. She refused to even repeat the basic principle that no one can be a judge in their own case as part of her nonanswer. She said “no one is above the law,” but she gave no indication she actually believes that.

Pence’s evasion is smoother than Trump’s shouting, but he’s no more likely to answer a hard question

Posted on by Laura Clawson

One aspect of Vice President Mike Pence’s debate performance that won’t necessarily be caught by traditional fact-checking is how he constantly dodged hard questions. Although Pence is happy to lie, in many cases he instead just … didn’t answer, not even bothering with a politician’s traditional acknowledge-and-pivot.

The New York Times describes Pence’s answer to a question on preexisting conditions as “a master class in evasive rhetorical jujitsu.” In that one, he “ignored the question (the White House has not, in fact, come up with a plan), then launched into a long defense of his anti-abortion views and, for his dismount, demanded that Sen. Kamala Harris say if she supported a plan to ‘pack’ the Supreme Court.” But that wasn’t the only time Pence completely evaded an inconvenient question by any stretch.

He didn’t acknowledge the content of a question about whether voters deserve to know more about Donald Trump’s health, treating it instead as if he’d been offered well wishes to pass along to Trump. When asked: “Why is the U.S. death toll, as a percentage of our population, higher than that of almost every other wealthy country?” He lied about Trump having “suspended all travel from China” and attacked former Vice President Joe Biden for having opposed that move. He bragged about “the greatest national mobilization since World War II.” He promised “literally 10s of millions of doses of a vaccine before the end of this year.” He accused Biden of plagiarism for a coronavirus response plan that, Pence claimed, looks like Trump’s. (This, too, is false.) At no point did he admit that yes, the U.S. death toll is extremely high by global standards, or try to account for this failure.

Again and again, Pence followed this pattern.

When ineffectual moderator Susan Page asked: “Vice President Pence, you're the former governor of Indiana. If Roe v Wade is overturned, what would you want Indiana to do? Would you want your home state to ban all abortions?”

Pence began responding with “Thank you for the question, but I'll use a little bit of my time to respond to that very important key before.” He then offered 124 words on Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, before acting like he had been asked about whether he wanted to see Amy Coney Barrett confirmed to the Supreme Court: “Now with regard to the Supreme Court of the United States. Let me say, President Trump and I could not be more enthusiastic about the opportunity to see Amy Coney Barrett become Justice Amy Coney Barrett,” Pence said, and pivoted to attack Democrats for supposedly being opposed to Barrett because of her faith. At no point did he in any way approach the question of Roe v. Wade or whether his home state should or would ban all abortions. This is a man whose career has been defined in large part by his opposition to abortion under any circumstances, but when asked about it on his largest stage, he talked about everything but.

Pence also echoed Trump’s refusal to answer one extremely important question: “If Vice President Biden is declared the winner and President Trump refuses to accept a peaceful transfer of power, what would be your role and responsibility as Vice President? What would you personally do?”

Pence began with his confidence that he and Trump would win. That’s standard politician stuff—of course he wouldn’t start by accepting the premise that he’s going to lose. So, too, with his litany of supposed accomplishments of Team Trump. But. Pence then moved to attacking Democrats for supposedly undermining democracy first, through investigations of the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia and through impeachment, a constitutional process that did, let’s not forget, draw a conviction vote from Republican Sen. Mitt Romney. This is Pence setting up a rationale for Trump to attack the results of the 2020 elections. When he attacked mail-in voting as creating a “massive opportunity for voter fraud,” he was echoing Trump’s efforts to delegitimize the results of the 2020 elections. And crucially, at no point did Pence say yes, he would accept a loss in this election. At no point did he answer the question about taking responsibility if Trump refuses to accept a peaceful transfer of power.

In one sense, Pence was just doing the thing he’d done throughout the debate: dodging. But on this question, a dodge is an answer. Pence’s answer is that if Trump refuses to accept a peaceful transfer of power, he is along for the ride, kissing ass as he's been doing for the past four years.

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More Republicans look to join the House ‘What coronavirus threat?’ caucus

Posted on (Updated by Laura Clawson

Donald Trump isn’t the only Republican downplaying the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic. He’s joined in that disregard for human life by many Republican lawmakers—and by many of the Republican candidates who hope to reclaim some ground in the House in 2020. That’s both because this is Trump’s party and because Republicans have long put their version of the economy (the economy of the rich and corporations) above the health and lives of working people.

Missouri’s Rep. Ann Wagner, for instance, went out on March 7 and, insisting on her knowledge of the situation—“We have had multiple, multiple briefings at the federal level for some time”—went on to assure the public, “As I said, this is, it's clear that the risk to our US public is low.” 

Let's turn it all blue. The whole government, at every level. Can you give $1 to each and every one of these Daily Kos-endorsed candidates? If you can't, how many can you help?

Former Democrat Jeff Van Drew, who became a Republican over the impeachment of Donald Trump, also downplayed the threat, insisting that “This is not mass destruction. This is not 9-11. This is a terrible situation that has happened. But at the same time, we know that we deal with the flu every year.” That was on March 11. Van Drew is from New Jersey, which has now lost more than 16,000 people to COVID-19—more than five times the death toll of 9/11 as a whole.

Other congressional Republicans have postured against public health restrictions, like Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, who encouraged a church to hold services despite a police order not to do so. “Hold the services anyway, using common sense spacing, separation, etc. ... encourage elderly to stay home. But this kind of authoritarian nonsense must be challenged. #SicSemperTyrannis,” Roy tweeted. The church was in Virginia, far from Roy’s home state.

Wagner, Van Drew, and Roy are not alone in downplaying the threat or opposing public health restrictions—and if the Republican Party has its way, they’ll get a whole lot more company after November’s elections.

Company like Michelle Steel, challenging Rep. Harley Rouda in California’s 22nd Congressional District, who sounded a lot like Trump on March 22 when she said “hopefully the weather gets better this will all disappear.” At the end of April, she complained that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s order to close crowded beaches was “a clear example of unnecessary government overreach,” unnecessary because “Orange County has been successful in flattening the curve.” At the time, Orange County had reported 2,400 COVID-19 cases. That number has risen to more than 50,000.

In South Carolina, Nancy Mace is challenging Democratic Rep. Joe Cunningham. On June 8, she said “Our health has not been adversely affected in the way we were told it was going to be. We should have opened up sooner.” COVID-19 cases had already started rising in South Carolina at that point, and would be over 1,000 new cases a day for most of the following two months.

In Texas, Sheriff Troy Nehls, who is competing against Democrat Sri Preston Kulkarni for an open seat, has squawked loudly about mask rules, insisting “this government MANDATE from Harris County is unnecessary, unconstitutional, and unAmerican. It’s an unprecedented overreach which looks more like a communist dictatorship than a free Republic.” That was April 22. Texas, of course, went on to have a major spike.

Right now it’s impossible to pick apart how much Republicans downplay coronavirus and rail against restrictions aimed at slowing its spread because that’s what Donald Trump does, and how much it’s because they themselves, independently, think if they clap loud enough it will just go away. Either way, though, Republicans join Trump in owning the United States’ pandemic failures. And they must not get the power to make things even worse.