Category: Insurrection

Media Matters’ Bobby Lewis talks insurrection, white supremacy, and the media

Posted on by Tina Vasquez

In the media ecosphere, researchers may be among the most undervalued players in the industry—especially those who focus on “opposition research,” which is the practice of collecting information on opponents. For Bobby Lewis, this means studying, tracking, and analyzing the many strands of conservative misinformation in the U.S. that threaten our multiracial democracy. Since 2016, Lewis has been a researcher at Media Matters, a progressive research and information center that monitors misinformation in the U.S. media. In practice, Lewis’ job requires that he monitor everything from far-right message boards to Fox News and mainstream print outlets.

During the Trump administration, Lewis’ primary focus was the Fox News morning show Fox & Friends, which he says functioned as “an informal morning briefing” for President Donald Trump that influenced countless policy decisions and in turn, dominated almost every media cycle. Lewis’ work monitoring Fox & Friends and other conservative media gave him tremendous insight into the right-wing narratives that were pushed in the days leading up to and following Jan. 6, when on live television, Trump supporters attempted to carry out a coup in the U.S. Capitol and overturn the results of the election. 

The American public is still processing what happened, and the media is grappling with how to accurately report on the people who stormed the Capitol in an attempted coup. While the actions of these Trump supporters were deadly, reporting makes it clear that it could have been worse. As we headed into Inauguration Day, Prism spoke to Lewis about the language and framing journalists should consider when covering these events, the historical precedence for racial terrorism, and what to expect from the Republican Party post-Trump. Our interview has been condensed and edited. [This interview was conduced before Inauguration Day.]

Tina Vasquez: Many media outlets still seem to be grappling with what language to use to describe the events of Jan. 6. As a researcher, how are you thinking about it or articulating what we saw at the Capitol?

Bobby Lewis: “Insurrection” is an appropriate term for what happened, as is “attempted coup.” Simply put, a group of pro-Trump extremists attacked the U.S. Capitol to stop Congress from certifying an election that Trump fairly lost. Insurrectionists fought police officers to gain control of the building—even murdering one of them—and planted bombs at the Republican and Democratic national committees. Regardless of any other variables, there’s no question that an insurrection against the federal government took place on Jan. 6. As researchers, we watched it unfold on live TV, and more videos are still all over social media. But if you were watching right-wing media, the attempt to downplay insurrection began immediately. Fox’s news division said, “[I]t’s not like it’s a siege,” there was “no vandalism” (aside from all the vandalism), and the “peaceful” gathering was “a huge victory” for the insurrectionists.

Vasquez: As a journalist, I’m really struggling with the mainstream media's continued assertion that Trump supporters descended on the Capitol because they believed their president when he said the election was stolen. That may be true in many instances, but it also seems clear that so many of Trump's supporters simply did not like the results of the election. But perhaps neither of these narratives are accurate or helpful. What is the most responsible way to report on why these people invaded the Capitol?

Lewis: The first thing to keep in mind is that as we all saw, an insurrection took place. Every individual on the National Mall that day isn’t guilty of trying to overthrow democracy, but there were more than enough bad actors to mount a serious, violent attack on Congress, which came seconds from meeting its targets face-to-face with weapons and zip ties. That’s the most important thing that happened that afternoon. Attacking Congress is attacking our democracy, and given the United States’ rich history of violent white supremacists overthrowing democracy, we should remain focused on that threat above all else.

Those who attended the rallies on the National Mall were deluded by right-wing media and the president into believing the election was stolen and Trump actually won. At a minimum, the prevalence of those false claims created a space that allowed the rally and the violence to happen. In either case, it’s another symptom of our country’s depressingly vast information crisis, where tens of millions of Americans believe that our sources for information about the world are “fake news,” a belief that is ironically often based on exaggerated or false claims from unreliable sources they loyally trust.

Vasquez: Broadly, the media tends to convey surprise when right-wing movements have a show of force and there is little articulation of how it was a clear escalation of the rhetoric and conduct that’s been building over the last few years or that there is historical precedent for how white people behave in this country. We've heard that the Capitol was "unprepared" for what happened. Tell me what you know about how openly that week's events were being planned.

Lewis: The attack on the Capitol was, at least in part, planned in public. For weeks, far-right users on Parler and Telegram were openly brimming with violent fantasies about Jan. 6 in Washington. We shouldn’t forget the role of the mainstream social media platforms either. While Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg claimed that the insurrectionist attacks were “largely” not organized on Facebook, our research found at least 70 “Stop the Steal” affiliated groups on that site—importantly, 46 of these were private groups, a type of group that Facebook has struggled to regulate before.

The “Stop the Steal” movement, led by far-right personality Ali Alexander—and reportedly organized with help from GOP Reps. Andy Biggs, Mo Brooks, and Paul Gosar—attracted many extremists to the protest that would become an insurrection. Infowars’ Alex Jones heavily promoted and raised funds for the Jan. 6 event with violent rhetoric. There were plenty of warning signs that the police missed, accidentally or otherwise—an open question, with investigations underway into over a dozen officers—but it is clear that the Capitol Police force, like the rest of the government, doesn’t take the right-wing extremist threat as seriously as it should.

Immediately, the insurrection was an obvious escalation of Trump’s countless lies about voter fraud, which were reliably fed to him by Fox News, Newsmax, One America News, and others for months, even before the November election. In fact, right-wing media outlets have been lying about voter fraud and fearmongering about civil war for many years, so the groundwork for a violent rebellion has arguably been building on the right for a very long time. The precursors to insurrection fell together, more or less right in front of our eyes.

Vasquez: So this is an escalation of what we’ve seen over the last four years, but there is also historical precedence for this. I’ve been thinking about the Wilmington, North Carolina, insurrection.

Lewis: We do need to put the insurrection in a proper historical context. As Adam Serwer pointed out in The Atlantic, true democracy in the United States is not 244 years old—it’s only 55 years old, dating to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which guaranteed the vote (at least officially) to all Americans regardless of skin color. Prior to that we had Jim Crow, a system of racist governments throughout the South that established itself on the ashes of our brief attempts to enfranchise Black men (but not women) after the Civil War. The federal government eventually lost interest in protecting Reconstruction governments, and in time they were all destroyed by white supremacist terrorism.

The era of our true democracy has culminated so far in a multiracial coalition electing the first Black president, Barack Obama—and then an overwhelmingly white coalition electing the man who built a political career on saying Obama was not American. And on the day of the insurrection, this latter coalition stormed the Capitol in a violent attempt to keep its aggrieved leader in office. The insurrection was an expression of the systemically racist history of the country, much of which we also saw in racist coverage of Black Lives Matter protests. American white supremacy always strikes back after Black political achievement, and we already surrendered democracy to racist revanchism once before. It cannot happen again.

Vasquez: Over the course of the Trump administration, the media has reported on Trump supporters as if they are generally "working class" people with "economic anxieties," rather than racists who were moved by Trump’s rhetoric. The use of class status to elide a discussion of race is common, but as recent reporting has shown us, the insurrectionists came from all of the country and some were affluent—a fact mainstream media continues to appear surprised by. What are the characteristics of Trump supporters that you think are worth noting, what are the similarities his followers actually have?

Lewis: The most notable aspect of Trump support is a sense of grievance and anger over anything they feel has been taken from them. Since Trump himself is a perpetual victim, he cultivates this attitude in his followers as an us versus them ethos in which he and his followers are fighting alone for good and everyone else—the establishment, the media, Democratic voters, anyone who gets in Trump’s way—is the enemy of the people. Conservative media focus this hatred into political action, sometimes in ways that betray their poorest supporters, such as lying that Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy improved wages. Clearly, this sort of grievance knows no economic boundaries. Accordingly, there are extremely poor and extremely wealthy Trump supporters, and they all agree that some often intangible thing has been taken from them and that whatever the problem is, Trump will make it “great again.” 

Journalists should strongly resist the trap of assuming that Trump supporters, especially violent ones, are necessarily poor or uneducated. It strikes me as a holdover from the early days of Trumpism, when few in the media seemed to grasp the full picture of what was coming. It lends an embarrassing amount of accuracy to the Trumpist complaint that the media “doesn’t understand” them. And it’s a baffling mistake to make when we know Trump and his allies have had the support of a lot of the conservative intelligentsia and received plenty of donations from wealthy Americans. Also, the kind of tactical gear we saw on display in the Capitol attack is not cheap, much like highly customized AR-15s often seen at right-wing demonstrations. Lazy stereotyping helps nobody, and it actually hinders efforts to fully understand the white supremacist threat.

Vasquez: Leading up to the attempted coup, what were the most marked ways that right-wing media outlets fanned the flames of insurrection?

Lewis: Evidence has always shown that the results of the 2020 election were secure and accurate; there was never any credible reason to entertain the countless fraud claims. Yet in the run-up to Jan. 6, right-wing media kept pushing and entertaining “rigged election” claims in ways big and small, even down to refusing to refer to now-President Biden as “president-elect.” A violent attempt to overthrow the election may have found less popular support if right-wing media hadn’t poisoned the discourse with months, years, and even decades of baseless lies that widespread voter fraud steals elections, while also telling the audience that certifying the 2020 election is “the most dangerous assault on the very nature of America, certainly in our lifetime, and maybe since the previous Civil War.”

Vasquez: What did you find notable about right-wing media outlets' coverage or reframing of the coup? What are the narratives that Americans should be aware of, and how can they push back on them?

Lewis: It was remarkable how quickly false claims spread that “antifa” was responsible for the Capitol attack. Before the mob had even left the building, people across social media began posting videos from Capitol Hill claiming that “antifa” went undercover as Trump supporters to start violence. Conservatives quote-tweeted coverage with assumptions or claims that antifa was responsible, and tried to match people in photos from the Capitol with people in photos from anti-fascist protests. The claim peaked with a Washington Times article “reporting” that facial recognition had proved “antifa” involvement, a false claim which was retracted, but not until after it spread through right-wing media and made it to Congress, thanks to Rep. Matt Gaetz.

If we don’t indulge further right-wing lies about George Soros or “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” it’s unclear who would execute this B-movie “antifa” infiltration plot, or to what end. Unfortunately, it’s easier to share lies than report the truth, and once the lie has spread, truth plays catch-up forever.

Another narrative Americans should be wary of is the suggestion that the country should just move on, couched in vague appeals to “unity” that deliberately avoid a full reckoning of the insurrection. Fox & Friends, perhaps the president’s favorite TV show, said that Trump should not be impeached because his supporters are “ready to explode” and a second impeachment could inflame them further. Republican officials, including some who encouraged the insurrection, similarly call for “unity” as a response to impeachment. But there can be no “unity” without consequences for those who endangered the republic. And history has shown us, over and over again, that a failed insurrection with no consequences is a trial run for eventual success.

Vasquez: The events of Jan. 6 and everything we’ve learned in the days since have really shown some of these right-wing movements for what they are. It’s never been about patriotism or religion or freedom of speech, but rather a white supremacist power grab. Could this in any way be a moment of opportunity for progressive movements?

Lewis: Particularly at this moment, I think the most important thing people can do is demand that responsibility be taken not only for the violence on Capitol Hill, but also for the Trump and right-wing media-driven voter fraud lies that built the permissive environment for the insurrection. Dozens of corporations have suspended or eliminated contributions to members of Congress who voted against certifying the election; hundreds of business leaders denounced the insurrection; Trump’s approval is near record lows—society in this moment, including some critical levers of political power, is uniquely hostile to the revanchist conservatism that led to the insurrection. Fox News is still one of Trump’s most powerful allies, but as the Trumpist push against the election grew more extreme, the network lost viewers to right-wing rivals Newsmax and OAN, and Fox may have begun to get on the bad side of its biggest remaining advertiser—because he doesn’t think Fox supports Trump enough. With corporations eager to distance themselves from the insurrection, perhaps even Fox News’ cable fees could be imperiled by the network’s strong push to undermine the 2020 election. People of conscience should press the advantage and demand consequences for the attack on democracy before this unique moment passes.

Vasquez: There is no denying that the Trump administration has been a goldmine for mainstream and cable news and the journalists who cover Trump closely. What are the ways in which mainstream and cable news networks are responsible for normalizing Trump's rhetoric and underplaying how dangerous and violent it is?

Lewis: It was well-documented that CNN gave enormous amounts of free airtime to the Trump campaign in 2016, back when the network was obsessed with the spectacle of a game show host running for president. CNN also developed a terrible habit of hiring former Trump officials to provide commentary, even though they were contractually forbidden from criticizing Trump and many of them abruptly quit or got fired in disgrace. Les Moonves, the former CEO of CBS who later lost his job for being a sexual predator, said Trump’s run for president “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” Although those days have passed and in some ways coverage of Trump got much better, some normalizing trends unfortunately remained for the duration of Trump’s presidency.

For one, there is absolutely no need to invite a government official on a show when the network knows the official is just going to lie to the audience. Mainstream media outlets do have a critical “truth-telling” role, but telling the truth does not require platforming a liar, even if the liar has a prestigious job like White House press secretary. Continuing to have them on air, even if the interviews are contentious and filled with fact checks, does harm by treating a violently abnormal administration as normal.

A related scourge is mainstream media companies paying contributors or writers to represent conservative viewpoints with lies and misdirection. Showcasing a variety of viewpoints is one thing, but it is antithetical to the mission of a news organization to pay someone like conservative columnist Bret Stephens to mask vapid concern trolling as principled conservative arguments. Even in an opinion vertical, it’s unacceptable—not to mention the fact that Stephens has repeatedly embarrassed The New York Times with his terrible columns and petulant, entitled behavior. News staffers have likely been fired with cause for much less.

I am also concerned that, in time, Trump officials will get to become well-paid media contributors and consulting executives despite the current popular scorn toward them. It may seem unthinkable amid the current level of popular and corporate outrage, but many former George W. Bush administration officials found comfortable gigs despite their various roles in launching or supporting the Iraq War, which was also based on lies in the media. Some former Trump officials, like John Bolton, are already collecting checks thanks to their time with President Trump. They should never work in or near politics again.

Vasquez: Among journalists, there has been a lot of talk about the words we need to be using in reporting to describe the perpetrators of the attempted coup—white supremacists, domestic terrorists, insurrectionists, etc. As someone who studies media and right-wing movements, what framing do you think is important for journalists to use right now? 

Lewis: It’s important to remember that white supremacy was a central force in the insurrection, much like it is with Trumpism. White supremacy has always been the biggest threat to multiracial democracy, and the federal government often releases assessments to this effect. 9/11 notwithstanding, white supremacist terrorism has killed more Americans than any other kind by far. But people, often conservatives, resist the need to talk about white supremacy, which only helps the white supremacists. Relatedly, it’s equally important to keep our focus on the fact that this was an attack on multiracial democracy, which is still quite young and fragile.

We can also never forget that right-wing media misinformation got us to this point. Whether one goes back to the “rigged election” lies of the 2020 election, the countless lies and misdirection that defended Trump’s other disgraces, or the more mundane “voter fraud” lies of the Bush/Obama era, conservative media have been misleading their audience about the fundamental workings of politics for years. Conservative media poisoned people’s minds with lies about the world, and then kept them from learning the truth by smearing truth-tellers with more misinformation. Trump, conservative media’s biggest fan, amplified these tendencies. Why would a die-hard Trump supporter believe that the election was fair, just because “fake news CNN” and its “deep state” sources said so? Or why would a staunch Republican believe humans cause climate change just because the liberal New York Times and the left-wing intelligentsia say so? The insurrection was, in some ways, an outgrowth of a larger information crisis that sits largely (but not entirely) at the feet of right-wing media.

Vasquez: What do you want Americans to be on the lookout for ahead of Inauguration Day? What are you anticipating will happen, and how do you recommend the media covers whatever happens?

Lewis: Unfortunately, Americans should be on the lookout for people in their communities planning or discussing political violence. The FBI is expecting armed protests at all 50 state legislatures, and again at the U.S. Capitol in the lead-up to the inauguration—if true, it potentially poses a nationwide threat. Americans do have a right to protest, even to protest based on malicious lies, but we must be vigilant for overly apocalyptic rhetoric, calls for and suggestions of violence, and stockpiling of weapons. If there is a protest in your area, consider who’s organizing it and who is scheduled to appear—any person or group who was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, or helped organize or finance those events, should be a red flag. 

As someone who is from D.C. and who works in media, I unfortunately expect there to be violence around Inauguration Day. With any luck, my expectations will be incorrect. Violent far-right actors can often be all talk, but as we recently saw, things turn deadly when they decide they’re not bluffing. And with concurrent armed protests reportedly planned nationwide, there are many more situations that could potentially spiral out of control.

Whatever happens, the media should remember that our democracy itself came under attack on the Jan. 6, and it appears to remain gravely threatened by the possibility of more insurrection. Protest is an American right, but insurrection is not—and it’s not an “unfair bias” for the media to be forcefully direct about who enables attacks on our democracy. Telling that truth will be extremely unpopular, and will likely result in death threats, potentially even actual violence—but with the stakes so high, there is no other option.

Vasquez: You’ve talked about the role of conservatives and conservative media in how we got here, but I’m curious where you see the Republican Party going post-Trump. Actually, where do you think all of this is going?

Lewis: I think people need to begin considering the idea that modern, mainstream U.S. conservatism is fundamentally a racist movement. It can be a difficult and scary concept to think about given that it represents roughly half of the politically active adults in this country—and I’m not calling every conservative a racist or a terrorist—but for the past 50 years, the violent forces that would undo racial democracy have found a mainstream political home in Republican politics and nowhere else. From Lee Atwater’s Southern strategy to Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again,” white supremacy has been a strong and consistent undercurrent on the right for half a century—like it used to be for the Democrats prior to 1965. Again, we see this reflected in conservative media coverage like that attacking President Obama as a Kenyan Muslim and calling Black Lives Matter activists “thugs” and “terrorists.” The clear racism in this media coverage is only clearer when juxtaposed with coverage of the “protesters” at the Capitol.

I’ve believed for all of my adult life that Republicans need an honest reckoning with how they became the party of white supremacy. Similarly, conservative media must think critically about the ways in which their coverage—including the false “voter fraud” obsession—has reinforced white supremacy. But even after the Republican president inspired a white supremacist attack on the Capitol, fed by reckless lies in right-wing media, it seems like that reckoning will never come—and the white supremacists will complete their takeover of the party.

Tina Vasquez is a senior reporter for Prism. She covers gender justice, workers’ rights, and immigration. Follow her on Twitter @TheTinaVasquez.

Prism is a BIPOC-led nonprofit news outlet that centers the people, places and issues currently underreported by our national media. Through our original reporting, analysis, and commentary, we challenge dominant, toxic narratives perpetuated by the mainstream press and work to build a full and accurate record of what’s happening in our democracy. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

After hallway threats, Democratic congresswoman’s office moved away from QAnon congresswoman

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

Since Jan. 6, newly elected Democratic Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri has been one of the leaders calling for the ouster of all “Republican members of Congress who incited the white supremacist attempted coup.” One of the most prominent Republicans being referred to is Georgia millionaire and manic conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene. In recent days, more and more media outlets have become hip to how out-of-control, bananas scary Greene’s very recent history of delusional thinking is. On Friday, Rep. Bush turned to her Twitter account to share news of what sounds like another American’s unfortunate and frightening run-in with Greene, writing: “A maskless Marjorie Taylor Greene & her staff berated me in a hallway. She targeted me & others on social media. I'm moving my office away from hers for my team's safety. I've called for the expulsion of members who incited the insurrection from Day 1. Bring H.Res 25 to a vote.”

This comes a little over a week after Greene posted on Twitter that Rep. Bush needed to “denounce radical BLM violence and apologize to the McCloskey’s.” Funny story: The McCloskeys need no apologizing to, because they’re the assholes who stood in front of their St. Louis mansion threatening peaceful protesters with guns.* Greene posted a video she said proved that Bush berated her and not the other way around. In the video, Greene is talking directly into her phone, purportedly walking through the halls of the Capitol, with her “censored”-stenciled mask around her chin. Rep. Greene’s face is completely exposed as she breathily attempts to say she has denounced the Capitol insurrection and blame it on a few bad apples. At a point in the video, responding to someone telling her from down the hall to “follow the rules and put on a mask,” Rep. Greene turns, and does indeed put on her mask, while confusedly yelling back that “You know you shouldn’t bring COVID-19-positive members in here. Spreading COVID everywhere.”

To be clear, the only thing you hear what may or may not be Rep. Cori Bush saying to Greene is that she needs to follow the rules and put on her mask. And she says it once. It’s Greene’s staff that very quickly jumps to being Jesus on the cross, while suddenly having to put on their fucking masks like a bunch of boobs. According to CNBC, Reps. Bush and Greene have—or had—offices on the same floor of the Capitol. According to the news outlet, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has stepped in to reassign Bush’s office to another floor.

Rep. Greene’s continuing presence in the halls of the Capitol building is just another reminder, like Trump, of how bad a democracy can be when it is pumped full of swamp water and corruption.

A maskless Marjorie Taylor Greene & her staff berated me in a hallway. She targeted me & others on social media. I'm moving my office away from hers for my team's safety. I've called for the expulsion of members who incited the insurrection from Day 1. Bring H.Res 25 to a vote.

— Cori Bush (@CoriBush) January 29, 2021

The tweet below with the video attached provides a very succinct example of the cognitive disassociation people like Greene have when it comes to their actions and statements, and their perception of how reality works.

Rep. @CoriBush is the leader of the St. Louis Black Lives Matter terrorist mob who trespassed into a gated neighborhood to threaten the lives of the McCloskey’s. She is lying to you. She berated me. Maybe Rep. Bush didn’t realize I was live on video, but I have the receipts. https://t.co/CJjnI3ZTjC pic.twitter.com/ZMLGOGjxKw

— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) January 29, 2021

Rep. Greene is as guilty as Trump and the rest of the Republicans who have promoted the evidence-free election fraud theories that, combined with Second Amendment paranoia and fear-driven racism, led to the general toxic and violent climate we find ourselves in today. The fact of the matter is that if Marjorie Taylor Greene had not been elected by a hoodwinked and gerrymandered GOP district, she’d likely be dealing with charges of breaking and entering of our nation’s Capitol building, like this Texas realtor.

*To be clear, if the BLM protesters were as scary and violent as people like Greene pretend, the McCloskeys and their two guns would not have been much of a match for the hundreds of marchers.

Former prosecutors say this 10-minute video provides ample evidence for Trump’s impeachment

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

Online news outlet Just Security, which focuses on 'rigorous analysis of law, rights, and U.S. national security policy,' has created an intense 10-minute compilation splicing together video clips from events leading up to the Capitol insurrection alongside Donald Trump's speech to the mob before they marched to and into the Capitol.

Using videos that were created and uploaded by users of the gutter of right-wing social media dumpster Parler (before the FBI lights came on and users started to scramble), the events of Jan. 6 are becoming clearer. The original video was collected by ProPublica and made available to the public, and Just Security was able to create more context for Donald Trump's speech, using the crowd responses. Set chronologically, the video is a damning piece of evidence that could and should be used in the impeachment trial of the twice-impeached former president. It shows the crowd reacting in real-time to Donald Trump's calls to "fight" for him at the Capitol, as well as whipping the crowd into a white-hot frenzy toward his own vice president. 

Just Security reporters Ryan Goodman and Justin Hendrix interviewed numerous “former senior Justice Department officials and former federal prosecutors” to get their takes on the video compilation and the result is a roadmap into the possible second impeachment of Donald Trump.

The video begins with footage of Donald Trump speaking to the Jan. 6 Stop the Steal crowd, highlighting his claims that “We will never give up. We will never concede. You don’t concede when there is theft involved,” and “We want to be so nice. We want to be so respectful of everybody, including bad people.”

Video of the crowd obtained from Parler shows people yelling and cheering, and responding to Trump’s call to action by yelling things like “Storm the Capitol,” “Invade the Capitol building,” and “Take the Capitol.” Calling the “left” of the United States, “ruthless,” Trump continuously called on then-Vice President Mike Pence to “do what’s right for the Constitution and the country.” 

Trump hits the war and fighting metaphor again, saying that “Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy,” and how the Stop The Steal folks will now march down to the Capitol building and make themselves a herd heard.  The video then pivots to the march down to the Capitol building, showing charlatan luminaries like InfoWars’ Alex Jones telling the crowd to go to the “other side of the Capitol building,” where he claims Trump will be.

Later, the video shows a crowd at the door of the Capitol building chanting “We want Pence,” over and over again. It’s not a bunch of people calling for Mike Pence to speak—that’s something that’s never happened in America, frankly. A man inside of the Capitol building is videotaped talking into a landline phone in the building, asking for Speaker Pelosi and Mike Pence, saying “We are coming for you, bitch!”

Other video taped next to scaffolding erected at the Capitol building shows a guy speaking into a megaphone, saying he hopes Mike Pence goes to the “gallows,” and that he would like to see him in front of a “firing squad.” I wonder why Mike Pence didn’t come out to nod paternalistically at the MAGA supporters, like he has for the past four years?

Video inside of the Capitol building hallways shows big bearded faketriots screaming at D.C. and Capitol police, telling them that “You’re outnumbered. There’s a million of us out there, and we are listening to Donald Trump—your boss.”

The chant of “Fight for Trump” continues.

At 4:17 PM that day, after hours of inaction, Trump released his weak sauce Twitter video, once again calling the election “fraudulent,” but telling his supporters to go home. This is followed by video of Mr. QAnon Narcissistic Mascot Jacob Chansley saying that Trump told them to go home and that the rioters had “won the day,” because it had sent the message they would remove officials from office “one way or another” if they didn’t overturn the results of the election—or whatever demands they come up with, I guess?

Finally, they cut in MAGA acolytes like Texas realtor Jenna Ryan, who chartered a private jet to go and storm the Capitol building. After first telling people she hadn’t gone in the building, only to have her own footage and a lot of other footage show that she was lying, the video has a local news interview with her saying that she thought she was following Trump’s instructions. She was, but that’s still a crime.

Former Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York Elie Honig tells Just Security that “The House impeachment managers should consider rolling this tape as their final exhibit at the trial. It shows, clearly and viscerally, how President Trump’s words in fact incited the insurrectionist mob — particularly when taken in combination with Trump’s own tweet, after the riot, praising the mob as ‘great patriots’ who should ‘remember this day forever.’”

Former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman disagrees with Honig on strategy, but not on how damning this all is: 

From a legal standpoint, a prosecutor in a case charging Trump with seditious conspiracy would play this tape in an opening, and then say, “Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, the evidence will show that the insurrectionists came to Washington that day because they believed the President had called them there to do their patriotic duty; once there, the President worked them into a demented rage, telling them they had to fight like hell, and that he would be there with them at the Capitol. They went with blood in their eyes screaming ‘Fight for Trump!,’ threatening the lives of Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence, and proceeded to storm and lay waste to the Capitol, the sanctum of our democracy, all while President Trump viewed the bedlam with delight from his safe perch back at the White House. They were criminals and deserved to be punished; but any fair-minded person will see from this evidence and more that we will bring forward that it was the President who lit the match and threw it on the fire because he wanted – and at a minimum reasonably foresaw – that they would become an out-of-control mob.”

In lieu of real evidence of fraud, the Trump administration and its surrogates—and those wanting to make some last-minute money off the MAGA crowds—promoted the idea that the entire election of Joe Biden over Donald Trump was rigged. In every form of media, at every opportunity, they told millions of Americans that not only were their suspicions of problematic votes cast, but that in fact, a coordinated effort to overthrow the “landslide” victory of Donald Trump was underway.

You can argue that the people who believe the things that Donald Trump says are being conned. They are. You can say they truly believed that their attempt to force Congress to throw out millions of American votes was just and constitutional. You can say all of those things because Donald Trump, the president of the United States, told them exactly that. Other elected officials, including senators, told them it was true. 

The fact of the matter is that Trump’s guilt is very easily verified. He purposely misled his supporters and then attempted to have them illegally overthrow our government. The only defense the MAGA insurrectionists being arrested right now have amounts to an insanity plea. They believed the government was out to get them and they needed to violently defend themselves because they believed they were about to be hurt by magic. It’s not a worthwhile defense in most of their cases, and hopefully, they can watch from a jail cell’s closed-captioned television set as their fearful leader and liar is convicted of crimes against our Constitution and the Executive office of our country.

Vimeo Video

"Fight For Trump" Just Security - Incitement at US Capitol from Justin Hendrix on Vimeo.

Senate Republicans, still terrified of Trump, make up constitutional arguments to protect him

Posted on by Joan McCarter

On Monday evening the House will transmit to the Senate the article of impeachment to prevent Donald Trump from ever being in a position to destroy democracy again. Senate leaders have reached an agreement to begin the hearings on February 8. Most Republicans there are not so sure that inciting a violent insurrection against the very body in which they sit is such an impeachable thing. Not that they want to argue about Trump, because they actually did live through that terror that left five people dead, but they need a straw to cling to to avoid dealing with him. And his supporters. So they've made up a new thing: it's unconstitutional to impeach him.

Never mind that there is precedent for impeaching a former federal officer, and that the weight of scholarship on the issue supports it, even though the Framers did not make it explicit in the document itself. Probably because they couldn't possibly envision a Senate so thoroughly corrupted they'd be on the side of Trump. So you have the likes of Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, who opines "The Senate lacks constitutional authority to conduct impeachment proceedings against a former president. […] The Founders designed the impeachment process as a way to remove officeholders from public office—not an inquest against private citizens." He's presuming to speak for the Founders, who spoke for themselves, and that's not what they said.

For example, President John Quincy Adams: When the House was debating its authority to impeach Daniel Webster after the fact for conduct while he was secretary of state, Adams said "I hold myself, so long as I have the breath of life in my body, amenable to impeachment by this House for everything I did during the time I held any public office." The reality is, the Framers left this ambiguous, but they also left the Senate the power to do what they need to do. One, at least, foresaw what could be coming someday.

Here's Alexander Hamilton: "When a man unprincipled in private life[,] desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper […] despotic in his ordinary demeanor—known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day—It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may 'ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.'" There's one Framer who would surely want Trump cut off from any possibility of future office.

Of course, not all Republicans are making this bad faith argument. Others are trying to play the "unity" card. Like Florida Sen. Marco Rubio who got bogged down on Fox News, of all places, arguing that the impeachment is "stupid" even though Trump "bears responsibility for some of what happened." Which part he doesn't make clear. Maybe the five dead people? The one senator who voted to convict Trump last time around (that whole extorting Ukraine to get dirt on Joe Biden to throw the election for Trump—there's a theme developing here) says there's no question he should be impeached. "I believe that what is being alleged and what we saw, which is incitement to insurrection, is an impeachable offense," Sen. Mitt Romney said Sunday. "If not, what is?"

Meanwhile, the trial doesn't start for another two weeks, and the evidence against Trump just keeps increasing, from his machinations in the Justice Department to try to overthrow Georgia's election to his campaign's orchestration of the rally that Trump whipped up into an insurrection. Five people were killed in the insurrection, a cop died by suicide in the aftermath, and 139 U.S. Capitol and D.C. police were assaulted and/or injured in the attack. That evidence, and more, will be presented to the Senate and the American people, along with hours of video of the attack. Republicans might think now that they can make vague arguments about the Constitution, but in the face of the horror inflicted on the nation, their arguments are going to prove pathetic at best, treasonous at worst.

Trump supporters continue to plot violence as second impeachment trial approaches

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Thousands of National Guard troops will remain in Washington, D.C., through the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump thanks to continuing threats of violence against lawmakers. The number of troops has already dropped and will continue to drop from a high of around 25,000 to below 20,000 now. It is slated to drop to 5,000 in February.

In addition to the threat of armed protesters returning during the impeachment trial, law enforcement agencies are looking into threats that were “Mainly posted online and in chat groups” and “have included plots to attack members of Congress during travel to and from the Capitol complex during the trial,” the Associated Press reported based on information from an unnamed official who “had been briefed on the matter.”

These threats are not hard to imagine. Indeed, one of the alleged Capitol attackers already faces charges for threats against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and for saying it’s “huntin[g] season” with respect to the officer who fatally shot rioter Ashli Babbitt as she tried to climb through a broken window to get to where lawmakers were evacuating the House chamber.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has been flailing in his response to the Capitol attack, but even he has been very clear about the threat to members of Congress, telling his caucus not to attack any of their colleagues by name because “it's putting people in jeopardy.” 

Saying he had reached out personally to some Republicans—we can guess which offenders those might have been—McCarthy emphasized, “Do not raise another member's name on a television, whether they have a different position or not. Let's respect one another and you probably won't understand what you're doing, and I'm just warning you right now—don't do it.”

The insurrection Donald Trump incited isn’t going to go away all at once. The threats continue, and they’re not just threats to individual members of Congress—they’re threats of continuing attacks on our democracy.

Maxine Waters Claims Trump Will ‘Take Over Legislatures, Little Towns And Cities’ If Not Convicted

Posted on by John Hanson

Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters claimed Sunday that former President Donald Trump would attempt “to take over legislatures, little towns and cities” if he is not convicted for insurrection.

Waters made her comments on MSNBC’s “The Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart.”

RELATED: Biden Accuser Tara Reade Reemerges To Say It Was ‘Unspeakably Hard To Watch The Man Who Assaulted Me’ Be Inaugurated

Waters Claims Trump ‘Paid’ The ‘Organizers Of The Insurrection’

Waters said, “I do believe he sent all of these domestic terrorists to the Capitol to take over the Capitol, and that includes not only the Proud Boys but the Oath Keepers, the QAnon, and white supremacists.”

“These people have been aligned with him” Waters insisted.

Waters then accused Trump of paying the “organizers of the insurrection.”

“One of the things I hope that will be looked at as we take this impeachment to the Senate is the fact that in his campaign for re-election, he was paying the very organizers of the insurrection that took place,” said Waters.

After the violence at the Capitol in early January, Waters also claimed that President Trump was “capable” of “starting a civil war.”

Waters Demands Trump Conviction

“The names are right there” she continued. “The amount of money that he paid to them, it is shown in the last report,” the Democrat said. “More of it is going to show up in the next report that they have to do.”

“I think it is very clear” Waters said. “We cannot afford to allow this president to leave here without being impeached and, you know, absolutely convicted.”

She further explained why she believes the Senate must impeach Trump, claiming that Trump would use taxpayer money to organize his supporters.

Waters continued, “We cannot allow him to leave and have all of the resources of the taxpayers to have not only money to hire staff, but to hire security, and money to organize with, because he will continue.”

RELATED: Joy Behar Comes Unglued – Says Trump ‘Made It His Business For Four Years To Rape This Country’

Then Waters made her wild claim about Trump somehow being so influential over parts of the U.S. population that he will be able to control small towns and local governments.

“He now knows, he has a population” Waters said adding that “he’s going to expand that.”

“He will be attempting to take over legislatures, little towns and cities and he doesn’t give a darn about the Constitution and so our democracy is at stake,” Waters claimed.

“We must convict him, and we must take away his power” she finished.

If President Trump were convicted by the Senate and barred from holding political office, it would do nothing to stop him from organizing or politicking as a private citizen.

The post Maxine Waters Claims Trump Will ‘Take Over Legislatures, Little Towns And Cities’ If Not Convicted appeared first on The Political Insider.

Pelosi confirms House will send impeachment article to Senate on Monday, updates members on security

Posted on by Joan McCarter

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi confirmed a dear colleague letter to Democrats that the House will send the article of impeachment of Donald Trump to the Senate on Monday, a "momentous and solemn day, as the House sadly transmits the Article of Impeachment."

"Our Constitution and country are well-served by our outstanding impeachment managers – lead manager Rep. Jamie Raskin and Reps. Diana DeGette, David Cicilline, Joaquin Castro, Eric Swalwell, Ted Lieu, Stacey Plaskett, Madeleine Dean, and Joe Neguse," she wrote. She also low-key slammed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who had tried to dictate the timing of the impeachment by telling Pelosi to wait until the last half of February to start the process. "The House has been respectful of the Senate’s constitutional power over the trial and always attentive to the fairness of the process," she wrote. "When the Article of Impeachment is transmitted to the Senate, the former President will have had nearly two weeks since we passed the Article."

Friday, Jan 22, 2021 · 11:27:01 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

BREAKING: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says former President Trump's impeachment trial will start the week of Feb. 8. https://t.co/FKAryO7Sum

— The Associated Press (@AP) January 22, 2021

Pelosi also informed her colleagues about security at the Capitol, informing them that "General Russel Honoré is preparing his assessment of the security of the campus, and we expect to have updates soon." She also reminded them that when they return, they'll vote on a rule change to impose fines on any member trying to bypass the metal detectors to get to the House chamber. The issue escalated this week when Rep. Andy Harris, a Maryland Republican, tried to bring a concealed gun onto the House floor, which is a violation of House rules. A number of Republicans have blown off the detectors and disrespected Capitol Police trying to enforce the new protocols.

"It is sad that this step is necessary," Pelosi wrote of the fines, "but the disrespectful and dangerous refusal of some Republican Members to adhere to basic safety precautions for our Congressional Community—including our Capitol Police—is unacceptable." Any House member will face a $5,000 fine if they refuse to cooperate with the screening. If they do it again, they'll pay a $10,000 fine. That money will be withheld from their paychecks—they can't use campaign funds or their expense accounts to pay them. The precedent for this new rule is the mask rule passed last week, which fines members not wearing masks on the floor—$500 on a first offense and $2,500 for a second offense.

Pelosi ends her missive on a hopeful note. "I am confident that, strengthened by the new Biden-Harris Administration and Senate Democratic Majority, we can restore healing, unity and optimism to our nation, so that—as Joe Biden quotes Seamus Heaney—'The longed for tidal wave of justice can rise up, and hope and history can rhyme.'"

Starting Monday, Republican senators will have to face the fact that Trump tried to get them killed

Posted on by Joan McCarter

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced Friday morning that the impeachment of Donald Trump in the Senate is imminent. "I have spoken to Speaker Pelosi who informed me that the articles will be delivered to the Senate on Monday," and promised "It will be a full trial, it will be a fair trial." That's a rebuff to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who attempted to dictate the schedule to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Schumer in a proposal released late Thursday. McConnell argued that Trump needed time to plan a defense and that "At this time of strong political passions, Senate Republicans believe it is absolutely imperative that we do not allow a half-baked process to short-circuit the due process that former President Trump deserves or damage the Senate or the presidency."

A reminder: Trump sent a mob to the Capitol to hunt leadership, including former Vice President Mike Pence, down and kill them. Which is what the House impeachment managers intend to keep at the forefront. A Democratic source told Washington Post's Greg Sargent that their presentation will include "a lot of video of the assault on the Capitol … to dramatize the former president’s incitement role in a way that even GOP senators cannot avoid grappling with." Maybe that will keep them awake during the proceeding.

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"If they‘re going to vote against it, they're going to vote against it knowing what actually happened," the aide told Sargent. "A lot of senators" were "very upset angry about what happened,” the aide continued, saying the managers' goal is to "remind them of why." Among those needing the reminder is Trump's caddy, Sen. Lindsey Graham. Remember Graham on January 6, in the aftermath of the attack when the Senate reconvened. He said the effort to challenge the Electoral College vote was "the most offensive concept in the world." He said that he and Trump had been on "a hell of a journey. I hate it to end this way. Oh, my god, I hate it." He said Trump's attempt to challenge the result in Congress was "not going to do any good." That's Graham, essentially admitting that Trump set the insurrection in motion.

Here's what Graham said just two weeks later. "For the party to move forward, we got to move the party with Donald Trump." So much for the end of the journey. "There’s no way to be a successful Republican Party without having President Trump working with all of us and all of us working with him. […] [W]e got a decent chance of coming back in 2022. But we can't do it without the President." He's not alone. There'a a whole cadre of Republicans senators who are actually threatening McConnell's leadership if he votes to convict Trump.

They're not going to be able to hide from what Trump did, the House Democrats will make sure of that. "The president of the United States committed an act of incitement of insurrection," Pelosi reminded everyone Thursday. "Just because he's now gone—thank God—you don't say to a president, 'Do whatever you want in the last months of your administration. You're going to get a get-out-of-jail card free' because people think you should make nice, nice, and forget that people died here on Jan. 6."

The McConnell-Trump war reignites, as Republicans threaten his leadership over impeachment

Posted on (Updated by Joan McCarter

The minority leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, is getting threats from his conference over what they perceive to be his abandonment of their one true leader, Donald Trump. Though only one is dumb enough to do so publicly, rather than anonymously.

"'No, no, no,' Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican and Trump ally, told CNN when asked if he could support McConnell if he voted to convict Trump, calling such a vote a 'dangerous precedent' and adding: 'I don't even think we should be having a trial.'" (You knew it was him, didn't you.) Another, asked the same question, told CNN "If he does, I don't know if he can stay as leader." This is after McConnell's remarks Tuesday on the floor, when he said "The mob was fed lies. […] They were provoked by the President and other powerful people. And they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like. But we pressed on."

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According to Sen. Mitt Romney, McConnell told Republicans to "vote your conscience." The Utah Republican said that McConnell "has not in any way tried to pressure folks to go one way or another." That's not enough for Johnson and the more circumspect Republicans who aren't showing their hands right now. They want him to fight the upcoming trial and protect their leader. So the old days of the Republican civil war between Trump and McConnell are back. Which is fun.

The part that isn't fun is that these Republicans are still downplaying the insurrectionist attack of January 6, when the lives of their colleagues—and former Vice President Mike Pence!—were very much threatened. Republican Rep. John Katko, the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee and one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach, has hinted at just how dangerous the situation was without revealing any classified information he's received in intelligence briefings.

"I've had a lot of classified briefings on it, and it's deeply troubling," Katko said in an interview with local press this week. "I was left with a profound sense that it was much worse than people realized." Bad enough that he is behind the effort to create a 9/11 type commission that has subpoena power to investigate. "There are a lot of unanswered questions here, from possible security lapses to who was involved and when they were involved," Katko said. "We need to have a full stem to stern look back on this to see what happened, how it happened, the sequence of events, who contributed to it, and how we make sure it never happens again." McConnell would have also been getting these briefings, and so would Johnson, who is the outgoing chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

McConnell is smart enough to recognize the threat to the Republican Party—including losing lots and lots of funding from big donors who don't want to be associated with the rabble that tried to overthrow Congress—posed by the insurrection and its aftermath. There will be an aftermath because there will be a commission that investigates it. There will also be more arrests and more court proceedings that uncover what happened behind the scenes. Johnson hasn’t caught up with that eventuality yet.

McConnell finally blames Trump for insurrection, but that’s not enough. The Senate must convict

Posted on (Updated by Joan McCarter

The second impeachment trial of Donald Trump in the U.S. Senate is likely to be a real trial, unlike the first time around when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his fellow Republicans conducted a sham process, refusing to hear witnesses and refusing to consider the gravity of Trump's crimes. That's changed, now that their place of work—their essential home—has been defiled by an insurrectionist mob incited by Trump. That the impeachment hearings will go forward this time was made clear Tuesday by none other than McConnell, when he stated on the floor "The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people."

Despite McConnell's essential granting of the validity of the charges against Trump and recognition that the process will proceed, there will still be Republicans and Trump apologists who will argue that the Senate shouldn't continue because Trump is already gone—variations on the supposed "unity" theme we have been hearing since January 6 and the violent, armed, deadly insurrection Trump instigated. Some will argue that the Senate cannot try a former president for acts during his or her presidency. Most nonpartisan experts have called that idea bunk, but now we have the pretty darned definitive conclusion of the Congressional Research Service, which looks at all the scholarship and all the precedent, and concludes that it is well within the power of Congress to convict a departed official and that "even if an official is no longer in office, an impeachment conviction may still be viewed as necessary by Congress to clearly delineate the outer bounds of acceptable conduct in office for the future."

The attorneys writing at Congressional Research Service start at the beginning. "As an initial matter, a number of scholars have argued that the delegates at the Constitutional Convention appeared to accept that former officials may be impeached for conduct that occurred while in office," they write. "This understanding also tracks with certain state constitutions predating the Constitution, which allowed for impeachments of officials after they left office." That's following the precedent of British law and practice, which included the impeachment of the former governor-general of Bengal Warren Hastings, impeached two years after his resignation and while the Constitutional Convention was actually happening. The Framers were aware of this while it was happening, and in crafting the impeachment articles did depart from some British precedent—for example requiring a two-thirds rather than simple majority vote for conviction—but they didn't explicitly restrict Congress's power to convict a departed official.

There's the plain text of the Constitution, however, which doesn't really definitively say one way or the other. "The President, Vice President and all Civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment … and Conviction." Then there's the other part: "judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States [emphasis added]," which follows from removal from office. How could you disqualify an already-departed and deserving official from holding future office if you couldn't impeach them first? As one scholar argued all the way back in the 1920s, "an official's resignation following an initial impeachment by the House but before conviction in the Senate may not 'deprive the people of the full measure of the protection afforded them' through the additional remedy of disqualification."

What was in the Framer's heads isn't too hard to divine, either. They told us. CRS relates this: "President John Quincy Adams, who, during debate on the House's authority to impeach Daniel Webster for conduct that occurred while he had been Secretary of State, said in relation to his own acts as President: 'I hold myself, so long as I have the breath of life in my body, amenable to impeachment by this House for everything I did during the time I held any public office.'" There's also the precedence of the 1876 impeachment of Secretary of War William Belknap for, essentially, bribery—accepting payments in return for making an appointment. Belknap resigned hours before a House committee determined there was "unquestioned evidence of malfeasance," but the committee recommended impeachment anyway, despite his resignation. The House debated moving forward, and ultimately approved the resolution, without objection. The Senate debated and deliberated on the issue of whether he could be tried in the Senate as a former official for more than two weeks, and ultimately "determined by a vote of 37 to 29 that Secretary Belknap was 'amenable to trial by impeachment for acts done as Secretary of War, notwithstanding his resignation of said office before he was impeached.'" That vote established the representation of an impeached former official being subject to a Senate trial. A majority voted to convict, but not a two-thirds majority.

What the CRS report does not go into deeply, and what would be the larger point of a Trump conviction, is the disqualification part. That would come in a simple majority vote following a successful conviction, and would prevent Trump from ever holding "any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States." They can't get to that part—the part that matters to McConnell and plenty of other Republicans—if they don't do the first part, convict.

McConnell's condemnation of Trump on Tuesday means little more than McConnell trying to create distance between himself and the man he—almost single-handedly—allowed to remain in a position in which he could raise an insurrection against McConnell's own branch. This could have been prevented if, one year ago, McConnell and Senate Republicans had offered even one word of rebuke to contain Trump. If at any point in the last four years McConnell had done anything to curtail Trump's worst instincts. Hell, if we wound the clock back to late summer 2016 when the entire intelligence community was warning congressional leadership that Russia was intervening in the election on Trump's behalf, when McConnell refused to let that information be made public. But I digress.

Yes, Trump can still be impeached, convicted, and barred from ever holding office again. That's if Senate Republicans care more about the country, about their own institution, about the future of their own party than about their next election and whether the MAGA crowd will primary them.