Category: LindseyGraham

Three ‘very friendly’ Republican senators met with Trump’s defense lawyers

Posted on (Updated by Laura Clawson

At the beginning of an impeachment trial, senators swear an oath to “do impartial justice.” Most Republican senators have made clear throughout both of Donald Trump’s impeachment trials that this was a lie—at best, a fig leaf they used to get out of answering questions about how they saw the evidence. Then there’s Lindsey Graham, Mike Lee, and Ted Cruz. Those three met with Trump’s defense lawyers Thursday evening to offer advice.

The “very friendly guys,” according to Trump lawyer David Schoen, were making sure Trump’s lawyers were “familiar with procedure.” Probable translation: Wanted to be sure these clowns didn’t screw this thing up too badly for even Republicans to ignore. Was that ethical, though? “Oh yeah, I think that's the practice of impeachment,” Schoen claimed. 

How badly do Graham, Lee, and Cruz think Trump’s lawyers are going to screw up their defense arguments? Alternatively, how worried are they that some Republicans were persuaded by the House impeachment managers’ case? All but six Republicans already voted against holding an impeachment trial at all on the obviously false grounds that it was unconstitutional, giving them an excuse to vote to acquit without engaging the substance of what Trump did at all. 

Sens. Roy Blunt and Marco Rubio are sticking with that claim, for instance. “My view is unchanged as to whether or not we have the authority to do this, and I’m certainly not bound by the fact that 56 people think we do,” Blunt said. “I get to cast my vote, and my view is that you can’t impeach a former president. And if the former president did things that were illegal, there is a process to go through for that.”

And Rubio: “The fundamental question for me, and I don’t know about for everybody else, is whether an impeachment trial is appropriate for someone who is no longer in office. I don’t believe that it is.”

Do Cruz, Lee, and Graham think Schoen and immediately notorious idiot Bruce Castor need their advice to get through what’s forecast to be a very abbreviated day of arguments? Or are they still trying that pathetically hard to suck up to Trump? They do seem to have gotten the attention of his inner circle, with sleazeball adviser Jason Miller repeatedly mentioning their involvement on Newsmax, making absolutely clear the senators were there to build the case for Trump. “It was a real honor to have those senators come in and give us some additional ideas,” he said.

Republican senators have that “not constitutional” sham to hide behind, and they are energetically doing so. They have state parties ready to attack them the minute they step out of line. Donald Trump has his own defense lawyers, albeit not exactly the prime talent of conservative law. And as of Thursday, he officially has three of the people sworn to do impartial justice actively strategizing to help him get off.

The House impeachment managers, on the other hand, had the truth of what happened, and it was too powerful for Republicans to fully ignore. But that is unlikely to be enough.

Trump’s impeachment trial will also be an indictment of Republican lawmakers—and they know it

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

The Republican Party, which has now firmly staked its claim as a “big” tinfoil tent, is deploying some of the very same lawmakers who perpetrated a giant election fraud lie to assure the nation that impeaching Donald Trump is unwarranted, unfair, and unconstitutional.

“I mean, the House is impeaching him under the theory that his speech created a riot,” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told Face The Nation Sunday despite being directly involved himself with pushing the very lie that fueled the deadly riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6. At one point, Graham even pressured Georgia officials to commit fraud themselves in order to overturn the election. 

But that's where the Senate GOP is: pushing out liars who lied to poke holes in the impeachment case assembled by House Democrats. Please proceed, senators, because the impeachment presentation Democrats are getting ready to make starting on Tuesday is going to be a doozy.

“The story of the president’s actions is both riveting and horrifying,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and the lead prosecutor, told The New York Times. “We think that every American should be aware of what happened — that the reason he was impeached by the House and the reason he should be convicted and disqualified from holding future federal office is to make sure that such an attack on our democracy and Constitution never happens again.”

The Democrats' case will rely heavily on a video recreation of the violent siege, viscerally reminding both lawmakers and citizens alike of the trauma Trump inflicted on the nation that day. Since Democrats will need the votes of at least 17 GOP senators to convict Trump and only five have signaled a willingness to consider the arguments on their merits, winning a Senate conviction seems unlikely. But convicting Trump and his GOP enablers in the court of public opinion is clearly worth the energy—particularly as Republicans spend the next couple years whining about President Biden sidelining them in his effort address the country's urgent needs. Congressional Republicans spent four years helping Trump shred the U.S. Constitution in pursuit of stealing another election. Now they think they deserve to be equal players in a presidency they sought to nullify by overturning the will of the people. Democrats are going to remind The People that Trump engineered an attack on the homeland specifically to disenfranchise them and the Republican Party aided and abetted that effort.

Republicans' chief argument against convicting Trump is that it's unconstitutional since he's no longer in office. But remember—Sen. Mitch McConnell stalled the Senate trial until Trump was safely out of office. As luck would have it, Senate Republicans are now basing their key defense strategy on a loophole McConnell created.

But it's not only a phony loophole, it’s also a weak loophole at that. The notion that presidents can't be held to account for their conduct during the entirety of their tenure is ludicrous. As the House impeachment managers wrote in their brief, "There is no 'January Exception' to impeachment or any other provision of the Constitution." 

Even conservative stalwart and constitutional law expert Charles Cooper is calling BS on the notion that a president can't be held accountable for their actions in office merely because they are no longer in office. Specifically because the Senate has the constitutional authority to bar people from holding office in the future, Cooper argued in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, “it defies logic to suggest that the Senate is prohibited from trying and convicting former officeholders.”

So GOP efforts to discredit the impeachment trial come down to sending out a bunch of discredited Republican lawmakers to make a preposterous constitutional argument based on circumstances that they themselves manufactured.

Sounds totally reasonable, said nobody who was sane enough to vote for Biden in the first place. And just maybe a few people who voted for Trump but were repulsed by the lethal Jan. 6 riot—or who had hoped the Republican Party would redeem itself in a post-Trump era—will find the Republican posture equally as revolting. The Capitol siege already set in motion a wave of conservative voters who are fleeing the party. The sentiment fueling those defections is only likely to gain steam as Americans watch the impeachment trial and the GOP’s bogus defense of Trump and, by extension, themselves.

Lindsey Graham’s latest defense of Donald Trump is a racist attack on Kamala Harris

Posted on by Mark Sumner

As Donald Trump’s second impeachment approaches, Lindsey Graham has made a series of extremely odd threats. On Tuesday, he suggested that should Democrats call a single witness, Republicans would call in the FBI to give a full accounting of how white supremacist groups had planned for weeks to carry out violent acts on Jan. 6. The reason that Graham thinks that this is a threat which should concern Democrats is because Fox News and other right-wing sources have been working hard to convince their viewers that the entire impeachment is just about things Trump said at the “Stop the Steal” rally just before the assault on the Capitol. So if anyone was doing pre-planning for the insurrection, that lets Trump off the hook. Except that’s not at all what the impeachment documents actually say. 

It’s not clear if someone actually made that point to Graham, but when he was questioned about the impeachment on Wednesday, Donald Trump’s most loyal senator was ready to voice an even more obscure response—one that involves a long-running, and racist, Republican lie. If Democrats call even a single witness to discuss events on Jan. 6, Graham promised that Republicans would turn the table and … use the impeachment trial to attack Vice President Kamala Harris.

How would anything happening on Jan. 6 relate badly on the vice president? It wouldn’t. But the statements, which Graham made—where else?—while speaking with Sean Hannity on Fox News don’t actually have anything to do with the assault on the Capitol or Trump’s impeachment. As Yahoo News makes clear, Graham is really speaking to an existing Republican theme claiming that Democrats have encouraged violence by Black Lives Matter protesters.

"If you're going to pursue this, and you wanna start calling witnesses, and you want to drag this thing out, it would be fair to have Kamala Harris' tape play where she bailed people out of jail,” said Graham. “What more could you do to incite future violence, than to pay the bail of the people who broke up the shops and beat up the cops. How's that not inciting future violence? Be careful what you wish for my Democratic colleagues, be careful what you wish for."

The thing about the “Kamala Harris’ tape” is that it would be very difficult to play. Because there is no tape. Instead, there appears to be nothing behind this by a single tweet from  Harris in which she encouraged contributions to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which helps to address inequities in America’s often crushing cash bail system. Harris’ tweet was made on June 1, placing it less than a week after Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis Police, and at a time when over a hundred nonviolent protesters had been arrested. 

The claim that Harris was encouraging violence became a recurring theme on the right. In August, Republican Sen. Tom Cotton tweeted that Harris “helped violent rioters in Minnesota get out of jail to do more damage.” Donald Trump recycled that information the next day, except that Trump—as he does so often—expanded on the lie to make it not just about Harris, but “thirteen members of Biden’s campaign staff” as well as “his running mate, Kamala” bailing “rioters” and “looters” out of jail.

Now, almost six months later, Graham is reviving this claim against Harris as if it represents some sort of defense of Trump. It’s a mirror of how Republicans have been reacting to criticism of QAnon Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene by waggling fingers at Rep. Ilhan Omar. In both cases, Republicans are trying to equate racism, anti-Semitism, and white supremacist violence with Black Americans asking for justice. 

As The Washington Post pointed out back in September, this whole line of attack isn’t just racist, it’s also simply wrong. Of the 170 arrested in connection with the protests between Floyd’s murder and the date of Harris’ tweet, 167 were released without bail or with only a small fee. About a third were arrested without charges. Minnesota Freedom Fund definitely benefited from the attention, and their contributions went way up. But it seems that none of the money actually went to bail out anyone charged with either rioting or looting. Some of the money collected did later go toward people charged with serious crimes, even murder. But that’s an indictment of the cash bail system, and the massive inequality it generates in the justice system. It’s not a mark against Kamala Harris.

In any case, what Graham is proposing is the kind of testimony that would not be allowed in any court. It’s pointing a false finger of blame at someone else in a completely different situation. It’s a third grade idea of justice where “she did it too” is supposed to be an excuse for doing something wrong.

On top of all that, Graham’s finger pointing at Harris is deeply racist. Not only is it built on false racist claims about protesters in Minnesota, it’s absolutely no coincidence that Graham was signaling toward Harris and not other people who have been vocal about the need to abolish the cash bail system—including President Biden.

Unable to defend Greene, Republicans have resorted to attacking Omar or Maxine Waters, as Republican leader Kevin McCarthy did in his statement on Tuesday evening. Unable to defend Trump, Graham instead lodged a completely false claim at Kamala Harris. 

Those targets are not a coincidence.

Republicans still fighting results of 2020 election, refusing to allow Democratic Senate to organize

Posted on (Updated by Joan McCarter

It's now February and nearly a full month since the Jan. 5 election in Georgia that flipped the Senate to Democrats. At least nominally—the body is split 50-50 and the weight goes to Democrats because they can bring in Vice President Kamala Harris as necessary, so they've got the majority. But the Senate still hasn't passed the organizing resolution to finalize all that and, critically, hand the keys of the committees over to the Democrats.

Why? Sen. Dick Durbin says it’s Sen. Mitch McConnell. "He's the key to it," Durbin told CNN's Manu Raju after an infuriating exchange of tweets and letters Durbin has had with the abhorrent Lindsey Graham, who is the pretender in the Judiciary Committee chair. Technically, the committee doesn't have a chair. The committee doesn't have members, not until the organizing resolution passes. But habit is keeping the gavel in Graham's hand, and he's refusing to schedule a hearing for President Biden's nominee for attorney general, Merrick Garland. Durbin went public with his frustration Monday afternoon tweeting out a plea and a letter to Graham to schedule the damned confirmation hearing on Feb. 8.

To which Graham replied in his typical pissy, hypocritical way. In other words, no, he's not going to extend even a bit of consideration or courtesy, and he's going to be a condescending and patronizing ass in "explaining" why. "Your request is highly unusual," he says. Then he blames it on impeachment and goes through three paragraphs of lecture about committee procedure. Which Durbin knows. Well.

The committee has reams of background material on Garland and has had it since 2016, the last time Republicans were assholes about this particular—completely qualified and non-controversial—nominee, that time for the even more important job on the Supreme Court. 

This might be McConnell and team exacting revenge for their embarrassing loss in filibustering the organizing resolution to keep the filibuster. They're dragging this out as long as they can, though talks among staff have reportedly been "productive." Soon, aides say, maybe as soon as Tuesday. But no one is giving a deadline.

At this point, Biden should just start threatening to name all his nominees who haven't yet had hearings "acting" directors and Schumer should try to force them onto the floor without committee hearings. It would take unanimous consent, but it would also highlight the fact that Republicans are still fighting the results of the 2020 election by refusing to allow Biden to complete his government and the Senate to fully function.

Republican threat over calling witnesses reveals fundamental misunderstanding of Trump’s impeachment

Posted on by Mark Sumner

Lindsey Graham, who is, just as evidence that we have not yet exited the worst timeline, still the chair of Senate judiciary committee, went on Fox News Monday evening to deliver a threat. Should House impeachment managers attempt to call a single witness during Trump’s trial before the Senate, Republican senators are going to want witnesses of their own. Which could make this trial last just ages.

But this time around Graham isn’t threatening to call witnesses about such non sequiturs as what Hunter Biden did in Ukraine. Instead the threat is much stranger. If Democrats call even a single witness, it will “open up Pandora’s Box,” according to Graham. Because Republicans will “want the FBI to come in and tell us about how people actually pre-planned this attack.” It’s a threat that’s not only not a threat, it’s one that shows that Graham hasn’t actually read the impeachment documents.

The reason that Graham, and other Republicans, are putting forward “calling in the FBI” as a threat is because of a very simple theme they’ve been repeating since before Trump was actually impeached, again, in the House. If the impeachment is all about Trump inciting the mob that marched on the Capitol, murdered a police officer, and ultimately caused more American deaths than Benghazi while erecting a gallows on the lawn; then the fact that many of those insurgents came prepared for sedition means it’s not Trump’s fault.

Not only is that argument completely foolish on its face, it ignores what’s actually in the impeachment. The supporting materials submitted to the Senate make it explicitly clear that there is more to Trump’s impeachment than a single morning or a single speech. 

In the months leading up to January 6, 2021 President Trump engaged in a course of conduct designed to encourage and provoke his supporters to gather in Washington, D.C. and obstruct the process of the electoral votes that would confirm his defeat. That conduct spanned months and included frivolous and harassing lawsuits, direct threats to state and local officials, and false public statements to his supporters, all in an effort to incite his supporters into believing it was their patriotic duty to attack Congress and prevent the peaceful transition of power. 

The incitement over which Trump was impeached took place not just on the morning of Jan. 6, but in the preceding months. During those months, Trump repeatedly lied about the outcome of the election, fed a rising tide of rage among his supporters with claims he knew were false, told white supremacist militias to “stand by,” and called on his forces to gather on the day when electoral votes were counted for a “wild” event.

As the impeachment makes clear, Trump acted to “undermine confidence in the results of the election, spread dangerous disinformation, and stoke false and wild conspiracy theories.” The whole body of that action is the reason for Trump’s impeachment and the subject of his trial before the Senate. Trump specifically and repeatedly pointed out Mike Pence and members of Congress as targets for the hatred of the supporters he had inflamed with a stream of continuous lies.

So why does Graham think calling the FBI to speak to how the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and others came prepared to storm the Capitol and seek congressional hostages is somehow a threat to the Democratic case? That’s because from the very beginning Republicans—and especially Republicans appearing on Fox and other right-wing media—have been repeating a claim that the impeachment is all about Trump inciting the march on the Capitol in his speech at the “Stop the Steal” rally that morning. According to the framing they’ve been selling Fox viewers, if Trump didn’t expressly tell people to invade the Capitol that morning, he wasn’t really responsible. And if any of the treasonous mob came prepared to violence, it’s proof that the insurgency was not Trump’s fault.

Unfortunately for Graham and others, this reading of the impeachment is as fantastical as the lies Trump told leading up to Jan. 6. The impeachment makes it clear that Trump worked for months to build anger and hatred among his supporters though repeated lies about the election. Trump supporters began planning violence against election supervisors in both Nevada and in Pennsylvania within hours of Trump standing up in the early hours of Nov. 4 to falsely claim victory. Trump encouraged that violence in every statement, every rally, every tweet between the election and Jan. 6. Trump didn’t even disown the invaders while they were inside the Capitol, stepping out to say “we love you” and calling them “very special.”

If Lindsey Graham thinks that calling the FBI is some kind of threat … call them. Call in the agents that have been imbedded with the Proud Boys and Ohio Militia. Call in the agents that have been warning of the increased threat of white supremacist violence, only to have their warnings swatted down. Call them all. If what it takes to purge Trump from the system is pouring out all the poison in public, let’s do that.

It shouldn’t be required. As Graham says in his interview on Fox, he “knows what happened that day.” It should be more than enough to convict Trump and remove the possibility that he will ever again hold public office. But if it’s not … witnesses, sir. Let us have the witnesses.

Senate Republicans are preparing to circle the wagons around Trump in delayed impeachment trial

Posted on by Laura Clawson

The House impeachment managers delivered the article of impeachment to the Senate on Monday, and the Senate will convene Tuesday afternoon to issue a summons to Donald Trump for his second impeachment trial. But the trial itself won’t begin until February 9, leaving Trump time to try to find a second lawyer willing to take on his defense. South Carolina lawyer Butch Bowers will lead the defense, but other lawyers are proving reluctant to associate themselves with the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, in addition to very reasonable concerns that Trump won’t pay them.

While Republicans are trying to forestall the trial by arguing that Trump can’t be tried now that he’s no longer in office, President Joe Biden told CNN on Monday that  “I think it has to happen,” because, while the trial may be cause delays in his own agenda, there would be “a worse effect if it didn't happen.”

In addition to their reliance on the procedural claim that a former president can’t face an impeachment trial, the delay in beginning the trial will give Senate Republicans time to decide that what’s past is past and the threat to their own lives should be waved off as irrelevant—but during that time there may also be further revelations about Trump’s efforts to illegally retain power. So the wait could cut either way, or both at once.

Once the trial begins, the House impeachment managers are expected to use video from the attack, including video like one assembled by Just Security showing the response of the rally crowd on January 6 as Trump exhorted them to march to the Capitol. Footage of the mob inside the Capitol could remind senators of just what that felt like—but many Republicans have shown that they are more afraid of that mob coming after them again in one form or another if they don’t support Trump at all times. “There are only a handful of Republicans and shrinking who will vote against him,” predicts Sen. Lindsey Graham, who is continuing his service as Trump’s lapdog. 

Since Trump is now a private citizen, his impeachment trial won’t require the services of Chief Justice John Roberts. Instead, Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Senate president pro tempore, will preside. Some Republicans are trying to make an issue of the lack of Roberts, but only a sitting president merits the chief justice, and that is not Donald Trump. Leahy is firmly pledging total procedural fairness, saying “I don’t think there’s any senator who—over the 40-plus years I’ve been here—that would say that I am anything but impartial in voting on procedure.” And no kidding—it’s as likely that Democrats should worry he’ll bend so far backward to show he’s fair that he’ll form a one-man loop.

Conviction remains unlikely because Trump continues to own the Republican Party too thoroughly for it to be likely that 17 senators will be able to admit to the seriousness of inciting an insurrection that threatened their lives. Which is saying something about just how much of a cult this is. But it’s important to hold the trial—especially with evidence still coming out about both the seriousness of the attack and the scope of Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.

TRUMP: "...you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength..." CROWD VOICES RESPOND:"Storm the #Capitol... invade the Capitol" @justinhendrix, @just_security & @rgoodlaw use crowd video to argue for incitement. 1/pic.twitter.com/A80WBkt002

— John Scott-Railton (@jsrailton) January 25, 2021

Senate Republicans push to let Trump off the hook for inciting Capitol attack

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Republicans want to move along and forget that whole thing where a mob of Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol, threatening the lives of lawmakers and killing one police officer and wounding others. Donald Trump isn’t in office anymore, the senators who would have to vote in his impeachment trial say, so there’s nothing to talk about anymore.

We should move on from the 15 police officers hospitalized and more than 100 injured as Trump-supporting domestic terrorists beat them with fire extinguishers and American flags and fists and whatever else was available, shot bear spray at them, massed in the hundreds if not thousands to force their way through doors and beat down windows, and in one case Tasered an officer in the neck until he had a heart attack.

Rep. John Katko, the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee and one of the 10 House Republicans who voted for impeachment, said after classified briefings on the attack, “I was left with a profound sense that it was much worse than people realized.”

But Senate Republicans are strenuously looking for excuses not to hold Trump accountable. Sen. John Cornyn spent Thursday morning quoting former Trump impeachment lawyer Alan Dershowitz to suggest that holding Trump to account for his significant role in whipping up the mob that attacked the Capitol would be merely “seek[ing] revenge” and would “distract from President Biden’s agenda, and make it hard to heal the country.” 

”What good comes from impeaching a guy in Florida?” Sen. Lindsey Graham asked. But he made clear to CNN that his concern was not about “what good” but about what’s good for the Republican Party, saying: “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. That's just a fact. And I think we got a decent chance of coming back in 2022. But we can't do it without the President.”

Trump told these people to come to Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, the day Congress met to count the electoral votes that made Joe Biden the president. “Will be wild,” he tweeted. That day, he told the crowd “we’re going to have to fight much harder,” and, “You will have an illegitimate president. That is what you will have, and we can’t let that happen.” Then, “We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” And he told them he would be with them as they marched on the Capitol.

What good would come from impeaching him now that he’s a private citizen in Florida? You put a marker down that inciting violence against Congress specifically as it attempts to carry out the process of democracy is not acceptable. Do Cornyn or Graham treat a dirt-filled wound by slapping a bandage on it and pretending it’s not there? Because that’s a recipe for festering infection, just as refusing to address what happened at the Capitol, and Trump’s role in it, would worsen the already festering infection in U.S. politics. 

Republicans like Cornyn and Graham, though, don’t care about what’s good for the nation. They care about what’s good for the Republican Party.

Trump’s aides have finally been shamed into silence. He doesn’t get it

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

Donald Trump, the twice impeached and reviled leader of the free world, is ticked off at absolutely everyone for his current predicament with the exception one singular exceptional person: himself.

Based on reports in The Washington Post and The New York Times, Trump felt "blindsided" by the openness of Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell to convicting him. Trump is harboring a special hatred for House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy for publicly condemning his actions before ultimately voting against impeachment. And Trump isn't even on speaking terms with personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who crisscrossed the country spewing conspiracy theories about massive voter fraud that Trump chose to buy into so his exceedingly fragile ego could be protected from the reality that he's a bona fide loser. “Trump has privately expressed concern with some of Giuliani’s moves,” writes the Post. Huh—turns out Rudy G. might have been a tad off. Who coulda guessed it? But Trump's so furious with Giuliani, he's refusing to pay his $20,000 per day fees from the entirely fruitless post-election legal battle. 

"Trump has instructed aides not to pay Giuliani’s legal fees, two officials said, and has demanded that he personally approve any reimbursements for the expenses Giuliani incurred while traveling on the president’s behalf to challenge election results in key states," writes the Post.

But wait, there's more! Trump's really pissy at virtually every one of the aides that still exist at the White House for refusing to publicly defend him for launching a riotous and lethal attack on the government he's charged with leading. Where's the loyalty? Son-in-law Jared Kushner, Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, Economic Adviser Larry Kudlow, National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien, and Chief of Staff Mark Meadows—all just trashy disappointments to Trump. As House Democrats, and even some Republicans, pounded away at Trump's indefensible conduct, those aides held no press conferences, issued no talking points, did no interviews on the White House grounds, and even declined to whip votes against impeachment. Gee, it's almost as if they were shamed into silence. Or too incompetent to mount a defense. Or both. Surely only the best aides are still skulking around the West Wing at this point.

“I just think this is the logical conclusion of someone who will only accept people in his inner orbit if they are willing to completely set themselves on fire on his behalf," one senior administration said.

Speaking of which, there is one person who's been willing to suck back up to Trump even after Trump couldn't be bothered to take his calls during the deadly insurrection threatening his life in real time—Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. "Enough is enough!" Graham cried immediately following the deadly attack. "Count me out." Er ... I mean, "in!"  

Two peas in a pod from hell.

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.

Morning Digest: This race could give Texas Democrats their first statewide win in 26 years

Posted on by Daily Kos Elections

The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, Carolyn Fiddler, and Matt Booker, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.

Leading Off

● TX Railroad Commission: As Lone Star Democrats seek their first statewide victory in more than a quarter century, their best hope may be Chrysta Castañeda, who's running for a spot on an agency many people haven't heard of: the Texas Railroad Commission.

Campaign Action

Despite the name, the commission doesn't actually oversee trains, but it does have jurisdiction over something even more important in Texas: the state's energy industry (oversight of the rails was handed to the state's Department of Transportation in 2005). The panel, often known as the "RRC," is made up of three members, each elected statewide for six-year terms.

The last time a Democrat won a seat on the board was in 1990, when former Rep. Bob Krueger beat a Republican opponent by 56-40 margin. Krueger wound up resigning to accept an appointment to the U.S. Senate when Lloyd Bentsen became Bill Clinton's Treasury secretary, and Republicans comfortably beat his appointed successor in 1994.

Ever since, the GOP has held all three seats, but Republicans were already preparing for a serious battle this year—which, ironically, might have made their situation even worse. Republican Ryan Sitton, who first won a slot on the RRC in 2014, had stockpiled $2 million in his war chest for the general election, but in March, he lost his primary in an absolute shocker to an unknown named Jim Wright, the owner of an oilfield waste disposal company who had raised less than $13,000.

The 55-45 loss was so inexplicable that some political observers wondered if Wright benefited from sharing a name with the one-time speaker of the House who hailed from Fort Worth, the late Democrat Jim Wright, who died in 2015. It's not such a crazy theory: Perennial candidate Gene Kelly won multiple Texas primaries in the previous decade because voters had him confused with the beloved dancer.

Whatever the explanation, though, Wright's victory has left Republicans with a suddenly open seat and a badly flawed candidate. The RRC—the very body that Wright wants to join—fined him $182,000 for improper storage of hazardous waste in 2017, and he's been sued by his former business partners for fraud stemming from the mess.

Castañeda, an oil and gas attorney, took aim at Wright for his record in her first ad of the race, which went up last month, but the main topic she's focusing on is the issue of "flaring." That refers to the practice of oil producers burning off unwanted natural gas from their wells rather than capturing it for later use, a process that is both environmentally harmful and economically wasteful.

It's also against the law—unless a driller is granted a special permit, of which 7,000 were handed out last year. As Castañeda notes, such permits can only be granted if all three members of the commission agree, meaning she could single-handedly put an end to flaring even if Republicans still hold a nominal 2-1 majority on the board next year.

With this backdrop, The New Republic recently called this race "this year’s most important election for American climate policy." It could also finally put an end to the longest statewide losing streak for Democrats anywhere in the nation, as Texas last voted Democratic for any statewide race in 1994.

3Q Fundraising

● IA-Sen: Theresa Greenfield (D): $28.7 million raised

● WV-Gov: Jim Justice (R-inc): $890,000 raised, $263,000 cash-on-hand; Ben Salango (D): $564,000 raised, $153,000 cash-on-hand

● CA-25: Mike Garcia (R-inc): $3.2 million raised, $2 million cash-on-hand

● CA-48: Michelle Steel (R): $1.8 million raised

● MN-03: Kendall Qualls (R): $873,000 raised, $538,000 cash-on-hand

● MN-08: Quinn Nystrom (D): $650,000 raised

● NH-01: Chris Pappas (D-inc): $700,000 raised, $1.35 million cash-on-hand

● NY-02: Andrew Garbarino (R): $771,000 raised

● TX-10: Michael McCaul (R-inc): $870,000 raised, $1.1 million cash-on-hand

Senate

● GA-Sen-A: A pro-Republican group called Georgia Action Fund says it is spending $5 million on digital ads supposedly aimed at swaying undecided voters in the race between Republican Sen. David Perdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff.

● LA-Sen: Democrat Adrian Perkins narrates much of his first TV ad, which focuses on his biography, including his graduation from West Point and his service in Afghanistan and Iraq that resulted in an award of the Bronze Star. A voiceover notes that after he fought overseas, "Harvard Law and big job offers came." But, says Perkins, "I chose to come home. To serve my community. Now I'm taking our mission to Washington to get things done for you."

At the end, text appears on-screen noting that Perkins has been endorsed by Gov. John Bel Edwards and Barack Obama, an effort to consolidate Democratic voters to ensure Perkins makes a December runoff against Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy.

● NC-Sen: Republican Sen. Thom Tillis' new ad, unsurprisingly, goes after Democrat Cal Cunningham over the intimate text messages he shared with a woman who is not his wife. The spot mostly features clips of newscasters discussing various angles to the story, and during the "I approve this message" segment—not a section we discuss often—Tillis is shown hand-in-hand with his wife. Tillis' allies at the Senate Leadership Fund also recently went up with a similar ad.

Meanwhile, Politico reports that the DSCC is adding $3 million to their existing TV ad reservations for the last two weeks of the race.

● Polls: If you click each race tag below, such as "MT-Sen," you'll be taken to the Daily Kos Elections poll aggregator for that race, which displays a trendline for all available public polls and the current polling average.

  • MT-Sen: Data for Progress (D) for Crooked Media and Indivisible: Steve Bullock (D): 48, Steve Daines (R-inc): 46 (49-43 Trump)
  • NC-Sen: Data for Progress (D) for Crooked Media and Indivisible: Cal Cunningham (D): 50, Thom Tillis (R-inc): 39 (51-44 Biden) (Aug.: 49-41 Cunningham)
  • SC-Sen: GBAO (D) for the DSCC: Jaime Harrison (D): 48, Lindsey Graham: (R-inc): 47, Bill Bledsoe (C): 3 (49-44 Trump)
  • TX-Sen: Crosswind Media (R) and Pulse Opinion Research: John Cornyn (R-inc): 48, MJ Hegar (D): 39 (51-44 Trump)
  • TX-Sen: Data for Progress (D) for Crooked Media and Indivisible: Cornyn (R-inc): 45, Hegar (D): 42 (47-45 Biden) (Sept.: 40-38 Cornyn)

MT-Sen: While there hasn't been a ton of polling in Montana—and what we have seen has almost all been very tight—Data for Progress' survey is the first to show Steve Bullock with a lead since an early July poll from PPP that had Bullock ahead 46-44.

NC-Sen: A number of polls taken since Labor Day have shown Cal Cunningham up by double digits, but what's notable about about this Data for Progress poll is that it was in the field from Weds, Sept. 30 through Monday, Oct. 5. That means half of it was conducted after news about Cunningham's affair broke on Friday night, Oct. 2.

SC-Sen: The DSCC's poll included Constitution Party candidate Bill Bledsoe, who dropped out of the race and endorsed Lindsey Graham a few days after the survey concluded. However, Bledsoe's name will still appear on ballots.

Gubernatorial

● NC-Gov: Dan Forest is just the latest Republican trying to scare voters with ads showing footage of unrest, even starting his latest spot by saying, "Seems like the only people you see in downtown Asheville these days are rioters." Seems like he should try harder: According multiple local office-holders, including Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer, Forest's clips don't show the city at all but instead were shot in other locales. When asked for comment, the Forest campaign didn't dispute the charge.

● Polls:

  • WV-Gov: Strategies Unlimited (D) for WV First: Jim Justice (R-inc): 46, Ben Salango (D): 40, Daniel Lutz Jr. (Mountain Party): 5

This is the closest poll of the three we've seen to date in this race. According to the Parkersburg News and Sentinel, WV First is a group opposing Jim Justice's re-election bid, though it does not appear to have any presence the web. The same is true of the pollster, Strategies Unlimited.

House

● IN-05: Indiana schools chief Jennifer McCormick has once again stuck her thumb in the eye of her own party by endorsing another Democrat, Christina Hale, who is seeking to flip the open 5th Congressional District. Though elected superintendent of public instruction as a Republican in 2016, McCormick has regularly feuded with the GOP and previously backed Democrat Woody Myers in his bid to unseat Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb, as well as Democrat Jonathan Weinzapfel, who is running for state attorney general. McCormick is not seeking re-election this year after Republicans turned her position into an appointed one starting after 2020.

● MI-08: Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin's latest ad features footage from a recent debate that went viral after she shredded her Republican opponent, Paul Junge, on healthcare. Junge had sought to make an issue of a lapse in insurance coverage that befell Slotkin's mother, blaming "undue burdens and regulations." Slotkin's scathing response occupies the bulk of the ad:

"Please don't speak about my mother as if you understand what made her health care unaffordable to her. And I think it's crazy that every time we ask you specific details about the thing that really helps people know that they're going to be protected—their kids are going to be protected—you deflect and start attacking me. And raising my mother? Come on, Paul."

● NE-02: Former Democratic Rep. Brad Ashford has endorsed vulnerable Republican Rep. Don Bacon, who narrowly booted him after one term in the House in 2016. Ashford sought to reclaim his seat in 2018 but lost a tight the Democratic primary that year to nonprofit executive Kara Eastman, who herself lost a close contest with Bacon later that year—a race in which Ashford supported her.

Eastman sought the Democratic nomination again this year and this time handily defeated Ashford's wife, attorney Ann Ferlic Ashford. Ann Ashford angrily refused to endorse Eastman following the May primary, citing comments Eastman had made blaming Ashford's campaign-trail criticisms of her on "bad blood" stemming from her defeat of Ashford's husband two years earlier.

Bacon's past statements about Brad Ashford, however, have been far harsher. Among other things, Bacon accused Ashford of being soft on the Islamic State during their 2016 race, claiming in an ad, "If Brad Ashford doesn't know ISIS is targeting Nebraska, how can we trust him to keep us safe?"

● VA-02: Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria's newest ad stars a COVID survivor named Fred Herrmann who excoriates Republican Scott Taylor for hosting a campaign event over the summer where attendees were maskless and greeted each other—including Taylor—with intimate hugs. Footage of the disturbing gathering rolls as Herrmann pours out his criticism. "Scott Taylor even compared coronavirus to the flu. It's not the flu," he says. "Mr. Taylor, I couldn't see my family while I thought I was going to die, because this virus is dangerous—and sending you back to Congress would be, too."

● Polls:

CA-25: Smith's memo didn't include exact figures for the presidential race, but it did say that Joe Biden "is currently beating Trump by 4 points." That would represent the rare district-level poll where Biden's margin is narrower than Hillary Clinton's was in 2016 (she carried the 25th 50-44).

NY-22: Believe it or not, Siena's poll is the very first we've seen of this race, and the findings are a serious whoa-mama-joe moment for the GOP, particularly as regards the presidential race. Upstate New York's 22nd District was one of those rural white areas where the bottom really fell out for Democrats in 2016: While Barack Obama had lost to Mitt Romney by less than a point here, Trump crushed Clinton 55-39.

There's good reason to believe Siena, too. In 2016, the school's polling accurately forecast the district's big shift to Trump, both in late September and just before Election Day, when it had Trump up 14. If Republicans can't beat Brindisi, who exactly can they beat?

Mayoral

● Miami-Dade County, FL Mayor: The Democratic firm Bendixen & Amandi International's new poll for the Miami Herald gives Democrat Daniella Levine Cava a 45-35 lead over Republican Steve Bovo in next month's officially nonpartisan race, which is an improvement from the 39-32 edge it found last month. Levine Cava also released a Change Research survey in late September that showed her up 45-32, while Bovo's side has yet to publicize its own numbers.

Levine Cava would be the first Democrat to serve as the chief executive of Florida's largest county since Alex Penelas left office in 2004. Penelas himself waged a comeback campaign this year, but he took third in August's nonpartisan primary.

● New York City, NY Mayor: Civil rights attorney Maya Wiley, a former counsel to term-limited Mayor Bill de Blasio, entered next year's Democratic primary to succeed her old boss on Thursday. Wiley, who is Black, would be the first woman mayor in the city's history. In her kickoff, she took several jabs at the unpopular incumbent. "If I am mayor, you will never have to wonder who's in charge," she said. "You will never have to question ... whether the mayor even wants the job." She also ridiculed de Blasio's hapless presidential bid, saying, "You will never have to wonder whether I'm in Iowa."

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