During and after the Jan. 6 insurrection, before Fox News went all-in on greasing the skids for fascism, some of its most celebrated on-air personalities acted as though Donald Trump had been hit with a protoplasmic growth ray and was rampaging from sea to rising sea popping whole Taco Bell Expresses in his mouth like Fiddle Faddle.
Indeed, everyone with eyes knew that Trump had gone Bonkers McGee in the wake of the election he decisively lost—including Fox News personalities Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Brian Kilmeade, who all texted people close to the pr*sident to convince him to give the stand-down order during the Capitol riot. But since those dark days, when our democracy teetered on a knife’s edge, Tucker Carlson has made a career out of convincing people to die of COVID-19 (thereby making Joe Biden look bad, though not quite as bad as those goateed doofuses with intubation tubes down their throats) while assuring them that Jan. 6 had nothing at all to do with salt-of-the-earth Trump supporters. Meanwhile, just Thursday night, Hannity welcomed the disgraced ex-POTUS to his show and Turtle Waxed his barnacled balls to a high shine and finish.
We’re finally seeing even more evidence that Trump’s media enablers thought Trump had gone too far, and that his actions following the election and the failed Bumblefuck Putsch were way beyond the pale.
A letter from the Jan. 6 Select Committee asking Ivanka Trump to testify includes newly revealed text messages from Hannity to former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany that outline a strategy for dealing with their glitching ocher overlord:
In the texts, Hannity recaps just a few points of a broader communications plan for responding to the attack, among other pieces of advice.
“1- No more stolen election talk,” Hannity reportedly texted McEnany, who herself sat down with committee investigators last week after being subpoenaed.
Per the letter, he continued, “2- Yes, impeachment and the 25th amendment are real and many people will quit...”
So Hannity knew Trump’s actions were impeachable, huh? That’s not the impression he’s been giving his viewers.
CNN’s Jake Tapper brought former Mike Pence adviser Olivia Troye on his program on Thursday to discuss these new revelations, and boy, was she ever not impressed. (Troye did some great work in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election that helped expose Trump for the menace he was and is.):
TAPPER: “A very interesting text message exchange between Trump loyalist Sean Hannity and then-White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. It suggests that Hannity texted Kayleigh McEnany on Jan. 7, the day after the insurrection, laying out a five-point approach for talking to then-outgoing President Trump. He started with ‘1) No more stolen election talk, 2) Yes, impeachment and 25th Amendment are real, and many people will quit ...’ to which Kayleigh McEnany responded, ‘Love that. Thank you. That is the playbook. I will help reinforce.’ Hannity, according to these messages, also told McEnany that White House staff should try to keep Trump away from certain people. He texted her, quote, ‘Key now. No more crazy people,’ to which McEnany responded, ‘Yes. 100%.’ We should note that Sean Hannity’s show was a major place where these election lies were told—in fact, they’re being sued as a result—and Kayleigh McEnany is one of the biggest election liars that we know. So what’s your reaction when you see this conversation—this private conversation.”
TROYE: “Well, it’s stunning. It’s stunning to see this full-on evidence of these types of conversations that were happening in the lead-up to Jan. 6, but even more so, just the fact that they knew the gravity of the situation—they knew the repercussions of the possibility of what would happen in continuing down this narrative, and then even more egregious is that now they’ve doubled down on it. Right? And the problem is, not only does this narrative still exist out there—the Big Lie lives on. It’s being used by people who are seeking public office this year. It’s become sort of, the Republican Party’s platform is really the Big Lie and you have to support it or you’re going to get kicked out. … You know, I think it’s important to get this evidence out there to the American people so that they can see that in the lead-up in that situation with Donald Trump, people knew. People knew that this type of action was worthy of impeachment. It was worthy of the 25th Amendment. That these are actual discussions happening with people like Sean Hannity.”
Needless to say, these hair-on-fire texts from Trump’s biggest defenders are damning evidence that they knew he was, at best, out of control and, at worst, dangerously unfit for office. And by that, I mean any office. Or office building. Or office supply store, for that matter.
Naif that I am, I sincerely believed in the aftermath of Jan. 6 that conservatives would resurrect their long-buried shame and denounce Trump. But they sort of puttered around the grave for a few minutes, figured, “Nah, this is too hard,” and went right back to shivving the country full time.
Hopefully, Republicans will begin to slink away in something resembling shame as the Jan. 6 committee unveils more evidence, but I wouldn’t count on it. After all, the Eye of Sour-Don watches, and they dare not displease their master.
Or they could try to cobble together the last remaining shards of their dignity and try to be good-faith actors—instead of, well, just actors. But that’s just never going to happen, is it?
Sen. Ted Cruz has been beating pro-seditionist conspiracy theory drums since before the Jan. 6 insurrection ever took place. It's still a bit novel to see Cruz use his pro-sedition conspiracy theory as a campaign fundraising gimmick, though.
But here we are, and the man who once ran for president—only to be crushed by Donald Trump, then subsumed into the fold of Trump's most obsequious boot-polishers—is using the newest Republican hoax to raise money from pro-sedition members of his base. The hoax Ted Cruz is promoting is the "Ray Epps" theory:
"Who is Ray Epps? Was Ray Epps a federal agent or informant?" asks Ted. Because "We know the FBI has been misused in the past to target President Trump" and just "look at the Russia Collusion Hoax" and "Peter Strzok" and "Merrick Garland won't answer questions" and "What are they trying to hide now about the events of January 6, 2021?"
If it sounds like any other Republican fundraising letter, down to the buzzwords and linked conspiracy theories and warnings of an "extreme-left agenda," it's because the party's vocabulary has dwindled down to a mere 500 words or so, all of them focus-grouped to the last serif, and half of those are references to theories that exist only in the Fox News universe. Literally any Republican in the party could send this same letter with only a sentence or two changed to fit their current position. Whatever individuality Ted once had, back in the days when he was known mostly for being the least pleasant person to be around even in Washington, D.C., has been smoothed out in favor of Generic Pro-Trump Conspiracy Guy.
Same fundraising language, same conspiracies, same blanket defenses of the most bumbling and crooked president of the modern era as being the fault of whatever enemies Donald has a personal grudge against.
The "Ray Epps" theory is, short version, a conspiracy theory being peddled by Republican sedition backers (including, of course, Trump backers who participated in the day's violence) that supposes that actually, the crowd that Trump and Trump allies scrambled to assemble on that day and hour were goaded into mounting a violent rebellion by the FBI. Or by antifa. Or by somebody. But the important point, in the theory, is claiming that the seditionists attempted to overthrow the government only because the government egged them into doing it, and so everybody should go free and once again we really should be investigating Trump's enemies, not the people doing grotesquely illegal things on Trump's personal behalf.
Sure, the crowd attacked police officers. Sure, there were deaths. But you see, some guy was seen outside the Capitol on that day but hasn't yet been charged by federal agents, ergo that guy must have been a plant and not a real Trump supporter, ergo the crimes don't count and none of this ever happened.
Ted Cruz has some personal stake in this, of course, given that Ted Cruz was one of those who attempted to nullify an American election that day, erasing the new administration rather than obliging Trump to hand over power. Ted can't well claim that the FBI goaded him into supporting an attempted autogolpe on the Senate floor, but as federal prosecutors target individual insurrectionists with "seditious conspiracy"—the first in-court acknowledgement that individuals in the violent crowd planned their actions as a serious effort to bring down the nation's government—it is to his advantage to argue that the only coup attempt that day was his own effort and that those people were doing something else entirely.
It's not true. Both efforts were linked, as documents from inside Trump's band of schemers have now shown. Republican lawmakers and Mike Pence were supposed to challenge the election's results as corrupted and invalid; Trump and allies had organized the large crowd to "march" to the Capitol grounds at exactly the same moment to intimidate waffling lawmakers into going along—and, under the assumption that violence would break out when Trump's crowd met "antifa" opponents that never appeared that day, provide grounds for using the Insurrection Act to summon the military, declare the election nullified, and promise a "do-over" election that might or might not have ever happened.
Ted Cruz did his part on that day, and the crowd of Trump supporters did theirs. The plan failed only because Mike Pence did not go along, and the expected counter-demonstrators never appeared—which meant there was no plausible deniability for the pro-Trump militia members and others who committed violence that day.
Cruz and his seditionist allies in the House and Senate near-immediately began inventing new theories to explain why the violence was actually the fault of antifa or other "anti-Trump" forces regardless of what we saw and heard on our televisions; one of the catch-all theories has been that the FBI staged the whole thing themselves, or at least helped plan it, or at least were the people goading Trump's frothing supporters into storming the Capitol and attacking people.
It was a theory invented in real time on pro-insurrection television programs and among pro-sedition lawmakers. It was based on nothing—another hoax in the now endless stream of pro-Trump hoaxes.
In real life, Ray Epps is a longtime militia member who was once president of the Arizona branch of the Oath Keepers, one of the two militias whose members are now facing seditious conspiracy charges due to their actions before and during the coup. He was in the pro-Trump crowd for the same reason as the others: to back Trump's attempt to remain in power regardless of the election's actual results. He has so far not been charged with criminal acts for a rather mundane reason: Epps appears to have never entered the Capitol building himself, and while there is footage of him encouraging others to go inside, there is so far no footage of him telling the crowd to be anything but "peaceful."
That makes him a small fry, when it comes to prosecution efforts. Courts and prosecutors are already overburdened with insurrection cases, and even those who did enter the building are not necessarily facing much punishment unless they manage to stack up other illegal acts as well. Prosecutors aren't targeting Epps because it's a harder case to prove than the others and his violations were less severe. So far.
If Ted Cruz is going to claim that every member of the pro-Trump crowd who hasn't been charged with crimes has not been charged with crimes because they're working for the FBI, he's welcome to go nuts with that. But he'd obviously be lying—and he's obviously lying now.
The last remaining bit of this farce hinges around the question that Cruz and other seditionists demand be asked: What if Epps was an FBI informant at some point? What if he did cooperate with investigators?
Okay, Ted, you've got me. What of it? Let's say this guy talked with the FBI and squealed as squealingly as a squealer could squeal—let's say he, or somebody else in the militia movement, sat down in front of a computer screen with three FBI agents named Edward, Thaddeus, and Bifftholomew and spent 10 solid hours going through security footage, naming every last face he recognized.
So then what? Oh my goodness, somebody cooperated with law enforcement to name people who attacked police officers, ransacked offices, or threatened to hang the vice president.
That's your conspiracy theory, Ted, so tell us what that would mean. Don't snivel like a seditionist little coward and suggest that something like that might be true; come out and tell us what the actual outrage would be.
Is it that somebody, somewhere might be cooperating with law enforcement to bring Trump's most violent supporters to justice? Is that what has you so upset?
Are you suggesting that those who stockpiled weapons and who planned their actions on that day so that they would have the best possible chance of toppling constitutional government should be set free, because somebody in the crowd is a snitch?
How very odd. But it's a pattern we've seen from Cruz and the near-entirety of Republicanism over and over again; whenever Donald Trump or someone close to him gets caught doing something that would have been grounds for immediate impeachment, removal, and likely prosecution during any previous administration, the Republican Party immediately launches an all-out war against whatever public official discovered the corruption. Every last time. The Republican enemies list is now just an unending list of names of government workers, foreign diplomats, top journalists, law enforcement agents and others who have reported or testified that Donald Trump did something corrupt.
Merrick Garland is now on that list because Ted is outraged Garland's Justice Department is charging people who attacked police officers and went hunting for lawmakers with crimes. That says a lot more about Ted Cruz than it does about anything else.
There's no mastery as to what is happening here. Ted Cruz was part of a far-right effort to nullify a United States election based on a fraudulent hoax dreamed up by conspiracy theorists and seized upon by his whole party as convenient excuse. He, personally, was accessory to an attempt to erase an election rather than recognize its results. It was all a lie, and Ted Cruz was one of its chief spokesmen.
But it failed, and now Ted and the other lawmakers who engaged in that seditious conspiracy are attempting to throw up whatever barricades they can between themselves and those who are investigating the day's events. They stonewalled congressional investigation—as in, the premise that there should even be one. They have supported architects of the day's events as those figures have defied congressional subpoenas demanding their testimony. They have tossed out countless new conspiracy theories intended to discredit law enforcement investigations of the people who were caught, on camera, attacking and injuring hundreds of police officers.
Ted would rather everyone who attacked police officers and ransacked offices that day go free, so long as that means federal and congressional investigations of who sent them there are stopped in their tracks.
Why?
Because Ted Cruz was part of a seditious conspiracy himself. And however large his part is known to be, it's very, very clear that it's Ted and his fellow lawmakers who are "trying to hide" the "full truth" of what happened that day.
What do you have to hide, Ted? What's so important that you're willing to shove conspiracy theories out to your base, attempting to discredit the entire federal investigation?
Somewhere out there, there is a photo of former Vice President Mike Pence taken by a White House photographer on Jan. 6. It reportedly depicts him in hiding in a “barren garage” during the attack of the U.S. Capitol.
But when a Jan. 6 defendant recently asked the government to produce that photo to help his defense, U.S. prosecutors said it was not in their possession.
This response has ignited some curiosity around the photos and sparks questions anew about why Pence refused to allow their publication and moreover, who, exactly, may hold the photos today.
To start at the beginning, last August, the Jan. 6 committee filed its initial request to the National Archives and Records Administration for presidential records tied to the insurrection.
Among its inquiry, the committee specifically asked the Archives for “all photographs, videos, or other media, including any digital timestamps for such media, taken or recorded within the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, or taken of the crowd assembled for the rally on the morning of Jan. 6 and all communication or other documents related to that media.”
Moreover, the committee specifically requested “all photographs, video or other media including digital timestamps for such media” of Mike Pence and any individuals accompanying him on Jan. 6.
Then in November, journalist Jonathan Karl released his book Betrayal, about the final days of the Trump administration.
In its pages, Karl described having seen a photograph of Pence taken by an official White House photographer.
The image reportedly depicts Pence, second lady Karen Pence, their daughter Charlotte Pence Bond, and a few of Pence’s staff members taking refuge during the Capitol attack thanks to the quick help of Secret Service agents who whisked them away from danger.
“The photos show Pence in a barren garage. There were no windows and no furniture. This was a loading dock with concrete walls and a concrete floor,” Karl wrote.
When Karl appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, he reiterated what he observed, describing Pence in the photo as standing “in a loading dock in an underground parking garage beneath the Capitol complex. No place to sit, no desk, no chairs, nothing.”
“This is the vice president of the United States and he’s holed up in a basement,” Karl said.
The journalist’s request to publish the pictures was denied by Pence through a spokesperson.
Pence has never denied publicly that the photographs exist.
Talk of the photos resurfaced on Jan. 4, 2022 when Couy Griffin, founder of Cowboys for Trump, asked a federal judge to compel the government to produce the Pence photos to assist his defense.
Prosecutors charged Griffin—who also serves as a commissioner for Otero County, New Mexico—with two misdemeanors for breaching Capitol grounds.
Griffin maintains he never entered the Capitol building unlawfully but went to peacefully protest and was effectively swept up into a prohibited area.
He and his accompanying videographer Matt Struck saw an open door at the top of the stairs on the Capitol’s outer deck and went through it, according to a police affidavit.
Griffin then faced the crowd, grabbed a bullhorn, addressed those around him and began leading a group in prayer, the affidavit notes.
In a Facebook video for Cowboys for Trump that has since been removed, authorities say Griffin was heard saying in the clip that he climbed to the top of the Capitol for a “first row seat.”
He was there for over an hour.
That same video also had Griffin expressing a desire to return to the Capitol for the inauguration of Joe Biden, saying: “You want to say that was a mob? You want to say that was violence? No sir. No ma’am. No we could have a Second Amendment rally on those same steps that we had that rally yesterday. You know, and if we do, then it’s gonna be a sad day, because there’s gonna be blood running out of that building. But at the end of the day, you mark my word, we will plant our flag on the desk of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and Donald J. Trump if it boils down to it.”
Griffin’s videographer admitted to the FBI that the men may have committed “minor trespassing” on Jan. 6.
Griffin has a bench trial before Judge Trevor McFadden in Washington, D.C., on March 21.
He insists that the government can only keep its case against him if it can prove that he “entered or remained” in the Capitol or on Capitol grounds while Pence was also present.
“If such photographs exist, they constitute Brady material in this case. If the journalist’s description of the images is accurate, the former vice president left the Capitol Building, passed through the subterranean tunnel network, and entered the Senate underground garage,” Griffin argued in a motion on Jan. 4. “That garage is not part of the structure of the Capitol Building. It lies between the Capitol Building and the Russell Senate Office building underneath the Senate Foundation.”
The government responded Tuesday, telling Griffin that Brady material is defined as material in the government’s possession that has some exculpatory or impeachment value.
“The photographs requested by the defendant from the official White House photographer are not in the government’s possession, therefore, they are not considered Brady and the defendant cannot move to compel their production… similarly the defendant’s request for these photographs under Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure 16(A)(1)(E) should be denied as Rule 16 only requires the government to disclose photographs within its possession,” assistant U.S. attorney Matthew Graves wrote.
Graves rejected Griffin’s contention altogether, too, saying that even under Griffin’s proposed context, Capitol grounds are still prohibited from trespass whether Pence was physically there in the moment or not.
Andrew Laufer, a civil rights attorney, spelled it out for Daily Kosin an email Tuesday: “The government is required to disclose all exculpatory evidence, things which will assist the defendant with his defense. If the judge determines that the photo of Pence meets the criteria, an order will be issued compelling the Department of Justice to produce it.”
So, this begs a series of questions.
Do prosecutors have the photos and have opted not to share them with Griffin because they are purportedly irrelevant to his defense? Would a court order change what prosecutors say?
Or do prosecutors genuinely not have the photos in their possession? If not, who has them? Does the National Archives have them?
As noted, the Jan. 6 committee asked the Archives to remit such documents as a part of its probe into the Capitol attack, but the exact nature of what has been shared with the committee is not yet clear and a legal fight is still being waged between the committee and the Trump administration over the privilege of presidential records.
The Archives did not respond to multiple requests for comment Tuesday.
When asked about the photos, a spokesperson for the Jan. 6 committee pointed to the committee’s initial request to the Archives from Aug. 25, only confirming that it made the request for pictures or media of Pence from Jan. 6.
The White House and the Department of Justice did not respond to requests for comment and a spokesperson for Pence did not immediately respond, either.
It should be noted that Pence has reportedly been willing to cooperate with the Jan. 6 committee thus far and the panel’s chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, told reporters last week that the committee is still deciding on whether it should formally subpoena the former vice president.
“I think at some point the committee will make a decision whether or not we already know enough about it or if we need to hear from the former vice president on it,” Thompson said last Monday.
Several of Pence’s senior-most staff have already met with the committee at their request including Pence’s former national security adviser Keith Kellogg, his former chief of staff Marc Short, and onetime press secretary Alyssa Farah.
That makes Pence’s decision to keep the photos out of view, when Jonathan Karl asked to publish them, all the more curious.
The photographer was a government employee performing his official duties on Jan 6 — those photos are government property and should have been turned over to the National Archives under the Presidential Records Act. https://t.co/U93AVlUh8c
Remember Glenn Beck? He’s still around and he’s still doing what he’s always done: grifting away. His modern look includes spectacles and a sort of Kentucky Fried Chicken Colonel Sanders look. Surprising no one, Beck’s evidence-free conspiracy theory stylings, now common on the right, are focused on all of the same tropes of misinformation, disinformation, and anti-vaxxer clickbait that allows for making money on his BlazeTV network.
Wednesday night, on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by MAGA supporters hoping to install a dictator into the office of president, Glenn Beck released a video of his previously recorded interview with Donald Trump. Beck boasted of traveling down to Mar-a-Lago to talk with Trump about all the ways President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are trying to steal your freedoms. Also, Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to steal your penis or something.
But guess who opened his special interview with the announcement that he has “been diagnosed” with COVID? Glenn Beck did, silly billy. No worries—the grift must go on and Glenn used his COVID diagnosis as a jumping off point to … hawk things during commercial breaks.
Beck, looking very red and like he was about to burst, told his audience that he was at home quarantining, but that you needed to watch his interview with Trump, as liberals want you to worry about the Jan. 6 attempted coup because they don’t want you to know about the gospel of Trump. Then came the first segment:
Trump says something about how wind power and solar power are terrible because you have to update your windmills and solar panels every three decades or something
Says we are standing on “liquid gold,” and the push away from fossil fuels is all a part of China’s plan to win.
Glenn Beck tells Trump that Putin respects him but doesn’t respect Biden.
Oh, liberals are worried about Jan. 6 because they are “scare-mongerers”
Then a quick commercial break to try and scare you into buying a home security system because “your home may not be a secure as you think.” One person you shouldn’t let into your home now? Glenn Beck, who is selling you this as he sits in his home with a positive COVID-19 diagnosis.
Back to the show:
Business is being killed by “the mandates.” You should get vaccinated, or not, if you don’t want to, it’s up to you. Business!
Dr. Fauci is the new president of the United States. Donald Trump didn’t do most of what Fauci suggested. [Side note: Dr. Fauci was suggesting things to Trump back in January 2020. Looks at watch? Two years later. Excellent job.]
Quick commercial to tell you that “I think it is critically important that you get your finances in order.” You’re telling me. Back to the show!
Joe Biden is trying to pit our children against each other and throw parents in trouble.
We need to abolish public schools and let states decide what students should learn about our country’s history.
Something something “cancel culture.”
Time for a commercial! Beck has COVID-19, in fact he doesn’t have much of an appetite and he had just started a diet. You know what’s saving his life? Diet bars. You know what else? You can buy them by way of Glenn Beck’s diet bar commercial. Back to the show!
Trump got 100% of the vote (on something).
The impeachment was a “hoax.”
Blah blah blah, witch trials.
Our army is run by “television generals”
Glenn Beck doesn’t “know” if he can tell his son to go into the military these days.
When Fox News demonstrates more journalistic scruples than the BBC, you know we’re in trouble.
Famed constitutional scholar Alan Dershowitz, who thinks the Constitution gives Donald Trump the power to do anything he wants so long as he’s earnestly attempting to steal elections, appeared on BBC News Wednesday after Ghislaine Maxwell was found guilty on five counts of sex trafficking. The problem? The network presented him as an impartial legal expert without acknowledging that he’s been implicated in some of the same crimes involving Maxwell and her erstwhile boyfriend, notorious convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Shortly after Maxwell was convicted Wednesday of sex-trafficking charges for assisting Epstein in abusing young girls, BBC News brought on Dershowitz to analyze the guilty verdict of Epstein’s longtime paramour. But the network failed to mention that Dershowitz not only previously served as Epstein’s attorney but that he is accused of having sex with Virginia Roberts Giuffre when she was as young as 16. Dershowitz has denied the allegations.
Dershowitz used his time on the “BBC World News” to slam Giuffre for supposedly not being a credible witness in the Maxwell case — claims that went unchallenged by the show’s anchor. He also claimed the case from Giuffre against him and Britain’s Prince Andrew, who has also been accused of sexual assault and has denied the allegations, was somehow weakened after Maxwell’s guilty verdict.
Have a looksee.
BBC interview Alan Dershowitz over Ghislaine Maxwell - a new low BBC, a new low. pic.twitter.com/dapu03gkAl
Whoo! Great job, BBC. What’s next? Inviting Jared Fogle to write a weight-loss column, or giving Bill Cosby a segment to discuss his favorite cocktail recipes? It’s probably too late to run Jeffrey Dahmer’s outré restaurant reviews.
Fox News at least acknowledged Dershowitz's connections with Epstein. Unfathomable that the BBC thought this was a good idea. https://t.co/KZKisz3VX4
Is it rude to suggest that maybe, just maybe, Dershowitz is being blackmailed? This self-proclaimed liberal has Human Centipeded himself to Donald Trump’s backside with such alacrity, it’s almost impossible to imagine he’s not being pressured somehow. But hey, maybe Epstein Island was just an elaborate Chuck E. Cheese with Friday night pizza parties, unlimited Skee-Ball, and an animatronic Jerry Sandusky Jug Band.
Of course Dershowitz also appeared on Fox News on Wednesday, because Fox never misses a chance to be ghastly. But as journalist and tweeter extraordinaire Aaron Rupar noted above, at least Fox acknowledged Dershowitz’s connections to Epstein and Maxwell.
Meanwhile, some very smart people—all of whom would have been more credible on this issue than Dershowitz—were appalled by the BBC’s lapse in judgment.
“Last night’s interview with Alan Dershowitz after the Ghislaine Maxwell verdict did not meet the BBC’s editorial standards, as Mr Dershowitz was not a suitable person to interview as an impartial analyst, and we did not make the relevant background clear to our audience. We will look into how this happened.”
Well, at least the network copped to it, even if the statement didn’t include an apology. I would expect a similar mea culpa from Fox News if they had editorial standards to violate. But as long as they rigorously maintain a maximum skirt length and occasionally change the batteries in Brian Kilmeade’s head, their broadcast license isn’t in any danger. Yet it remains a mystery why the very last person who should have been tapped to discuss this subject is the very guy the respected network chose to interview.
Do better, BBC. You don’t want to become the American media. That way lies madness.
When rioters were ransacking the Capitol and Rep. Kevin McCarthy was presumably somewhere hiding from the mob former President Donald Trump incited, he and Trump had a rather tense chat.
Full transparency on the content, timing, and length of that discussion is information that would be undeniably vital to the Jan. 6 committee’s probe of the assault.
In an interview Wednesday with ABC News, the chair of the committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, said that while McCarthy has not yet received a formal request from the panel asking for his voluntary compliance—which is different than a subpoena—an informal invitation still stands.
“If he has information he wants to share with us, and is willing to voluntarily come in, I’m not taking the invitation off the table,” Thompson said. Thompson also emphasized: “If Leader McCarthy has nothing to hide, he can voluntarily come before the committee.”
If McCarthy won’t, then things could start to get a bit more official.
So far, the committee has issued formal requests for voluntary compliance to two lawmakers: Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania. Both have said they would not comply with the request. The next move goes to the committee.
Perry, investigators say, may have been involved directly with a scheme to install a Trump ally, Jeffrey Clark, at the Department of Justice. As for Jordan, it was his contact with Trump and, potentially, members of Trump’s inner circle on Jan. 6 that piqued the committee’s interest.
A representative for McCarthy’s office did not return a request for comment Thursday.
Back in April, however, the Republican congressman told Fox News: “I was the first person to contact [Trump] when the riots were going on. He didn’t see it. What he ended the call with saying was telling me he’ll put something out to make sure to stop this.”
Guardedly, McCarthy also said at the time: "My conversations with the president are my conversations with the president."
McCarthy’s claim that Trump “didn’t see” the riot is not yet supported by any public evidence.
In any event, one of those conversations with Trump was a key feature cited in Trump’s second impeachment this January.
Sometime in the middle of the afternoon of Jan. 6—the exact timing is not entirely clear— according to a public statement made by fellow Republican Rep. Jamie Beutler-Herrera, McCarthy called Trump to report on the violence playing out at the Capitol.
McCarthy was also calling to ask Trump for help—namely demanding that the president release a public statement immediately to quell the riot.
McCarthy said he asked Trump to “publicly and forcefully” call off his supporters, but his request fell on deaf ears.
Despite the sea of Trump flags fluttering in the wind just outside, the spray of “Trump for 2020” T-shirts, banners, hats, bumper stickers, posters, signs, and other ephemera in bright blue, red, or white display, Trump insisted it wasn’t his supporters mobbing the building and viciously beating police amid calls for the head of his second-in-command, then-Vice President Mike Pence.
“Well, Kevin,” Trump said. “I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”
That reportedly set off a powder keg. McCarthy, the House GOP leader, exploded at Trump, the president of the United States.
“Who the fuck do you think you are talking to?” McCarthy said.
Several Republican members confirmed the conversation to reporters at various outlets in February. McCarthy has also publicly discussed the exchange.
Though McCarthy has long taken a position against the current investigation of the attack, a week after the assault from the House floor, he laid the blame squarely on Trump.
“The president bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters,” McCarthy said. “He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding. These facts require immediate action by President Trump."
McCarthy called the attack “criminal” and “undemocratic,” and openly proclaimed that the suggestion it was “antifa” at the gates on Jan. 6 was false.
Despite this, he would not vote to impeach Trump for his conduct. That would be too divisive, he argued.
Public hearings hosted by the House select committee on the issue will begin in the new year. Lawmakers will hear testimony and parse evidence openly about the Trump administration’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. They will likely also call on state and local election officials to testify about the president’s pressure campaign to overturn electoral results.
There will be assessments on the state of national security and intelligence gathering failures in the runup to the assault. Thompson has also stressed that the role of extremist organizations like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers will come into focus.
The committee will use the information it gleans to inform a variety of legislative decisions, including those they make about possible amendments or revisions to the Electoral Count Act of 1887. The committee also has not ruled out the possibility of issuing criminal referrals, if necessary.
Only 24 hours ago, Trump filed a motion with the Supreme Court resisting the idea of the committee weighing criminal referrals. He’s currently in a tug of war with Thompson over a trove of presidential records that investigators requested from the National Archives back in August. Trump tried to shield the records, citing executive privilege, but President Joe Biden overrode him, saying that the documents were more vital to the public interest than Trump’s.
A lower court and an appeals court have ruled against Trump, and now it will be the Supreme Court that decides whether it will even hear Trump’s appeal. The Jan. 6 committee recently narrowed its request on some of the records, underlining that it only needs documents that are relevant to its probe.
The investigation was never designed to be a catch-all of Trump’s entire presidential archive, and the decision to narrow the request was strategic as it might very well chip away at Trump’s claims of abuse of the executive branch by members of Congress.
Thompson told ABC News on Wednesday that the committee’s focus would not be deterred as the anniversary of the attack looms.
“What we will do in our hearings is put the pieces of the puzzle together so the average man and woman on the street will understand how close we came to losing our democracy,” he said.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, deemed by some to be a master tactician, has missed every chance he had this year to help secure the downfall of Donald Trump and his increasingly ascendant wing of the party. Until now.
After failing to lead his caucus in January to a Trump conviction and then in May killing off a carefully negotiated independent commission on Jan. 6, McConnell is clearly relishing the fruits of the House select committee cobbled together by Speaker Nancy Pelosi in spite of his dismal efforts.
“Interesting” has become McConnell’s word of choice for the Jan. 6 committee whenever he is asked about its work and latest revelations. It was a word he repeatedly deployed the week of Dec. 13 as he ginned up interest in the committee’s eventual findings.
On Tuesday, Dec. 14, McConnell was asked whether he was one of the GOP lawmakers who had personally texted White House chief of staff Mark Meadows as the Jan. 6 assault unfolded. He wasn’t, McConnell told Capitol Hill reporters, adding, “It will be interesting to reveal all the participants who were involved.”
But that was just the beginning of McConnell’s week-long campaign plugging the committee’s probe.
“I read the reports every day,” McConnell offered a couple of days later at a different press conference. “And it’ll be interesting to see what they conclude.”
But the capper to McConnell’s sales pitch came later that evening in an interview with Julia Benbrook of Spectrum News. Asked to comment further about his curiosity in “all the participants,” McConnell responded, “The fact-finding is interesting. We’re all going to be watching it. It was a horrendous event, and I think what they are seeking to find out is something the public needs to know.”
So not just interesting, but an actual necessity in terms of public knowledge.
But why the sudden burst of cheerleading from a man who once panned an independent commission on the Capitol siege as a useless exercise unlikely to unearth any “new facts”? Quite simply, the Jan. 6 probe is giving McConnell a do-over on what he was incapable of accomplishing himself—neutralizing the Trump wing of the party. He had chances in 2021, and he either didn’t take them or fumbled the ball at the 1-yard line, particularly in the case of impeachment.
The prospect that the House probe might implicate and ensnare Trump and pro-Trump members of his own party is both enticing and existential for McConnell. Just imagine what a criminal prosecution of Trump could do for McConnell, not to mention someone like Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas being found complicit in the crime. That’s an entirely possible scenario, especially with a new book out from Trump aide Peter Nevarro claiming that Cruz played a key role in an election-stealing scheme Nevarro concocted with Trump henchman Steve Bannon.
“We spent a lot of time lining up over 100 congressmen, including some senators. It started out perfectly. At 1 p.m., [Rep. Paul] Gosar and Cruz did exactly what was expected of them,” Navarro told The Daily Beast of the GOP lawmakers’ initial blockade of certification. Gosar, of Arizona, lodged the first objection to certifying his state’s vote, and Cruz officially signed off on it, sending the two chambers of Congress into recess to weigh the objection in their respective chambers. That was before Trumpers breached the police barricades and stormed the Capitol, brutalizing and killing people along the way.
What has become perfectly clear throughout 2021 is that McConnell entirely misjudged the hold Trump had on the party’s base, even going so far as to call him “a fading brand” at one point.
But by the end of the year, McConnell had lost so much control that he was reduced to endorsing candidates like alleged wife beater and former football star Herschel Walker for a Georgia Senate seat that offers the GOP one of its best pick up chances in 2022. In other words, Trump is now towering over the supposedly masterful McConnell, who is bending like a wet reed to Trump’s every wish.
The Jan. 6 panel is now giving McConnell a glimmer of hope. And after fumbling away all his opportunities to dispense with Trump earlier this year, the least he can do is stoke a little interest and intrigue in what promises to be a fascinating year of revelations.
When the history books reflect on Donald Trump’s presidency, the religious right’s unflinching support of him will surely get a lot of ink. Trump promised the religious right everything it wanted and then some—particularly conservative federal judges and Supreme Court justices who would roll back abortion and marriage equality.
It is obvious why the religious right supported Trump. One thing that has nagged at me for the better part of six years, though, is how they could justify doing so. How could rolling back abortion and marriage equality be so important that some of the same people who pilloried Bill Clinton over character issues were willing to make a Faustian deal with a guy who plastered a news anchor’s personal cell number on social media, mocked the disabled, condoned violence at his rallies and against the media, and reveled in degrading women?
Looking back at how the religious right has done business since it started rearing its ugly head in the late 1970s and early ‘80s seems to reveal at least part of the answer.
All too often, it seems that the nation’s self-declared moral guardians have been willing to forsake Jesus’ warning in Matthew 25 about caring for “the least of these.” They have been willing to throw the vulnerable under the bus for the sake of not only making America great again, but making America Christian again—or more accurately, making America Christianist again.
A stark example of this mentality comes from James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family. Long before he rose to prominence in the late 1980s and early ‘90s as one of the most vocal generals in the religious right army, Dobson was a prolific author. But at least two of his books say a lot about who he really is.
In 1983, he penned a book called Love Must Be Tough, in which he offered advice to individuals and couples in troubled marriages. One of those individuals was “Laura,” a mother of two in a horribly abusive marriage for the last 12 years. According to Dobson’s book, Laura’s husband was two-faced, or at least he was in 1983. While most people knew him as a prominent lawyer and church leader, he frequently went into fits of rage and beat Laura to a bloody pulp before blaming her for the abuse.
A trained psychologist like Dobson would know that there is only one acceptable response to Laura’s question: Tell her to get out, and get out now. For that matter, it shouldn’t take any training to know that marriage died long ago. But incredibly, Dobson told Laura that “divorce is not the answer to this problem.” Rather, he encouraged Laura to “change her husband’s behavior” by taking his most outrageous demands, wadding them up, and throwing them back at him.
Dobson did suggest that Laura move out until her husband “gives her reason to believe he is willing to change.” Only then, he noted, should the process of reconciliation begin. But one shouldn’t need a psychology degree to know that when abuse has gone on for this long, there’s no reconciling, especially when kids are in the situation.
In 2015, R.L. Stollar of Homeschoolers Anonymous, a community of people who share their experiences in the evangelical homeschooling world, discovered that the sage advice from Dobson remained unchanged in the 2007 edition of Love Must Be Tough. The book has gone through four editions, with the advice to Laura remaining the same in all of them; the most recent was in 2010.
Telling Laura to stay in an abusive marriage isn’t the worst thing that has come from Dobson’s pen. That came in 1978 from one of his many books on child-rearing, The Strong-Willed Child. Dobson starts that book by recalling how he took a belt to his 12-pound dachshund, Sigmund Freud, after “Siggie” refused to go to bed. This vile account has remained unchanged through five editions—most recently in 2017. As disturbing as this is on its own, it’s even worse when considering the mountain of evidence that cruelty to animals inevitably leads to cruelty to people.
Dobson still went on to become one of the most powerful voices in the religious right, with the ear of three presidents—including Trump. Watch him give his thoughts about Trump on CBN News.
But how was Dobson even allowed to get to that point? The only plausible conclusion one can draw is that the publishers, pastors, and Christian radio stations who supported Dobson and Focus on the Family were willing to overlook these outrageous statements due to his conservative views on child-rearing, reproductive roles and rights, and the family. A little violence against a senior dog didn’t matter so much when Dobson’s publisher and his audience liked the rest of the book.
This conclusion doesn’t sound so outlandish in light of the religious right still being in thrall to Trump, even in the face of his many depravities. Trump infamously declared in January 2016 that he wouldn’t lose any supporters even if he turned Fifth Avenue into a bloodbath. But in 2020, The New York Times’ religion reporter, Elizabeth Dias, revealed that Trump said something else in that speech.
“I will tell you, Christianity is under tremendous siege, whether we want to talk about it or we don’t want to talk about it,” Mr. Trump said.
Christians make up the overwhelming majority of the country, he said. And then he slowed slightly to stress each next word: “And yet we don’t exert the power that we should have.”
If he were elected president, he promised, that would change. He raised a finger.
“Christianity will have power,” he said. “If I’m there, you’re going to have plenty of power, you don’t need anybody else. You’re going to have somebody representing you very, very well. Remember that.”
Trump gave that speech in a corner of northwestern Iowa that’s one of the most fundified regions of the country. This was the former bailiwick of one of the most odious members ever elected to the House, Steve King. According to Dias, this speech encapsulated why people in this region, and evangelicals as a whole, flocked to Trump. They knew full well he was a gangster, a boor, a bully. But at least he was “the bully who was on their side,” someone who would “restore them to power.”
Seen in this light, the religious right’s continued support for Trump despite his voluminous outrages, as well as its willingness to peddle a false narrative about him, makes more sense. For instance, after the Access Hollywood tapes came out, it seemed like religious right leaders were falling all over themselves to say that his profane words didn’t matter nearly as much as Trump’s promise to appoint line-drawing conservatives to the courts who would roll back abortion and marriage equality. Indeed, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council openly admitted he and other so-called moral guardians were giving Trump a “mulligan” for his past depravities. To service the massive debt he owed them for their support in 2016, Trump just had to give evangelicals what they wanted on policy. During Trump’s first impeachment, pro-Trump pastors actually claimed that those evil liberal Democrats were actually impeaching their values, under the influence of demons.
This nonsense hasn’t let up since Trump left office, even though it has been demonstrated beyond any doubt that Trump was not just lying about the 2020 election being stolen from him, but also incited a deadly insurrection in hopes of stealing another term. For the better part of a year, a number of so-called “prophets” have insisted to everyone who would listen that Trump is the legitimate president, and that God himself will right the terrible wrong done to him. One of them, Johnny Enlow, even declared with a straight face that those who don’t bow and pray to the orange god that he and his fellow moral guardians helped make do so at risk of their salvation.
Sadly, this approach is working among the religious right’s followers. In late September, a poll from the Public Religion Research Institute found that a whopping 61% of white evangelicals believed that Trump had a second term stolen from him. An equally staggering 68% of white evangelicals considered Trump a “true patriot.”
In what world is it possible for people holding themselves out as moral guardians to go all-in for a man whom they know is a thug and a reprobate? And in what world is it possible for a significant segment of a major party’s base to be in thrall with such a man even after it has been amply demonstrated that he is guilty of moral and political corruption at best, and treasonous acts at worst? In the world of the religious right.
With this knowledge in hand, a number of other low moments in the religious right’s worship of Trump suddenly make more sense. The one that sticks out the most came during the battle over Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Almost from the moment Trump picked Kavanaugh to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, the religious right went all-in on the effort to get Kavanaugh that black robe. It’s no surprise: Kavanaugh was Reason 1-B for the religious right prostrating itself before Trump. (Neil Gorsuch was Reason 1-A, and Amy Coney Barrett was Reason 1-C.)
But just how determined the nation’s so-called moral guardians were to get another potential vote against Roe v. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges was revealed when Steve Strang, publisher of Charisma magazine, claimed that Christine Blasey Ford’s claims that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her were no big deal.
For some time, Strang has used his platform as the publisher of the largest Pentecostal/charismatic-oriented magazine in the world to carry water for the religious right, including the effort to bully the country into worshiping Trump. Strang has written two paeans to Trump,God and Donald Trumpand Trump Aftershock, arguing that Trump’s upset victory was a miracle, and that he wasn’t just making America great again, but Christian again—which we’ve of course heard before.
Strang hit absolute bottom in late September, when he told Charisma’s Facebook followers that Kavanaugh should have been confirmed—even if Ford’s allegations of assault were in fact true. As he put it, even if one believed Ford, Kavanaugh was merely engaging in “the kind of nickel and dime stuff that high school kids do.” No, this isn’t snark. Watch him say it.
claims Kavanaugh hustled her into a bedroom, pinned her to the bed, groped her, and covered her mouth. Clearly, Strang believed that behavior that the rest of us would consider ghastly sexual assault didn’t matter as much as another vote against abortion and marriage equality.
While I’ve come to expect very little from Charisma of late, I’ve been befuddled for some time at how Strang felt safe saying something so degrading. But Strang was speaking to a constituency that allowed someone to ascend to an early leadership role after he bragged about animal cruelty. That might explain how Strang’s moral compass could be so warped.
I’m also reminded that a number of supposedly mainstream elements of the pro-life movement have openly declared that nobody should be allowed to get an abortion, even in cases of rape or incest. Most of us in the reality-based world know that denying a rape or incest victim the option of an abortion would have the effect of victimizing them all over again. Further, medical opinion is almost unanimous that it’s far too dangerous to force anyone younger than 13 to keep a pregnancy to term, and even patients as young as 15 risk severe complications if they give birth.
But Marjorie Dannenfelser of the Susan B. Anthony List doesn’t care. In 2015, she told a Christian radio show in Des Moines that “any child at any stage should be protected from conception.” To Dannenfelser’s mind, whenever lawmakers carve out access exceptions for rape and incest in a law restricting abortions, it’s merely “a political judgment” to get it passed. Dannenfelser conceded that as much as she didn’t like a rape and incest exception being included in a bill that would have banned abortion after 20 weeks, the alternative was “no bill at all.” Meanwhile others view such an exception as a matter of basic decency. Silly us.
Former Arkansas governor and two-time presidential candidate Mike Huckabee doesn’t appear to see it that way. In a 2016 appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, discussion turned to the ordeal of a Paraguayan girl who was forced to carry a pregnancy to term after her stepfather brutally raped her:
Huckabee didn’t seem to mind that Paraguay’s ultra-strict abortion laws forced this girl to give birth despite her youth. While conceding that what happened to that girl was “a tragedy,” he claimed that letting her have the option of an abortion would take away “the possibilities that exist for that child.”
The worst example I’ve seen in recent years came from a pair of anti-abortion activists in Alabama, infuriated when a 12-year-old girl was permitted to have an abortion after she was raped by a male relative. A juvenile judge allowed the girl to get a waiver to Alabama’s parental-consent law, and the Court of Civil Appeals let the waiver stand. When local abortion foes Lorie Mullens and Win Johnson heard this decision, they hit the ceiling.
Mullens, who ran a crisis pregnancy center in Montgomery, claimed the girl would be “a perpetrator of this newest violence” if she went through with the abortion. Most crisis pregnancy centers are in the business of scaring women with information that’s inaccurate at best and dangerous at worst, so you can be pardoned for questioning whether Mullens had this girl’s best interests at heart.
On the other hand, Johnson, who ran the Administrative Office of the Courts when Roy Moore was state chief justice, framed the abortion ruling as allowing the girl to “murder her own child in her womb.”
It’s clear: The pro-life movement, and the religious right as a whole, have nothing to do with the sanctity of life, and everything to do with subjugating women. This is a faith with leaders who teach that divorce isn’t ever the answer.
It’s no accident that much of the pro-life movement seems willing to stand against basic human decency. The religious right as a whole speaks to a constituency that is increasingly out of touch with the country. In a March piece for The Washington Post, historian Steven Gillon noted that under the influence of the religious right, the GOP is the party of white Christians—in a time when the country is becoming “less white and less religious” by the day.
Gillon noted that this trend actually dates back to 1984, when Ronald Reagan sealed the alliance between the GOP and the religious right with a golden braid. Since then, white people have gone from 80% of the nation’s population to 60%. While white evangelicals make up only 16% of the overall population, they account for 35% of Republicans—and most of the GOP’s most loyal base. Gillon believes that motivating a dwindling base is why social issues have become the heart of GOP messaging, and also explains the recent rash of voter suppression measures from Republican lawmakers.
Suddenly, the religious right’s pact with Trump makes even more sense. The nation’s self-appointed moral guardians knew the country’s demographics were moving against them, and were willing to listen to anyone who promised them a way to hold onto what they still had, even if he was a reprobate. Along comes Trump, who told them what they wanted to hear: Christians didn’t have nearly enough power, a situation that he would put right if elected. As Dias put it, the religious right was more than willing to support a bully, so long as he promised them power.
From where I’m sitting, though, the religious right was primed to support such a bully long before Trump. It’s the only way to explain how Dobson was ever in a position to become what passes for mainstream in the religious right, despite espousing views that any right-thinking person would consider repugnant. It’s not too big of a leap to go from accepting such a man as a leader to embracing a man who became the most unfit and unqualified president in our history. Clearly, Trump didn’t expose a bug in the religious right, he exposed a feature.
Perhaps Dobson would never have been allowed to amass the power and influence he still retained after leaving Focus on the Family in 2010 had the repugnant views he espoused in Love Must Be Tough and The Strong-Willed Child gotten greater notice. It’s not too late for him to get a long-overdue dose of accountability. Those books are still available for sale in mainstream bookstores around the country. They’re also available from many Christian outlets, like Lifeway and Christian Book Distributors. I wonder what would happen if people reached out to these retailers and shared the worst of his writings.
Inevitably, Dobson would frame it as an attempt to “cancel” him. Far from it. Perhaps if Dobson learns that lesson, the religious right will begin to understand that no cause, no amount of power, is ever so important that the innocent must be trampled in order to further it.
I have a deep, visceral mistrust for anyone who says God is on their side. When has Providence ever sorted winners and losers like this? Didn’t we learn better from the bloody Crusades? Or centuries of ruinous sectarian violence? Or Tim Tebow’s NFL career?
Of course, these days we’re meant to believe that God is on the side of the vast majority of the people unnecessarily dying of COVID-19—because that’s what they keep claiming. Apparently, he’s calling them home to tell them to their faces that they’re fucking cretins.
So this kind of thing isn’t new. Not at all. And the idea that God picked Donald Trump for something other than beta-testing debilitating brain parasites is basically an article of faith among Republicans these days. But last weekend, during the latest leg of the conservative Reawaken America tour, Trump scion Eric outdid them all. (Yeah, I could have written this sooner, but I was trapped near the inner circle of thought.)
Watch:
Eric Trump says “God was watching down” on his father’s 2016 campaign and “will watch us again in 2024.” pic.twitter.com/e2Gs20vPiV
ERIC TRUMP: “By the way, believe me, talking about religion? Hillary outraised us like six to one, all right? We raised $300 million. A lot of that was money he put in himself, which was like the first time a politician had ever done that in history, actually putting their own money into a race. So we had $300 million. She raised $1.5 to $1.6 billion, right? So, believe me, God was watching down on us, because there’s no way you would have been on the stage right now. There’s no way you would have been on the stage if someone wasn’t looking down and watching. By the way, he’s going to watch us again in 2024. Believe me, he’s going to watch us again in 2024.”
So God made Trump president in 2016, took a breather in 2020, and will get back to it in 2024? I have a hard time believing that. In fact, after congressional Republicans refused to give the Trump impeachment evidence a fair look in late 2019, God almost immediately sent a plague. Sure looks to me like God wasn’t terribly keen on another four years. If Trump ever wins again, I fully expect hailstones the size of Louie Gohmert’s head.
Of course, you’ll also be shocked to learn that Eric is lying about the amount of money each candidate had at their disposal in 2016. Then again, if I checked every feverish Trump family statement for accuracy, my Googlin’ fingers would all look like ruddy Christmas hams by now. They don’t—yet—but give it another year. And the bit about Trump being the first candidate to ever kick in his own money for a campaign? I won’t even bother to check that one, because Jesus Christ, dude.
People who claim they know God’s motivations are almost always swindlers—at least in my experience. I mean, I can thank God for the $20 I found on the sidewalk—and if He actually arranged for me to find it there, yeah, that’s nice. But someone else lost it. Meanwhile, plenty of kids continue to get cancer for no discernible reason. Is God too busy to help them because He wants to put the most venal man on the planet back in charge of the most powerful nation in history?
Again, I have a bit of a hard time believing that. Unfortunately, the kinds of people Eric talks to these days will believe just about anything.
Contrary to Donald Trump’s usual attempts to pulverize reality into an unrecognizable heap of dust he can power-snort directly into his fib-pickled brain, the Trump-Russia investigation was neither a witch hunt nor a hoax.
For one thing, Robert Mueller’s report—which former Attorney General Bill Barr (mostly successfully) hid from public scrutiny like a 3-year-old flushing a poopy Underoo—identified at least 10 instances of likely obstruction on the part of our erstwhile pr*sident. The report flatly stated that Trump “engaged in a second phase of conduct, involving public attacks on the investigation, non-public efforts to control it, and efforts both in public and private to encourage witnesses not to cooperate with the investigation.”
That sure smells like obstruction to me, and because Trump’s involved, it’s also faintly redolent of deep-fried lard pops with rainbow sprinkles. Unfortunately, Republicans in Congress and elsewhere have taken it as an article of faith that Trump was fully exonerated by Mueller, even though Mueller pointedly stated he’d done no such thing. But Republicans have long since decided to pretend that the most corrupt and dishonest human ever to sully this nation’s shores is America’s true savior and lone beacon of truth.
But despite Republicans’ efforts to sweep Trump-Russia collusion under the rug, it’s still there. And occasionally Rep. Adam Schiff, a dogged critic of Trump who was front-and-center during the venal makeup mannequin’s first impeachment, brings some of that dirt back out to show everyone what Trump really was—and is.
Here he was on Thursday, slapping down yet another lost GOP sheep, Kentucky Rep. James Comer:
Yesterday, a Republican said he’d be excited if I would share the facts of Trump’s Russia collusion with him. I was more than happy to take him up on his offer. He was less happy when I did. pic.twitter.com/D74zC044at
COMER: “Mr. Speaker, every time Chairman Schiff rises to speak about intelligence and security and holding the president accountable, I get excited hoping that we’re going to hear about that evidence of collusion and all the other investigations that were conducted in this House over the past year … I’ll yield back, absolutely.”
SCHIFF: “Will the gentleman yield? Will the gentleman yield? Well, let me ask the gentleman, are you aware, just by way of illustration, that the president’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, secretly met with an agent of Russian intelligence and provided Russian intelligence with internal campaign polling data as well as strategic insights about their strategy in key battleground states? Are you aware of that?”
COMER: “I think everyone’s aware of every bit of information that you all have tried to peddle over the past four years.”
SCHIFF: “Let me ask you, are you aware that while the Trump campaign chairman was providing internal polling data that Kremlin intelligence was leading a clandestine social media campaign to elect Donald Trump? Are you aware of that?”
COMER: “I think we see every day, Facebook just announced that Russia was trying to do a Facebook campaign in Ukraine, if I remember reading that correctly. Mr. Schiff …
SCHIFF: “Would you like me to go on?”
I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want you to go on, Rep. Schiff. But I can, if you don’t mind.
In fact, collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia wasn’t just proven—it was a flashing red light that should have been widely acknowledged as a scandal for the ages.
As Franklin Foer, a staff writer for The Atlantic, noted in Aug. 2020, Manafort was in near-constant contact with a bona fide Russian agent during the 2016 presidential election campaign:
When Mueller’s prosecutors appeared in court, in February 2019, they implied that the most troubling evidence they had uncovered implicated Manafort, the Trump campaign chairman. This wasn’t a surprising admission. Throughout their filings, Mueller’s team referred to Manafort’s Kyiv-based aide-de-camp, Konstantin Kilimnik, as an active Russian agent. Manafort had clearly spoken with Kilimnik during the campaign, and had even passed confidential campaign information to him, with the understanding that the documents would ultimately arrive in the hands of oligarchs close to the Kremlin.
Well, there’s your collusion, Rep. Comer. Pretty cut and dried. But that’s not all!
The Senate Select Committee’s Aug. 2020 report on Russian interference in the 2016 election went into great detail about Manafort’s Russian connections, but it didn’t get nearly the attention the long-anticipated Mueller report had. Nevertheless, it was damning.
The committee fills in the gaps somewhat. It reports that Manafort and Kilimnik talked almost daily during the campaign. They communicated through encrypted technologies set to automatically erase their correspondence; they spoke using code words and shared access to an email account. It’s worth pausing on these facts: The chairman of the Trump campaign was in daily contact with a Russian agent, constantly sharing confidential information with him. That alone makes for one of the worst scandals in American political history.
And in case you think Trump himself was innocent in all this, think again:
When Manafort—with a pardon dangling in front of him—brazenly lied to prosecutors, he helped save Trump from having to confront this damning story. He wasn’t the only Trump associate to obstruct justice. (The committee has referred five Trump aides and supporters to the Justice Department for possibly providing false testimony.) By undermining investigators, Trump’s cronies rendered Mueller’s report a hash lacking a firm conclusion. They helped detonate the charge of collusion, letting it fizzle well ahead of the 2020 election.
And, of course, in one of the most corrupt moves in U.S. presidential history, Trump later pardoned Manafort, his confederate in collusion.
One can only hope Trump will face his comeuppance before too long—and it appears New York Attorney General Letitia James is bound and determined to make that happen. In the meantime, we all need to speak up whenever MAGAs try to claim the Russia investigation was nothing but a hoax—because, in reality, it clearly exposed Trump as the corrupt asshole we always knew he was.