Jan. 6 Committee vice-chair Liz Cheney publicly disclosed Sunday that a witness cooperating with the insurrection probe has privately testified that during the assault on the Capitol, former President Donald Trump sat by and watched it unfold on television as police were viciously beaten and his supporters overran the building.
This bit of information is something that has been widely suspected by those who have followed the committee’s investigation closely—and even by some who have not. Trump’s silence and inaction for 187 minutes on Jan. 6 were palpable as the riot exploded. But precisely what he was doing, who he spoke to, or what he said in that window remains, for now, a subject of some mystery.
The implications are unprecedented.
Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, divulged the firsthand witness testimony on Face the Nation this past weekend as she fielded questions from host Margaret Brennan about the criminal culpability of Trump’s abject failure to act that day.
Cheney said on Sunday:
“The committee is obviously going to follow the facts wherever they lead. We’ve made tremendous progress. If you think about, for example, what we know now about what the former president was doing on the 6th while the attack was underway. The committee has firsthand testimony that President Trump was sitting in the dining room next to the Oval Office, watching on television as the Capitol was assaulted as the violence occurred. We know that that is clearly a supreme dereliction of duty. One of the things that the committee is looking at from the perspective of our legislative purpose is whether we need enhanced penalties for that kind of dereliction of duty. But we’ve certainly never seen anything like that as a nation before.”
The @January6thCmte has first-hand testimony that former President Trump sat and watched the assault on the Capitol on live TV, rather than taking immediate action to tell his supporters to stand down and leave the Capitol. pic.twitter.com/rAxBUq4Dry
During a separate appearance on Sunday with ABC News, Cheney further illuminated the committee’s findings. Cheney said a firsthand witness testified that Ivanka Trump, the former president’s daughter and then senior adviser, pleaded with Trump at least twice to do something to quell the violence.
Ivanka’s pleas have been reported elsewhere before. In Peril, a book on the Trump administration by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, the Washington Post reporters said that Ivanka tried to get Trump to step in no less than three times on Jan. 6.
“Let this thing go. Let it go,” Ivanka reportedly said.
“We know, as he was sitting there in the dining room next to the Oval Office, members of his staff were pleading with him to go on television, to tell people to stop,” Cheney said on ABC. “We know [House GOP] Leader [Kevin] McCarthy was pleading with him to do that.”
McCarthy has admitted openly to calling Trump on Jan. 6. During the former president’s second impeachment—this time for incitement of insurrection— Republican Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington shared McCarthy’s accounting of his tense phone call with Trump. McCarthy pleaded with the president to issue a statement that could calm the mob, and Trump effectively refused, insisting it wasn’t his supporters responsible for the melee but antifa.
McCarthy has been asked to voluntarily comply with the committee’s requests for his records and testimony. A threat of a formal subpoena looms. So far, just two other lawmakers have been hit with a voluntary compliance request, including Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania. Neither Jordan nor Perry have said they will comply, queuing up a likely bitter legal showdown between Trump crony legislators and the probe. Committee chair Bennie Thompson has indicated uncertainty over the panel’s power to subpoena fellow legislators.
Representatives for Jordan and Perry have not returned multiple requests for comment.
Appearing on Meet the Press Sunday, Thompson also reiterated the committee’s findings—and concerns—about the 187 minutes that Trump went silent.
Just before Christmas, the Mississippi Democrat told The Washington Post that the select committee believes, based on the records, evidence, and testimony it has obtained thus far, that Trump may have recorded several videos on Jan. 6 addressing his supporters before finally releasing a bizarre one-minute clip.
Thompson has said that Trump’s many reshoots of that clip, or one like it, were necessary because he “wouldn’t say the right thing.”
Thompson told Meet the Press this Sundaythat the committee has already asked the National Archives to provide investigators with any related videos it might have that have yet to be remitted.
The anniversary of the attack falls this week, and with it, plans are underway on Capitol Hill to hold a solemn ceremony marking the day, including a moment of silence for lives lost. Trump has announced plans to hold a press conference at Mar-a-Lago.
“He’s doing this press conference on the sixth,” Cheney said on Sunday. “If he makes those same claims [of election fraud], he’s doing it with the complete understanding of what those claims have caused in the past.”
The committee’s work meanwhile continues unabated, with public hearings imminent. More than 300 witnesses have already testified, and the committee has obtained reams of documents from cooperative probe targets.
Appearing on CNN on Sunday, Thompson said the committee would determine “whether or not what occurred on Jan. 6 was a comedy of errors or a planned effort on the part of certain individuals.”
Adding to the bevy of witnesses already called, the committee also plans to haul in state and local election officials for testimony. They also will take statements from members of the National Guard. Much confusion and uncertainty still reign over why assistance to the Capitol was so long delayed.
Democracy came perilously close to being lost on Jan. 6, Thompson told CNN.
“Before we just run out with a story we can’t defend, we will get to what we believe is the truth, and that’s the charge that we have as a committee,” he added.
Thompson also urged that if, in the course of its probe, committee members unearth evidence that they think “warrants review or recommendation” to the Justice Department, then they will do just that.
“We’re not looking for it, but if we find it, we’ll absolutely make the referral,” Thompson said.
In an appeal to the Supreme Court, Trump has balked at the committee’s position to disclose evidence of criminal wrongdoing to the Justice Department if necessary. The former president alleges the committee is acting outside the scope of its authority by weighing such referrals and thus has no constitutionally protected purpose.
Lower courts, however, have said the “mere prospect that misconduct might be exposed” in the course of an investigation does not alter the committee’s authority.
Whether the committee issues a criminal referral for Trump or not, Cheney emphasized a profound need for legislative review, at the least.
“I think that there are a number, as the chairman said, of potential criminal statutes at issue here. But I think there’s absolutely no question that it was a dereliction of duty. I think one of the things the committee needs to look at as we’re looking at legislative purpose is whether we need enhanced penalties for that dereliction of duty,” she said.
Even though Trump is out of office, his influence in Washington and elsewhere in the U.S. is still being felt and has shown no sign of slowing down. His messaging about voter fraud, for example, has buoyed the Republican argument against the expansion of voting rights in the U.S.
In a letter to Senate colleagues on Monday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer highlighted this dynamic as the anniversary of the attempted overthrow approaches.
“It was attacked in a naked attempt to derail our Republic’s most sacred tradition: the peaceful transfer of power,” Schumer said.
Considering this and in reflection of a year that found Republicans rebuffing every bid by Democrats to expand voting rights legislatively, Schumer announced that the Senate would debate and later vote on changes to its own filibuster rules by Jan. 17 if Republicans don’t get out of the way.
“The Senate must advance systemic democracy reforms to repair our republic, or else the events of that day will not be an aberration— they will be the new norm. We as Senate Democrats must urge the public in a variety of different ways to impress upon their Senators the importance of acting and reforming the Senate rules if that becomes a prerequisite for action to save our democracy,” Schumer wrote.
I have a lot of guilt about Jan. 6. I was assigned to cover the certification of the election that day and I expected it to be rowdy—D.C. is a protest town, after all. What ultimately unfolded that afternoon was the stuff my nightmares had been made of for weeks. A sickly anxiety bubbled up in me for the first time in earnest last September during a White House press conference, former President Donald Trump said openly that he wouldn’t commit to a peaceful transfer of power.
I wasn’t naïve. I covered his presidency from its inception. I knew who he was, I knew what he was capable of. I had listened to him baselessly cast doubt over mail-in ballots for months before the attack on the Capitol. I remembered his self-proclaimed jest about abolishing presidential term limits during an interview with Chuck Todd.
And I knew how devout his voters were—some of them had spit on me in 2016 for the sin of doing my job in their presence when I covered one of his rallies. I spent many weekends and late nights privately discussing how dangerous I believed the cult around him had become since the early days of his campaign.
So, as we careened toward January 2021, I quietly and often wondered if America was approaching a dangerous cliff. To my ear, Trump wasn’t just bloviating after his defeat. He was forecasting with his ‘Stop the Steal’ blathering. He was angry. And few things are scarier to me than a bitter man with great power and a historically absent sense of humor. Trump is not a man who takes losing well because his giant ego simply cannot allow it.
But I didn’t want to sound alarmist. I didn’t want to give him more power than he already had. He was, after all, a Mango Mussolini. His presidency and his powers were waning, so of course, I told myself, he would go down whining all the way.
But his cries of fraud came faster and clearer. I started questioning if it were truly possible for the U.S. to fall over some ragged edge into an autocracy. I feared the cowardly obedience of sycophants and the corrupt acquiescence of officials who would torch democracy, flawed though it may be, on little more than empty promises from a longtime charlatan.
By early November, I was spent emotionally and physically. I gave myself some cold comfort when writing a piece the month before about the so-called guardrails built into the Constitution. I trusted the voices I interviewed on and off the record, but the nagging gnawing worry was still there.
I would go to sleep most nights having dreams where Trump’s voice reverberated in my head, though his words were incomprehensible.
I’m getting paranoid, I’m overdoing it, I thought. I needed a break. I was working full time and had been caring for my dying mother. So, I cashed in some vacation hours for the days around the election.
That way, I told myself, when the day finally rolled around, I would go out, cast my vote, take my mom to vote, and go home. I wouldn’t be knee-deep in the shit. I would instead listen from a distance. I would bake bread. I would knead dough until my knuckles hurt. I had done my duty for four years, I told myself. I was sitting out election night. I did not feel bad about that.
It was “self-care” and for just a while, I felt light.
Then the votes were counted and eventually, Biden was declared the rightful winner. There was exhalation.
I returned to work. The heaviness returned with me.
After election night, after tabulations, more and more I imagined Trump prowling the Oval Office, pacing or cursing his cronies as they gathered about him to offer their reassurances or schemes. Or both.
Then it was Jan. 6. There had been promises of wild protests to come. My anxiety was ratcheted up.
I stayed up late the night before the assault. I checked and rechecked my camera a hundred times if I did it once, before finally crawling into bed. It was charged. My backup batteries were ready. I packed my bag neatly with a first aid kit stowed inside, as well as a small tube of pepper spray.
During the Floyd demonstrations, I rarely if ever felt unsafe. I never hid my press badge. The only harm to befall me during those many weeks was when police pepper-sprayed me and others as I reported on those exercising their right to assemble.
But on the eve of Jan. 6, I worried about pro-Trump street brawlers. They had been in Washington in December and a month before that, I recorded a caravan of his devotees speeding down the highway in considerable number. Two days before the certification, I noticed such an inordinate number of cars in my Northern Virginia neighborhood with out-of-state plates—Georgia, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Florida—that I started to tally them up on scrap paper between red lights each time I saw them in.
What is going on? I would say aloud to no one in particular.
My trust was low, my cynicism high.
I dressed on the morning of Jan. 6 in jeans and a black hoodie and a leather jacket and shoved my press badge down my shirt. I wanted to blend in the best I could. I felt the hard plastic stick to my chest. Unlike the Floyd demonstrations, I didn’t want anyone to know off the rip that I was press.
I traded out my surgical mask for one that looked like the U.S. flag. I got one for Jack Rodgers, my friend and fellow reporter who would cover the day with me. I shoved $20 in my shoe in case of an emergency. I wrote my mother’s name and cell phone number on my forearm in marker. I shoved my camera into my jacket and hid the strap under the bulk.
While it was barely light out, I drove to Maryland to pick up Jack and we hauled it into D.C., talking about how long the day would be.
I asked Jack to remember that day recently and he described the morning perfectly in an email to me: “cold, windy, overcast,” he wrote. It was “a day that settled into a generally uneasy haze,” he recalled.
We knew many Republican legislators would object to the counting of electoral votes and we expected, after grabbing some photos and interviews outside of the Capitol that morning, to spend the day in the press gallery in the House of Representatives, writing until our fingers cramped.
When we finally got into the district and approached a parking garage near the Capitol—street closures were in effect—we saw Trump’s supporters everywhere, walking, driving, emerging from train stations.
Jack recalled recently to me the rows of boarded-up shop windows.
“We saw cars and trucks around us, some painted with anti-Biden language in washable dye on their doors. But what most of the vehicles had in common were that they were from out of state—Georgia, Texas, North Carolina,” he said.
Pulling into a garage, we queued behind a line of trucks adorned with Trump paraphernalia. Supporters were streaming in and out of the garage on foot.
“I saw cars were following one another down a spiraling, underground garage. The thought of navigating a winding, underground space if something were to go wrong didn’t sit well with me, as we slowly approached the initial ramp into the unknown,” Jack wrote to me this week.
We didn’t want to get stuck underground, but options were few. As our turn with the parking attendant was coming up and we considered the subterranean option, we noticed a lone empty spot near the ground level exit right next to the attendant’s station.
We joked to each other: How much does that spot cost?
We greased the attendant with $20.
We parked in it and popped out into the street with crowds already building and flowing in a chaotic mass toward the Ellipse. It was a sea of black, blue, and red with giant pops of yellow from Gadsden flags fluttering high on makeshift flagpoles. I noticed men wearing shirts honoring the confederacy or heralding Trump’s 2020, 2024, and 2028 presidencies. Three Percenter insignia and ubiquitous symbols of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers were never far from view. There was a lot of camouflage.
If I stared too long at anyone, trying to assess how to approach for an interview, my gaze was often met with a furrowed brow or hard eyes. I looked through my viewfinder at one point, scanning throngs walking toward the Ellipse. I focused my lens on a group of men who then stared in my direction. They signaled to each other and then to me before walking my way. I moved quickly into the crowd to lose them.
“We took refuge near a federal building,” Jack remembered. “We were conscious about being near a law enforcement officer or some federal structure. We wanted to feel like we were protected.”
I reemerged in the middle of a street and this time, bumped into an elderly woman with a dark cowboy hat. She was with her husband and as waves of people passed by, she asked me to take their picture. Smiling with noses tinged red from the cold, they were euphoric. Their mood was so light and so in contrast with the more foreboding characters around them, that once the ice was broken with a photo, I started interviewing.
They were there to support their president. He asked them to be there, she said.
She was beaming.
I asked if I could take a picture of my own and without hesitation, they huddled together and let me snap their photo. That was the last and probably most normal thing I remember seeing that day: an older couple lovingly holding each other and smiling for a camera.
We walked further into the crowd. There were whiffs of beer, cigarette smoke, and occasionally, the faint aroma of marijuana. There were loud whoops and yells of excitement. There was music somewhere. There was a muffled voice yelling angrily through a speakerphone in the distance. There were chirps from police cars somewhere, trying to direct traffic.
The crowd was overwhelmingly white and male. Some men wore flak jackets. I saw a few men with helmets on. I remember a man with kneepads. Another with elbow guards and gloves and rope dangling from his waist. It took a split second to reconcile in my brain that they were wearing the gear for their protection. The rope didn’t register at all. I looked in the crowd for police and saw very few.
During the Floyd protests, I couldn’t swing my arm without hitting an officer.
“I remember the busyness of it all, the throngs of eventual rioters seeming to swirl into the street in a searching, grasping manner. The underlying feeling of trepidation and uncertainty as the nation lurched through a state of purgatory in anticipation of President Joe Biden’s inauguration. The fear of being seriously harmed for doing my job,” Jack said.
It was around this time I felt a shift in the air. It’s hard to describe and harder yet to believe when it is described, but when you have spent many months covering protests or otherwise large events, you attune yourself to energetic shifts in a space. Sometimes there’s an electricity in the air. Sometimes there’s that ‘pregnant pause.’ Sometimes there’s a sudden hush that falls.
In these moments, I’ve learned to start looking around.
I saw shoulders hunched high at the neck. I saw mouths pulled tautly and eyes darting around. I watched hand gestures flail wildly and observed fists clenching and opening. I could hear people cursing. There was a bad feeling and Trump had not even spoken yet. It was almost as if a message had swept through the crowd for them to tighten up and forgo the revelries.
That euphoria I saw on the older woman’s face was nowhere in the faces around me now.
We kept walking for a short moment and as we did, I locked eyes with a man passing by with straggly blonde hair and a white puffer coat hanging wide open.
He had a face mask covering his mouth though not his nose. And on the mask was a giant red, unmistakable swastika. He rushed right past me, and then another man blew by, this one with Nazi ephemera sewn to a bag he had draped over his arm. His forearm was exposed, and I noticed an SS tattoo.
I stopped in my tracks, and I turned to Jack.
I had been pushing myself so hard to get to this moment, to see the end of this presidency, to close this chapter. But every instinct in my body was now screaming at me to self-preserve at all costs.
Who would care for my mother if I get hurt today? played on a loop in my head.
“I have a bad feeling,” I said. “I think we should get a few more photos and get the hell out of here.”
I pulled out my camera to assess what I had shot so far. The battery light blinked twice and the camera died. I cursed it, grabbed a fresh battery pack, and slid that into place. The camera turned on. I started to flip through the images. I cursed again. The photos were too dark. It had been overcast and I didn’t have a flash. I checked the shutter speed—it was set too fast. How did that happen? I had been so careful.
In the middle of telling Jack the bad news about our photos, my camera died again. I was livid now. I fetched yet another battery. I slid that one into place. Now the camera wouldn’t come on at all. It didn’t make any sense.
We were making a slight spectacle of ourselves standing there. There was still time until certification and I live just over the Potomac, so I suggested going back to my house where I could get new batteries and upload whatever salvageable photos I had before returning to the Capitol.
On the walk to the garage, there were fewer people on the street. They had mostly congregated by the Ellipse and were preparing to listen to Trump’s remarks—remarks that would eventually earn him an incitement to insurrection charge in his second impeachment. Remarks that nearly got some of my friends killed. Remarks that led to the deaths of police officers and to hundreds of injuries. Remarks that inspired Ashli Babbitt to breach a federal building thinking she was invincible. Remarks that led her to disregard multiple verbal warnings as she tried to breach a congressional chamber. Remarks that left her bleeding on the floor, sucking for air as her life needlessly drained from her body and her compatriots mostly stood around, watching her die.
Long before Babbitt’s death, when we were finally at my house, Trump’s rally and the morning’s speeches were unfolding rapidly.
We listened to Rudy Giuliani call for “trial by combat” and we looked at each other. Few things could really shake us at that point in Trump’s presidency but this rhetoric was so baldly inflammatory in light of what we had seen that morning that a surge of goosebumps ran up my arms.
It didn’t feel safe to return. We worried about bomb threats. Our concern would prove perfectly reasonable in no time when pipe bombs were later discovered at the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee buildings.
Maybe once the crowd had dispersed from his speech at the Ellipse, we could head back for the count itself, we said. We didn’t realize people were already on their way to breach the Capitol at this time.
Jack was assigned to cover Trump’s speech. He sat at my desk in my home office to write while I fleshed out paragraphs for the impending certification story.
Trump droned on for over an hour, spewing lie after lie about election fraud. We flipped between video feed from his speech and the House and Senate chambers where certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory would soon be underway.
The next sequence is a blur. Pence released a letter saying he would not object to the count, I hurriedly wrote two pieces at once. The proceedings were going and I next remember Rep. Jim McGovern standing at the dais and calling for order before abruptly recessing.
The next few hours we spent writing and watching in shock while updating our story every few minutes. We texted friends inside the Capitol. People texted us to ask if we were okay. Jack remembered in our recent conversation how we received emergency broadcast alerts on our phones detailing statewide curfews in Virginia in response to the insurrection.
We were safe. But it was only chance, only dumb luck, that had brought us to this safe harbor. I apologized to Jack profusely, not knowing what had happened with the camera. I still don’t know. He was reassuring and grateful not to be hurt.
We ate pizza in my living room with our eyes glued to CSPAN and listened closely when Mitch McConnell, if but for that moment, finally divorced himself from Trump, saying there was no fraud, the election was not close and the electoral college margin was almost identical to what it was in 2016.
For the rest of my life, I will be able to hear Jacob Chansley’s guttural scream during the breach of the Capitol when I call that day back in my head. I didn’t know who or what it was when I heard it the first time. His yell carried in the background noise of live footage that afternoon that was being broadcast by CSPAN. But it was so out of place, so raw. It is seared into my brain.
The rioters broke something sacred that day and I will forever associate Chansley’s moan as the signifier of that break.
Now, almost a year later, I find myself still struggling with guilt. I should have been in the Capitol. I should have had another battery. Why did this happen? I pride myself on being prepared and having contingencies for my contingencies. Yet everything fell apart that day.
“Neither you nor I will ever have a story about pushing furniture against the door of a Congressional office to prevent incensed Trump supporters from breaking through. We’ll never have to live with the sound of rioters trying to break onto the House floor, like Rep. Jason Crowe, Rep. Bennie Thompson or Rep. Peter Welch, to name only a few,” Jack said to me recently. “What I still reflect on is the guilt both of us felt. The regret for having not been with our colleagues and members of Congress as they endured one of the most terrifying and paralyzing moments in our nation’s history. The ostracizing feeling of having watched some of our friends endure potential violence from the security of home.”
I only managed to get one picture off my memory card that was even remotely usable. It was so dark I had to use Photoshop to brighten it and it was of such bad quality that my editor didn’t care to use it even when we ran the story that day:
Was down on the Hill this morning before the melee and noted the distress or danger position of the Trump banner flown. Apologies for quality, had issues with brightness due to very overcast morning and shoddy camera function. @CourthouseNewspic.twitter.com/McUgNx3tqO
Now the first anniversary of the insurrection approaches. Talking about this piece, Jack said it was easier to look back now and dismiss the feelings of guilt.
“The individual responsibility of reporting what we saw and what we knew about the moment, weighed heavily on both of us after a month of traveling to the District and reporting on the racial justice movement in D.C.,” he said.
Like me, he’s done some introspective searching. That guilt is an “ongoing project,” he said.
“Like most truths, I think multifaceted reasons exist: I’m over-conflating responsibility to whatever I understand is my duty as a reporter, for example,” he said.
Sifting through the memories with me, some of the other details have grown fuzzy. It’s harder to recall what his family said when they texted him, frightened for his safety. It’s harder for him to remember what we discussed over a beer in that miserable afterglow of the attack.
”But I’ll never forget the underpinning feeling of uncertainty of that day or the National Mall vibrating with angry, insidious activity,” he said.
Some things are quite different now. Some things are very much the same.
Now I cover the insurrection at the Capitol on a regular basis, but I do it for a new organization. Now when I go out into the field, I won’t write my mother’s name on my arm but instead I choose someone who is alive to bail me out or identify my body. I don’t get to write with Jack all the time anymore or decompress with him, one of the few people who experienced this time in history with me up close.
Now, I get off at a decent hour. Now, I sleep a lot better. For now, my every waking moment is not consumed by a man hellbent on retaining power at all costs.
Amid all these many changes, however, there is a frightening consistency since Jan. 6: Many of the people who were willing to endanger our democracy a year ago are still very much in the ranks of our government today.
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.
Earlier this year, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat and member of the Jan. 6 committee, compiled and released a report. Its contents feature the comprehensive statements of sitting U.S. lawmakers who nearly a year ago posted messages on social media endorsing former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.
They are lawmakers who, as seen in this badland of their own admissions, sometimes reveled in Trump’s lies as rioters—many armed with makeshift weapons—scrambled up the marble facade of the Capitol. They are lawmakers who objected to the certification of votes after people were maimed and killed. They are lawmakers who, until today, have chosen to overwhelmingly stand behind these statements while continuing to prop up moldering delusions about a victory never won.
As the anniversary of the insurrection looms, plans are underway for public hearings hosted by the Jan. 6 committee. Solemn events commemorating the sacrifices made by those who defended the Capitol will be held. The former president, who incited the insurrection and found himself impeached by Congress for that conduct, has plans to hold something he believes resembles a press conference. If the hundreds of rallies he led and thousands of statements he made over four years of his presidency are any indicator, his event at Mar-a-Lago on Jan. 6 will be nothing more than a dusting off of sad old songs.
The following are excerpts from Lofgren’s nearly 2,000-page social media review. The following is not a comprehensive representation. To see everything, click this link. These statements do not deserve to be relegated to the shadowy corners of our nation’s collective memory. To forget them, to ignore them, is to treat democracy like it is guaranteed. If nothing else, Jan. 6 served as a reminder that it is not.
Rep. Mo Brooks, a Republican from Alabama, posted messages on social media repeatedly before the insurrection casting doubt on the validity of mail-in ballots and suggesting, baselessly, that a “criminal element” was at hand courtesy of Democrats. He also shared disinformation from Breitbart.
This December, ‘Stop the Steal’ movement founder Ali Alexander told investigators on the Jan. 6 committee that he exchanged a text message with Brooks in the run-up to the attack. Brooks initially denied communicating with Alexander. This week Brooks admitted to the text and as noted by the Alabama Political Reporter, he played it down. It was “so innocuous and forgettable that Congressman Brooks did not recall it,” a spokesperson for Brooks told APR.
The text from Alexander to Brooks:
“Congressman, this is Ali Alexander. I am the founder of Stop the Steal, the protests happening in all 50 states,” Alexander wrote in the text, shared by Brooks. “We met years ago back in 2010, during the tea party when you were first elected. I texted the wrong number. I had intended to invite you to our giant Saturday prayer rally in DC, this past weekend. Also Gen. (Michael) Flynn should be giving you a ring. We stand ready to help. Jan 6th is a big moment in our republic.”
Alexander also said he spoke to Arizona Republican Paul Gosar. Gosar, was censured by the House in November for sharing a video depicting the murder of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking President Joe Biden. Alexander also claimed to have spoken to Rep. Andy Biggs, another Arizona Republican. Gosar, Brooks, and Biggs are members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus. Lofgren’s social media report also archives multiple public remarks from Gosar and Biggs.
Brooks on Nov 5:
“But in a bigger sense, part of the problem is the uncertainty interjected into the election process by this early mailing of ballots en masse… The only weakness in the Alabama system is that you don’t really know if a person is an American citizen who can lawfully vote, and that’s because the Democrats out of Washington, D.C. have made it extraordinarily difficult for election officials to determine if a person is a United States citizen when they register to vote… Well of course Democrats want that kind of process because it has more vulnerabilities to election fraud. And the Democrats are renown for engaging in election fraud, voter fraud, election theft, however you want to categorize it… You don’t see the Democrats doing anything at all that minimizes the risk of election fraud, of non-citizens voting. Everything that the Democrats seemingly push for, creates another weakness that the criminal element that wants to steal elections can exploit… I have concerns about all of them… I’ll tell you right now, I don’t have confidence, if Joe Biden is reportedly elected President of the United States, I do not have confidence that the person who would be sworn in, was sworn in because that person in fact got the lawful votes needed to win the electoral college… based on all of the things I know about election theft and voter fraud from the past, coupled with how much easier it is to steal an election or engage in voter fraud with this system that the Democrats have been so successful in implementing around the country that has weakened my and a lot of other[s’] faith in the system.”
As a U.S. House member, I’m going to be very hesitant to certify the results of this election if Joe Biden is declared the winner under these circumstances b/c I lack faith that this was an honest election. Listen to my interview on @WVNN where I explain why. pic.twitter.com/BFN9wrMfWC
Jeffrey Clark, a former Department of Justice attorney, focused on Georgia as a part of his alleged attempt to oust former Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen at Trump’s behest and install himself. Rosen ultimately refused to go along with a pressure campaign.
IMHO, Joe Biden DID NOT win lawful vote majority in Georgia. Per its right & duty, Congress should reject any Georgia submission of 16 electoral college votes for Joe Biden. That is EXACTLY what I hope to help do. See below lawsuit for more! SORDID!https://t.co/B4wxjGZaaB
Brooks continued well into December, addressing Trump on Twitter and making claims of “illegal alien block votes” influencing the election.
My pleasure, Mr. President. Joe Biden must not be allowed to "win" election by "buying" illegal alien block votes via amnesty & citizenship promise to 11+ million illegal aliens. IMHO, if only lawful votes by eligible Americans counted, you won electoral college & reelection. https://t.co/vDcvCGtlnZ
Before a segment where Brooks said the 2020 election was plagued by the “worst election theft in the history of the United States,” the host of Fox & Friends First opened the show saying Brooks had “earned him[self] a big thank you from President Trump.”
“THIS IS THE WORST ELECTION THEFT IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.” - Alabama Congressman @RepMoBrooks says he’ll challenge the Electoral College vote when Congress convenes after the holidays to finalize the election results.https://t.co/ByoA10bhOG
Joined by two dozen fellow Republicans, Brooks called on Attorney General William Barr to investigate in Georgia. He also objected to counts in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Wisconsin, Texas, Arizona, Michigan, and elsewhere. He railed against Mitch McConnell when the former Senate majority leader warned Republicans not to object on Jan. 6.
Roughly two weeks before the Capitol attack, Brooks called on Americans to fight, saying: “The Socialist Democrats have successfully stolen votes from the American people in2020 and we need to fight and take it back.”
All throughout American history, time after time, American men and women have stood strong and fought for their country. That’s what we need to do now! pic.twitter.com/xoNvZIXhEr
The “fight for America” was on on Jan. 6. And with bicameral support from Sen. Josh Hawley:
SENATOR JOSH HAWLEY (R-MO) JOINS 30+ CONGRESSMEN IN OBJECTING to electoral college vote submissions from states with such flawed election systems as to render their election results untrustworthy. BAM! The fight for America’s Republic IS ON! WATCH JANUARY 6, STARTING 1PM ET. pic.twitter.com/vjcUW9ec6U
On Jan. 2, Brooks said “morale is high” and it’s time to “fight” as he and more than 50 lawmakers including Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan prepared for a conference call with former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and President Trump.
Our fight for honest & accurate elections gains momentum!@Jim_Jordan & I co-lead conference call w 50+ Congressmen who join & fight for America's Republic! Conf. call began 6PM ET. Now 715PM & continuing. President Trump & CoS Mark Meadows speaking. Morale is HIGH! FIGHT!
On Jan. 5 Brooks announces he will speak at the ‘Stop the Steal’ rally at the Capitol. Trump invited him personally to speak about the so-called election fraud conspiracy:
BIG DAY: I speak at tomorrow’s #StoptheSteal rally @ 7:50 am CT. @realDonaldTrump asked me personally to speak & tell the American people about the election system weaknesses that the Socialist Democrats exploited to steal this election. Watch:https://t.co/gIluQYMxGi
On Jan. 6 at 12:01 p.m., Brooks streams his speech at the rally at the Ellipse. The riot would ensue in less than an hour.
Is America the greatest nation in world history because we’re lucky? NO! I would submit that we are great because our ancestors sacrificed their blood, sweat, tears, and lives for America’s foundational principles. pic.twitter.com/BsyhrOEemr
BREAKING FROM HOUSE FLOOR! Congressman Paul Gosar (R, AZ) & Sen. Ted Cruz (R, TX) join to object to the electoral college submission of Arizona. BATTLE IS JOINED! Now we will find who supports, and who fights, voter fraud & election theft! FIGHT FOR AMERICA’S REPUBLIC IS ON!
Brooks sent out seven tweets while the riot was unfolding just outside the chambers. He called Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado “passionate” and praised other lawmakers joining the objection. Then as he recorded Gosar’s objection, he acknowledges the breach saying doors are locked and noting that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has left.
.@RepGosar OF ARIZONA = Objection sponsor. GOP #7. Details massive AZ election fraud compounded by AZ officials refusing to investigate fraud allegations, thus aiding voter fraud & election theft. DOORS LOCKED! CAPITOL COMPLEX BREACHED! CHAMBER DOORS LOCKED. SPEAKER LEAVES!
After 5 PM, Brooks issues a statement condemning the violence and says he is a former target of “Socialist Democrat gunfire.” Later that night he would continue to stoke disinformation while demanding an investigation into the storming of the capitol.
Evidence mounts that fascist ANTIFA infiltrated Trump rally & stormed Capitol. I don’t know the true facts yet, and neither does 99.99% of public. I suggest no rush to judgment until an investigation reveals whatever the truth may be. Then Prosecute!https://t.co/WZM6MIgJIi
For weeks after the attack, Brooks was on the defensive, attacking the media for reporting his own words and actions back to him.
.@RepCohen & other Socialists should prove their wild, off-the-wall, panicky statements . . . Or apologize. Proof is simple. What do Capitol security cameras show? Where is news media? If a Republican had said the same about a Democrat.... https://t.co/cs2wau4mkt
Reps. Jerry Carl and Barry Moore, also of Alabama, were equally vocal from November through Jan. 6.
Found on pg. 161 of Lofgren’s social media report.
Moore, in a Breitbart interviewon Jan. 5, laid the rhetoric on thick, saying: “We've got to fight for election integrity for the future of this country… A lot of people don't think we can win this fight but we have to fight."
Twitter suspended Moore’s personal Twitter account after the riot exploded and after he spread conspiracy about “racial justice” and antifa activists inciting the insurgence.
Moore also made this tweet on Saturday night about the US Capitol Police officer who shot and killed a woman as she tried to get into a lobby off the House floor, where lawmakers were sheltering from the attack by Trump supporters. pic.twitter.com/BsYL2DzedZ
Rep. Andy Biggs, never a shrinking violet, pushed the election fraud agenda hard. He tweeted and then deleted a post from Charlie Kirk inviting people to protest in Arizona on Nov. 6 and to “hold the line.” He retweeted Donald Trump Jr.’s call for his father to “go to total war” on Nov. 5. He retweeted Dan Bongino’s plea on Nov. 7 for the “biggest political rally in modern American history” and then deleted that retweet nine weeks later on Jan. 9. On Nov. 7 he wrote an opinion column for TownHall.com titled “The Only Way Forward is to Fight”—the link to which is now unavailable on Biggs’ Facebook page. Biggs did not immediately return request for comment on Dec. 22.
A little over a month after Biden was declared the winner, Biggs used his social media platform to amplify voter fraud allegations. Two days before a ‘Stop the Steal’ rally in Washington erupted in violence, Biggs tweeted:
The radical left and their allies in the mainstream media attempted to overthrow America’s duly elected president, @realDonaldTrump. Americans do not trust them, nor will we take orders from them when they command us to stop trying to ensure the integrity of our elections.
Biggs also tweeted “Never surrender!” on Jan. 4 and in the same breath linked to a tweet from Dan Bongino reading: “CONCEDE NOTHING!” During the breach, Biggs posted clips of his remarks from the floor objecting to the count. On Jan. 8, he railed against anti-Trump Democrats and defended the former president, saying that an “impeachment plot” was brewing. By Jan. 11 after his political rival Joan Greene said on Facebook that he, Rep. Mo Brooks, and Paul Gosar plotted the insurrection, he threatened a defamation suit.
"Inflammatory and splenetic accusations against Congressman Biggs are by any metric wholly, objectively, and knowingly false. They are injurious to him and reflect an irresponsible heedlessness of the truth." pic.twitter.com/JJK0JkaapT
On Jan. 20, Biggs’ own brothers gave an interview laying blame on the lawmaker for the Capitol attack. Ali Alexander had a higher opinion of Biggs. He called him his “hero.”
Rep. Paul Gosar’s social media feeds were littered with conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. He was seen posing for photos with members of hate groups like the Proud Boys over six months before the Capitol assault, but his affinity for the group reportedly stretches back years.
Here's Congressman Paul Gosar posing for a photo with what appears to be a member of the Proud Boys, a known hate group. As a bonus, the man on the far left of the photo is wearing a T-shirt for the Oath Keepers, an anti-government extremist organization. https://t.co/pcIvbmOB8F
In November, Gosar joined rallies at state capitols. He championed “conquering the Hill” at a rally in December in Arizona.
NEW: Republican Rep. Paul Gosar at a rally promoting the January 6 event: "You get to go back home once we conquer the Hill. Donald Trump is returned to being president." (2 minute mark) pic.twitter.com/tn3Om7hGTD
On Nov. 6, Gosar asked to be first in line for scrutiny and later praised Ali Alexander. Alexander has since deleted the message retweeted by Gosar where Ali said: “Ali Alexander addresses nation ahead of nationwide State Capitol rallies happening NOON tomorrow.”
Gosar attended various rallies demanding an audit and spent weeks promoting Trump’s claims to victory. Dozens of pages from Lofgren’s social media report are devoted just to Gosar’s missives alone. He lauded “teamwork” with Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and on Dec. 6 dug himself deeper, demanding audits in Arizona. On Dec. 7 he wrote a letter to the state of Arizona, questioning if the U.S. was witnessing an “open coup” and tagged Trump and Giuliani, saying he was responsible for the first ‘Stop the Steal’ rally in the state. He called news of an audit “28 bitch slaps” for Arizona Gov. Doug Doucey as he demanded Doucey’s recall.
The next day on Dec. 24, he announced a press conference with ‘Stop the Steal’ leaders. On Jan. 11 he deleted that tweet. Eight days before the Capitol breach, Gosar amplifies Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene:
We meet to defend the legitimately elected president @realDonaldTrump and deny the fraudulent usurper the spoils of a technology coup. Why use tanks or bullets when you have 3:00 am massive data dumps? Same result. #stopthesteal@alihttps://t.co/CIh6PxtACX
Gosar announces on Dec. 30 that he will attend the rally on Jan. 6 with Ali Alexander. In this message Gosar retweeted Trump, who wrote at the time, “JANUARY SIXTH, SEE YOU IN DC!”
I’ll be in DC with @ali and the rest of America. We will fight back against the leftists who’ve have engaged in sedition to run a Techology Coup. No tanks needed when you can drop hundreds of thousands of ballots or switch votes electronically. #StopTheSteaIhttps://t.co/pckoGsSkH7
The morning of Jan. 6, Gosar retweeted an interview where he discussed what he would do if he were Pence. Evidence obtained by the Jan. 6 Committee has illuminated the breadth and depth of the pressure campaign on Pence to go along with Trump’s attempts to overturn the election
As the riots were underway, there were two sides to Gosar: one on Twitter and the other on Parler, where he posted a photo of rioters scaling the Capitol and said, “Americans are upset.”
When you engage in election fraud and then refuse to allow an audit you @hiral4congress spray gasoline. This is on you. The people demand transparency. https://t.co/UUyieRtOlD
Another Arizona Republican, Rep. Debbie Lesko, tweeted an interview where she would not say how she would vote on certification, even as the riot was underway. She later said she predicted “there would be a problem” but she did not foresee something happening at “the magnitude” it did on Jan. 6. She ended up voting against certification.
GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California, spent weeks posting messages on Twitter attacking Pelosi and suggesting that Democrats were engaged in voter fraud.
Before the attack, he asked people not to be quiet:
.@GOPLeader Kevin McCarthy was laying the groundwork for the attack on the Capitol for months. 11/5/2020: “President Trump won this election, so everyone who’s listening, do not be quiet. We cannot allow this to happen before our very eyes... join together and let’s stop this.” pic.twitter.com/9Ys6elhUln
He was largely quiet on Twitter on the day of the attack, tweeting archived footage from election objections filed by Democrats in 2005 at around noon. He posted another message after 10 PM on Jan. 6: His own speech from the floor condemning the violence of the day.
Other lawmakers, like Rep. Lauren Boebert, promised to fight early on and invoked the ubiquitous “hold the line” rhetoric:
We’re always the party expected to give up and accept however the left wants to treat us. President Trump changed that. We’re not going to roll over anymore. I hope the rest of my colleagues are ready for the fight ahead of us! FREEDOM!
Boebert’s rants continued unabated for weeks and weeks after the election. The Lofgren social media report provides pages upon pages of Boebert’s tweets alone.
Just a daily reminder that there is currently no “President-Elect”, and our current President is Donald J. Trump.
She was a blanketing the false message of widespread voter fraud regularly.
I told @realDonaldTrump to keep fighting. We have so much evidence to prove that this election was not right. The American people are behind you 100%, President Trump! Thank you @MariaBartiromo for having me. pic.twitter.com/tdmekp3C4x
And on Dec. 6, one month before the attack, Boebert wrote: “The fight for freedom never ended, some of us just got too comfortable being told how to live life. The determination of 1776 has been reignited.”
The fight for freedom never ended, some of us just got too comfortable being told how to live life. The determination of 1776 has been reignited.
In a video posted to Facebook 48 hours later, Boebert said she met with Trump in the Oval. In the clip she said: “I want President Trump to fight until this election is actually over… I had the privilege of spending time with President Trump in the Oval Office a few days ago, and I encouraged him to use all of the legal means he had to make sure this was a fair election… I can assure you he’s definitely in this fight until the end… This election is not over.”
On Dec. 19, Boebert for the first time asks followers to mark their calendars for Jan. 6. She announced her intent to object to certification on Christmas eve.
A day after that, Boebert says the people are needed to put pressure on state legislatures to rescind certification and calls for pressure on senators and congressman to object on Jan. 6:
We need THE PEOPLE to put pressure on AZ, GA, PA, NV, WI, MI state legislatures to rescind their certifications. Then we need THE PEOPLE to put pressure on their Senators and Congressmen to object on the 6th. WE THE PEOPLE!
The attack was now days away. Boebert lashed out at Democrats and urged against playing by the rules:
For years, we’ve allowed the Democrats to set the narrative and we’ve just responded to it and played within their rule book. If we’re going to take this country back, it’s time for that to end.
Boebert was excited by the impending certification ceremony, saying the first six days of 2021 would be decisive. On Jan. 2 she would express gratitude to senators for announcing their plans to object.
Sending love and declaring blessings to all on this first day of 2021. The first six days of this year will include a new Congress, the most decisive Senate special election in years & possibly the most important day in our nation’s history: 1/6/2021. Happy New Year!
As Trump began his speech and the attack was less than an hour from unfolding, Boebert made urgent calls on Twitter and said she would “fight with everything” she had.
America is depending on all of us today. This is something I don’t take lightly. I will fight with everything I have to ensure the fairness of the election.
Two days after the insurrection, Boebert changed her profile picture to a portrait of Trump and posted a video on Twitter defending her vote to object. For a week after the attack, she appeared on social media chastising Democrats, accusing them of violence and playing coy around questions about her tweet saying Pelosi had been removed from the chamber on Jan. 6. Boebert condemned the violence after the attack but continued to amplify Trump’s election fraud conspiracy.
Other vocal Trump allies like Rep. Matt Gaetz—currently under investigation by the Justice Department—spent weeks before the election crying fraud without proof and on Nov. 5, Gaetz suggested the Justice Department could step in and evaluate votes in Pennsylvania. Similar pleas would be made by Gaetz for DOJ involvement for weeks after the election. Attorney General William Barr last December found no proof of election fraud.
The DOJ isn’t as powerless as it currently looks. They should be in court NOW to put the legally non-compliant ongoing Philadelphia count into FEDERAL RECEIVERSHIP!
He also posted and deleted tweets about alleged voter fraud in Pennsylvania and on Nov. 9 tweeted an article where Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said only legal votes would be cast. “Great hearing from you,” Gaetz wrote.
He said on Nov. 12 that he spoke to Trump about election fraud and that Trump was “ready for battle." He appeared on Steve Bannon’s show War Room a week after that. Bannon, investigators say, may have been integral to coordinating the attack, He was indicted on contempt of Congress charges this winter and awaits a summer trial. On Nov. 30, Gaetz appeared on Fox News, calling for people to “stand and fight”
On Dec. 21, just after 6 p.m. Gaetz called for a defense of the election.
Democracy is left undefended if we accept the result of a stolen election without fighting with every bit of vigor we can muster.
Tens of thousands might be marching in the streets on Jan. 6, Gaetz said 24 hours before the siege. He also cast doubt on whether Pelosi would permit debate. She made no indication she would not.
“One question remaining is whether or not Nancy Pelosi will even allow the two hours of constitutionally-authorized debate on these questions. But when you’ve got tens of thousands of people potentially marching in the streets in Washington, D.C., tomorrow, I think it would be a very bad look for the People’s House not to entertain debate if we have a constitutionally acceptable objection signed by a House Member and a Senator,” Gaetz said.
Tomorrow, Republicans will defend democracy and object to states that didn't run clean elections. pic.twitter.com/jW0uA6gjeD
On the day of the attack, Gaetz tweeted lightly. Around noon, he suggested criticism of elections made them better. He tweeted again at 10 PM, sharing an article suggesting facial recognition was used to pick up extremists in the crowd. The Washington Times removed the article he posted below after the facial recognition company said the claims were false.
In the weeks that followed and as a second impeachment brewed for Trump, Gaetz defended Trump unceasingly and said “the left” was engaged in rhetorical warfare. Gaetz bristled at the suggestion that Jan. 6 was an insurrection and when an independent government watchdog announced it was investigating improper attempts to overturn the election 20 days after the attack, Gaetz expressed outrage:
This is nothing more than an effort to purge any pro-Trump people left at the corrupt and highly political DOJ. (There aren’t many) https://t.co/ce3gmmlKY2
Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene got an early start, appearing in a video on Oct. 27 endorsing political violence.
“The only way you get your freedoms back is … with the price of blood,” she said.
SCOOP: In a pre-election video just uncovered by Mother Jones, Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene is seen endorsing political violence. “The only way you get your freedoms back is it’s earned with the price of blood," she says. More here: https://t.co/GcXZQY0K30pic.twitter.com/lSA6JUeWjM
Hurling insults at “weak-kneed” and “spineless” Republicans who wouldn’t join the chorus of election fraud claims, Greene caped for Trump incessantly. She called for people to attend a ‘Stop the Steal’ rally in Georgia on Nov. 7 and later deleted that tweet only to replace it with more posts of her appearance at that rally. On Nov. 10 she called for the Georgia governor to step in.
Tell @GaSecofState to complete the steps necessary to STOP THE BIDEN STEAL! 1. Verify no double voting with absentee ballots 2. Purge ineligible votes from felons and others 3. Most importantly, Georgia MUST have a RECOUNT BY HAND due to irregularities cc: @CollinsforGA
In June, I issued a warning to Antifa terrorists: Stay the HELL out of NW Georgia Now I’m giving away my famous AR-15. If Joe Biden steals this election, he’ll try to ban it. Get yourself a gun before it’s too late! ENTER NOW: https://t.co/5ygmmp0BoEhttps://t.co/5ygmmp0BoE
Greene also retweeted the following message from Kylie Kremer, a chief organizer for Women for America First. Kremer is reportedly now cooperating with the Jan. 6 committee after receiving a subpoena this fall. Kremer wrote: “The calvary is coming, Mr. President! JANUARY 6th | Washington, DC”
And in a video shared from her Twitter page the next day, Rep. Greene said: “Just finished with our meetings here at the White House this afternoon. We had a great planning session for our January 6th objection. We aren’t going to let this election be stolen by Joe Biden and the Democrats. President Trump won by a landslide… Stay tuned.”
Greene also said online that she spoke to Trump by phone on Dec. 22. She said they spoke again on Jan. 2.
.@realdonaldtrump deserves his day in court, AND we are definitely going to give him his day in Congress. We have a rapidly growing group of House Members and Senators. Jan 6 challenge is on. 🇺🇸 Call your Rep: 202-225-3121 Call your Senators: 202-224-3121#FightForTrump! pic.twitter.com/O9YvytKlrS
She also used Jan. 6 as a chance to fundraise, saying she would need a massive grassroots army behind her to “stop the steal.”
Congress will hear THE PEOPLE loud & clear on January 6th. I need a massive grassroots army behind me to STOP THE STEAL. Join the #FightForTrump! https://t.co/pSeigMzBEg
Like Boebert, Greene too called it a “1776 moment” in an interview with Newsmaxon Jan. 5. She said in a post later that same day that she held planning meetings with Republicans to discuss their objections.
During the riot, Greene called for people to "be smart.” She spent the morning tweeting out claims of election fraud in Georgia and called on Pence to “be bold and courageous.” Just after 9 PM on Jan. 6 she tweeted the later-debunked story about facial recognition picking up on antifa extremists. “We’ve seen what they’ve done all year long,” she said.
A message from the Capitol. Be safe. Be smart. Stay peaceful. Obey the laws. This is not a time for violence. This is a time to support President Trump and support election integrity. God bless! pic.twitter.com/CtgktgQK9z
In the aftermath, Greene condemned the violence on Jan. 6 but was aggressively promoting Trump’s claims nonetheless. She appeared on the House floor six days after the assault sporting a mask with the phrase molon labe. As pointed out by Rep. Lofgren’s report: “Molon Labe is a classical Greek phrase meaning “come and take [them],” attributed to King Leonidas of Sparta as a defiant response to the demand that his soldiers lay down their weapons. Gun-rights advocates have adopted the phrase as a challenge to perceived attempts by the government to confiscate arms.”
The lawmakers highlighted in this lengthy guide are far from the only individuals who posted messages promoting Trump’s claims of election fraud. But the lawmakers mentioned up to this point consumed some 880 pages of the nearly 2,000-page social media report. Rep. Billy Long, a Missouri Republican, alone, consumed dozens of pages showing how regularly he promoted disinformation and then later, insisted there was no insurrection. Dozens of pages also feature Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York. Stefanik later assumed a House leadership role when Leader McCarthy ousted Rep. Liz Cheney. Cheney was booted from the role when she refused to go along with her party’s overarching insistence that Trump won the election.
Neophyte lawmakers like Rep. Madison Cawthorn also eagerly promoted the ‘Stop the Steal’ agenda.
The fate of a nation comes down to the events of tomorrow. This New Republican Party will not back down. I look forward to seeing millions of patriotic Americans stand for their country. pic.twitter.com/1ADeeE9ji4
Other more tenured lawmakers, like Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio—who received a notice from the Jan. 6 Committee on Dec. 22 asking for his voluntary compliance with the probe—appeared to make promotion of election fraud lies a cornerstone of their job. During the riots he tweeted his objections routinely.
In this sweeping assessment of social media activity, there are many commonalities. Perhaps the most common was a desire by so many Republicans in the House for a thorough review of issues they deemed of national importance. Their nearly wholesale refusal of the Jan. 6 probe, however, has spoken volumes in the year since the Capitol attack.
South Carolina Republican Rep. Tom Rice said publicly Thursday that he now regrets voting against certifying President Joe Biden’s electoral victory this January, an important admission from a member of a party that has largely pledged unshakeable alliances with former President Donald Trump.
Rice made the admission to reporters at Politico. To be clear, the Republican legislator still maintains that he has reservations about the 2020 election outcome. He holds those reservations despite the fact that dozens upon dozens of courts found fraud claims to be baseless and despite the fact that Trump’s own former attorney general William Barr found no evidence of widespread fraud.
Trump’s remarks on the morning of Jan. 6 led to an insurrection at the Capitol. Multiple people died and hundreds of police officers were injured. Millions upon millions of dollars in damage were exacted.
On Wednesday, Rice said plainly that he “should have voted to certify because President Trump was responsible for the attack on the U.S. Capitol.”
Rice holds the odd distinction of being one of only 10 Republicans that voted in favor of impeaching Trump for incitement of insurrection. But he is the only Republican who did that and alsovoted against certifying Biden’s victory.
“In the wee hours of that disgraceful night, while waiting for the Capitol of our great country to be secured, I knew I should vote to certify. But because I had made a public announcement of my intent to object, I did not want to go back on my word. So yeah, I regret my vote to object,” Rice said on Dec. 22
Around this time last year, Rice signed his name alongside a bevy of House Republicans who filed an amicus brief, or a supporting statement, in effect, to the Supreme Court expressing reservations about the integrity of the 2020 election.
I joined @RepMikeJohnson and several other House members in filing an amicus brief to the Supreme Court expressing my concerns with election integrity. pic.twitter.com/vdZJwoRAdz
By Jan. 4, Rice posted to Twitter and Facebook again. This time, though the apprehension was still there, there was a lingering doubt expressed as well.
“The vote to certify electoral votes is momentous, perhaps the most so of my entire tenure. I do not plan to commit to a position until the evidence is weighed and the debate concluded. I take my job seriously, and will consider it carefully,” he said.
But in that same message two days before the insurrection, Rice went on to tout claims of election improprieties in multiple states including Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.
Friends, I have heard from many of you across the political spectrum regarding the upcoming vote to certify the vote of the electoral college in the presidential election. (1/8)
During the siege, Rice posted a video from the House floor, noting that “’protesters’” were trying to break in as the chaplain prayed. The footage was shot moments before the legislators were evacuated.
The riot raged into the late afternoon but by 3:30 PM, Rice was safely at home while D.C., he said, was in “chaos.” Rice called on Trump to act.
To all my friends back home, I am fine. Capitol Police evacuated us from the Capitol Building. DC is in chaos. This will accomplish nothing. Where is the President!? He must ask people to disperse and restore calm now.
On Jan. 13, Rice voted to impeach Trump for incitement of insurrection.
I have backed this President through thick and thin for four years. I campaigned for him and voted for him twice. But, this utter failure is inexcusable.https://t.co/SCWylYEER0
“I’ve excused his [Trump’s] foibles because I love his policy. But this last week, in my mind, is inexcusable. The fact that he gathered up the crowd and fired them up, and whether his speech or manner to incitement I don’t know, I’m not a criminal lawyer. But I know this, I know that once the people were inside the Capitol ransacking the place and trying to make their way to the Senate floor and House floor and Vice President Pence was in there in the Senate chamber, President Trump was tweeting that Vice President Pence didn’t have the courage to do what was right, and just further angering the crowd… The President offered only very tepid requests for restraint…” Rice said on Jan. 14 after impeaching Trump. “I think it was a complete failure of leadership… I wish that they hadn’t brought the impeachment vote, I want calm now.…but I’m not gonna hide behind procedure here. If my vote is yes or no on whether he should be President, I think the actions of last week disqualify him.”
Two weeks later on Jan. 31, Rice shared his Republican bonafides on Facebook. According to a post just after 6 AM that day, Rice emphasized how he stood with the Republicans of South Carolina and helped raise some $2 million for the national party. He added:
“I personally witnessed the insurrection in the Capitol on Jan. 6. I saw the rioters who were demanding to hang Vice President Pence. I heard the gunshots and smelled the tear gas. I was on Capitol Hill when the Capitol Police were overrun and Officer [Brian] Sicknick gave his life at the hands of the mob, to honor the oath he took to defend the Constitution,” Rice wrote. “I saw as we all did, the President’s lack of leadership in not stopping the mob, his callous actions saying Mike Pence had no courage and his comments in the middle of the riot that ‘These are the things that happen when victory is viciously stripped from these great patriots… remember this day forever.”
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.
Donald Trump has amassed a $105 million war chest since leaving office but hasn't dropped so much as a dime on boosting GOP candidates or funding outside efforts to overturn the 2020 elections, according to Politico.
Nope. That's for losers and suckers, and Trump is just a good old-fashioned grifter. Consequently, he has directed nearly all the money he soaked up through his political action committees (Make America Great Again PAC, Save America PAC, and the Save America Joint Fundraising Committee) to pay his own personal and business expenses almost exclusively. That includes paying for travel expenses, more fundraising appeals, the salaries of personal and political aides, and legal fees he racked up trying to mount an impeachment defense and overturn the 2020 results. Trump did make one external donation of $1 million to the America First Policy Institute, which was founded by several of his former aides after he lost reelection.
But when it comes to high-profile efforts to overturn 2020, like the Arizona fraudit or helping Republican candidates—zip! They're on their own. In other words, the vast majority of Trump's fundraising appeals have nothing to do with where he is actually directing his money. Those Arizona-style audits that more than half of Republican voters actually think could change the 2020 outcome are just window dressing to Trump. They're going nowhere and he isn't wasting a dime on them—but they sure are lucrative.
A Trump spokesperson now claims he recently made donations to his chosen candidates that haven't yet shown up in campaign filings. And despite telling all the GOP campaign committees earlier this year to cease and desist from using him or his likeness to solicit donations, Trump is now taking credit for their fundraising hauls.
“In addition to the RECORD BREAKING money raised over the last 6 months to my political affiliates, I am pleased to see the entire party benefit from ‘Trump,’ Trump said in a statement after the GOP's national committee and two congressional campaign committees raised close to a combined $300 million in first six months of the year.
Interestingly, though, the statement from the National Republican Senatorial Committee hailing its $51 million intake made no references to Trump.
“The more voters learn about the disastrous impacts of the Senate Democrats’ socialist agenda, the more the momentum builds to elect a Republican Senate majority in 2022,” NRSC chair Rick Scott said in a statement.
Gee, it almost seems like Senate Republicans don't want to be associated with Trump. Rest assured that Trump is lying awake at night smarting over the fact that the GOP committees have raised even a single cent that he believes belongs to him exclusively.
What Trump has lavished money on is attorney fees—the many, many lawyers involved in defending and advising him in everything from his second impeachment to the Russian investigation to a host of personal lawsuits.
Rudy Giuliani, however, the face of Trump's legal resistance following his 2020 loss, appears to have come up dry. The $75,000 Trump shelled out to Giuliani went exclusively to his travel expenses, not legal fees. Sorry, Rudy.
The running joke of the Trump presidency—okay, one of the running jokes—was the constant pronouncements of an upcoming “infrastructure week” or that some kind of infrastructure deal was in the offing. Nothing. Ever. Happened. Meanwhile, ask the people of Jackson, Mississippi—who watched as the government at every level failed for decades to invest in keeping their city’s water system up to date, with some residents unable to access water for weeks—to find humor in Trump’s failure to deliver. We’ll come back to that story below.
Once again, infrastructure is the word flying around Washington, D.C., and it’s no longer a joke. There are ongoing conversations in the House and the Senate. We’ve seen a bipartisan deal announced laying out the framework on funding what’s called physical infrastructure (roads, bridges, etc.), the urgent need for which will be our focus here. However, let me add that our government—with or without support from Republicans—absolutely must fund equally vital human infrastructure needs such as child and elder care, job training, and education, elements that are just as important in making our economy stronger. As President Biden pointed out in La Crosse, Wisconsin, on June 29, “the human infrastructure is intertwined with our physical infrastructure.”
Finally, the grownups are in charge.
For anyone who still needs convincing, the consulting firm McKinsey laid out the data on the benefits of serving the common good by investing in our country’s physical infrastructure: there is little doubt about the value of investing in good infrastructure. In 2015, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that every dollar spent on infrastructure brought an economic benefit of up to $2.20. The U.S. Council of Economic Advisers has calculated that $1 billion of transportation-infrastructure investment supports 13,000 jobs for a year. Beyond the numbers, infrastructure is critical to the health and well-being of the country: the United States could not function without the roads, bridges, sewers, clean water, and airports previous generations paid for.
As you can see below, after a nice bump early in the Obama-Biden years thanks to the 2009 stimulus package, infrastructure spending dropped off and fell to generational lows under the guy who followed them.
It would be impossible to provide even a partial list of the necessary infrastructure projects across the U.S., although this article does a nice job presenting a number of the highest priorities. The Biden White House has produced fact sheets that sum up each state’s physical infrastructure needs, demonstrating what it hopes to accomplish for Americans all across the country.
Images of the horrific water crisis in Flint, Michigan, are burned into all of our minds, but another city’s water-related tragedy may be less familiar. In Jackson, Mississippi, a city of 160,000 inhabitants, over 80% of whom are Black, the majority went without running water for weeks after a brutal mid-February storm. How brutal? An engineer at the state Department of Transportation expressed the following: “I sincerely hope that in 25 plus years from now, we are still talking about this event as the ‘worst one ever.” Even a month after the storm had passed, over 70% of people were still being told to boil their water before using it.
Why did the storm wreak such havoc in Jackson specifically? Because of a century-plus old municipal water system whose vulnerabilities were laid bare by the storm—which also pummeled Texas, killing hundreds and perhaps as many as a thousand people while knocking out that state’s power grid. Jackson residents reflected on the crisis in interviews with Good Morning America.
Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba specifically blamed Mississippi Republicans, who have dominated the state’s politics for decades, for failing to fund the necessary infrastructure repairs that would have mitigated damage from the storm: “I think that you find less willingness from the state to support a city like Jackson, because they don't necessarily feel that the demographics of Jackson, or even the politics of Jackson resemble the majority opinion.” In other words, they didn’t care one iota about a city full of Black Democrats.
The governor of Mississippi recently murmured something about assisting the city in looking around for low-interest loans. Yip-frickin-ee. The mayor estimated the cost of truly solving the problems faced by the city’s water system—Jackson’s water also has a lead problem rivaling that of the aforementioned Flint—at $2 billion. The Biden plan proposed to send what will hopefully be enough money to make things right for the people of Jackson.
Beyond Flint’s problems, there are dams all over Michigan that are simply falling apart. In May 2020, the Sanford and Edenville dams burst after heavy rains, flooding surrounding areas. Regarding the Edenville dam—aged 96 years—federal regulators revoked its license to generate hydropower in 2018, but the state regulators apparently dropped the ball in subsequent years. Overall, the dams failed because of “years of underfunding and neglect.”
Like in Mississippi, Michigan Republicans have controlled the purse strings for quite some time. They’ve maintained a state Senate majority since 1984, and have run the House since 2010—aided significantly by gerrymandering. From 2011 through 2019, the state’s governor was Republican Rick Snyder. While holding this trifecta of power, Michigan Republicans largely ignored the state’s infrastructure needs. In fact, Snyder, along with other members of his administration, were indicted earlier this year on criminal charges for their actions (or lack thereof) relating to Flint’s water fiasco.
On dams, the kind of flooding residents of Midland and Gladwin counties suffered is common in every part of the country. There are about 91,000 dams in the U.S. Of these, approximately 15,000-16,000 are located in spots where, if they broke, significant loss of life and property destruction would result. The Association of State Dam Safety Officials has determined that around one out of every six of those dams are “deficient.” That is a problem we need to address before the next storm.
The most infuriating, most foolish example of active Republican malfeasance originated in the time before President Caligula had made the transition from reality show buffoon to destructive demagogue. It took place at the center of the region with the largest economy of any in the U.S., and concerned its most important ground transportation hub—the one that connects the island of Manhattan to the mainland by train.
We’re also talking about a problem that Democratic President Barack Obama and a Democratic Congress, with the support of local officials, had actually begun fixing over a decade ago. That was before New Jersey’s Republican Gov. Chris Christie, doctrinaire conservative that he is, metaphorically stood athwart the train tracks yelling “STOP!” It’s a very long story, but it’s one that demonstrates how Republican ideology, Republican lies, and plain-old Republican shortsightedness put the kibosh on a project that remains just as necessary today.
There is only one train tunnel—which happens to be 110 years old—running beneath the Hudson River. For many years, we’ve known that that’s at least one tunnel too few. What was then called the ARC (Access to the Region’s Core) project would have built a second one, enabling twice as many trains to cross into the Big Apple. Roughly 200,000 people and 450 trains traveled through that sole, aging tunnel on a typical pre-COVID weekday. Other positive effects of the ARC project would have included: “alleviat[ing] congestion on local roads, reduc[ing] pollution, help[ing] the growth of the region’s economy and rais[ing] property values for suburban homeowners.” Oh, and it would have created 6,000 construction jobs right at the point during the Great Recession when unemployment was at its peak, at just about 10%.
The work was already underway when, in October of 2010, Gov. Christie suddenly reversed himself and cancelled the project. As late as that April, shortly after his inauguration, he had reiterated his long-standing support. Why, pray tell, did he take an action that “stunned other government officials and advocates of public transportation”? Even though the federal government, along with the states of New York and New Jersey, and the Port Authority, were all contributing to the bill, Christie claimed that New Jersey would end up bearing the burden of cost overruns, and so he pulled out.
It turned out that, as per a 2012 investigation by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Christie was, to put it charitably, incorrect in just about everything he claimed as justification for cancelling the project. Looking back, it’s clear why he did what he did, based on where the money that had been dedicated to building the ARC tunnel ended up—namely in NJ’s “near-bankrupt transportation trust fund, traditionally financed by the gasoline tax.” In other words, he took the money so he wouldn’t have to raise gas taxes, and thereby earn the ill-will of the people who put him in office. What a bozo.
As bad as that decision was at the time, it was rendered even more foolish by a little thing called Hurricane Sandy, which slammed the region in 2012. A year earlier, what had been the ARC project had been tweaked somewhat and re-proposed as the Gateway project, again centering on the building of a new Hudson River tunnel. After Sandy resulted in severe flooding, an Empire State Building-sized amount of dirty, salty water ended up in the tunnels. Repairing the damage with only one tunnel in operation would cause a nightmare for commuters.
But, after initial steps were taken during Obama’s second term that culminated in a cost-sharing agreement between the states—who together would pick up half the tab, with the federal government paying the other half—a new president took office in 2017. And he was a New Yorker, born and bred, so certainly he’d make sure the Gateway project happened. Unfortunately, The Man Who Lost An Election And Tried To Steal It not only physically abandoned his Fifth Avenue penthouse—he now makes Florida his primary home—he 100% abandoned the city that made him a household name. Progress on the Gateway tunnel ground to a halt, and the funding dried up, as Trump took an “obstructionist stance.”
That brings us back to the Biden-Harris administration, which formally approved the Gateway project just over a month ago. In the last days of June, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg toured the tunnel himself. He made clear that his boss was 100% on board, and fully understood the necessity for the whole of the American economy of the project. Shutting down even one of the two tubes in the existing tunnel for repairs without having first built the additional Gateway tunnel would mean, as the one-time Mayor Pete noted: “you would be feeling the economic impact all the way back in Indiana, where I come from.” To be more specific, a study by the non-profit Regional Plan Association found the impact could run as high as $16 billion, and cost 33,000 jobs.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York gave thanks to the White House on behalf of the region, and took a dig at the twice impeached former Gotham-dweller: “Now we can announce that the hostage that was the Gateway tunnel under the previous administration has been freed,” and added: “We are full speed ahead to get Gateway done.” The project could begin as early as next year, or else in 2023, according to the senator. Still, Christie and Trump set the region back years—perhaps a decade. All of us are still crossing our fingers that not only will the project happen, but also that the new tunnel is completed before the old one gives out.
But of course it’s not only urban centers that have dire infrastructure needs. Martin County is in eastern Kentucky, with a population that is, incredibly, over 99% white. Since 1999, both U.S. Senate seats from Kentucky have been held by Republicans, one of them by Mitch McConnell, who has led the Republican Party in that body since 2007. In the House, Martin County has been represented by Republican Hal Rogers since 1981.
In a video produced by the Biden White House, Barbi Ann Maynard detailed what she and her neighbors don’t have, because their infrastructure is so lacking: “People talk about Eastern Kentucky is poor, and they don't really have anything. Well, how are we ever going to have anything if our government won’t invest in our infrastructure? We’re people too. We’re American citizens. And we deserve access to clean, affordable drinking water.” Running the tap at her kitchen sink, she pointed at the not at all clear liquid flowing out of it and stated simply: “this water disgusts me. I’m afraid of this water.”
Maynard described the language that has appeared “for decades” as a warning on the back of the water bills Martin County residents receive: “If you are pregnant, infant, elderly, have a compromised immune system, consult a physician before consuming this water. If consumed over many years, it causes liver damage, kidney damage, central nervous system damage, and twice it says increased risk of cancer.” I drink New York City tap water every day, multiple glasses of it, without thinking twice. So while my region has its infrastructure deficiencies, folks in Eastern Kentucky have it even worse in their daily lives, right now.
Maynard continued by talking about the need for roads and bridges, which are either in disrepair or nonexistent across the county, as well as other priorities. The Nolan Toll Bridge was the only way for people in the area to get to the interstate. After being damaged badly, it was closed off rather than repaired. She lamented: “When you lose bridges, roads, you lose opportunities to grow. Businesses can’t come if they can’t get their product out,” and added “because we have [a] lack of infrastructure, that causes companies to not want to come and invest in Martin County.” Maynard has been fighting for increased infrastructure spending in her county for more than twenty years, and summarized the situation thusly: “I know what we could have. I know what it could be like. And I want that for my people.”
The Orange Julius Caesar took up shop in the Oval Office in January 2017, and his party controlled the House and the Senate. Using the reconciliation process, they could easily have passed a massive infrastructure package, or even a medium-sized one, with or without Democrats. After Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico’s infrastructure on Trump’s watch in 2017, he came up with little more than some paper towels to toss the island’s way. Puerto Ricans continue to suffer from Maria’s damage as well as, for just one example among many, earthquakes that revealed serious vulnerabilities in the design of hundreds of schools across the island—another major infrastructure need.
Even after Democrats won the House in the 2018 midterms, Trump still could have accomplished something major on infrastructure. Trump blew off Speaker Nancy Pelosi, fuming about impeachment. Republicans can bleat about how they believe in infrastructure, how they support infrastructure. When the rubber met the (in dire need of repair) road, they failed to deliver.
The Biden-Harris team, along with congressional Democrats, are going to do the work of funding our country’s infrastructure needs in every region, just as they’ve done the work on so many issues—ranging from carrying out a nationwide vaccination program, to rejoining the Paris Climate Accord, to passing the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, among other accomplishments. This White House knows that strengthening our physical as well as human infrastructure is good politics as well as the right thing to do for the American economy, and for the American people.
Trump—and his grotesque Hieronymus Bosch hellscape of an ego—is directly responsible for their deaths. Full stop.
But McCarthy doesn’t want to talk about any of that. He’s focusing on why the family AR-15’s safety was switched off when Baby started playing with it, not why it was in Baby’s crib to begin with.
Watch the second video here.
Kevin McCarthy won't acknowledge that Trump bears any responsibility whatsoever for the January 6 insurrection pic.twitter.com/wF7Cl5JDZ5
REPORTER: “Do you believe that … former President Trump is accountable in some way for the events leading up to Jan. 6?”
MCCARTHY: “What I looked … have you read the Senate report? Did you read the Senate report? Did you have questions about the prep that we had for this Capitol? Were you concerned about, when they found IEDs in the morning, did we not call the FBI? Were you concerned about the idea that the sergeant of arms had intel provided by the FBI but it wasn’t passed forward? Were you concerned if we had that information, why didn’t we have a different presence built here? If you were concerned about riots, why would you put the riot gear in a bus that was locked down the way? In the time the riot took place, why was there not communication that had direction from leadership, because leadership wasn’t talking? There’s so many failures along that way that happened the days before that allowed individuals to get into the building. That’s what we want to make sure never happens again.”
REPORTER: “Former President Trump was the president at the time. Does he have no responsibility?”
MCCARTHY: [Goes to another reporter.]
Let’s apply McCarthy’s fault-dodgin’ “logic” to, say, an intentional (and fully hypothetical) plane crash.
REPORTER: “Leader McCarthy, do you think the pilot of the downed airliner bears responsibility for the lives lost when he deliberately crashed his 757 into Lake Huron?”
MCCARTHY: “Did you read the FAA report? Why were people confused about where their floatation cushions were? Didn’t they listen to the safety instructions? Why were their tray tables not stowed away? Why were their seats not in the upright and locked position? Why didn’t they bring snorkels and flippers with them in their carryons? There are just so many failures along the way.”
Good questions all, Rep. McCarthy!
Of course, the current stance differs greatly from what McCarthy said on Jan. 13, one week after Trump’s failed bumblefuck putsch.
“The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters. He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding. These facts require immediate action by President Trump — accept his share of responsibility, quell the brewing unrest and ensure president-elect Biden is able to successfully begin his term. The President’s immediate action also deserves congressional action, which is why I think a fact-finding commission and a censure resolution would be prudent.”
That seems pretty unequivocal. So what the fuck happened?
Someone should dust McCarthy’s short-and-curlies for tiny man-baby fingerprints and spray tan residue.
Of course, it’s never a good sign when your party’s fortunes hinge on the dyspeptic whims of an insurrectionist, but that’s exactly what this photo demonstrates.
But recounting from other members of Congress relayed a much more desperate plea from McCarthy as the Capitol — and even his own office — came under attack.
McCarthy “said to the President, ‘You’ve got to hold them. You need to get on TV right now, you need to get on Twitter, you need to call these people off.’ And he said, the President said, ‘Kevin, they’re not my people,’” Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.), one of the 10 in her party to vote to impeach Trump, told a local paper, The Daily News.
She later wrote in a statement that became evidence in Trump’s impeachment trial: “That’s when, according to McCarthy, the president said: ‘Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.’”
Why are so many people seemingly in thrall to a rubbish human who tried to get them killed? Mike Pence. Kevin McCarthy. The city of Tulsa.His Secret Service detail. Pretty much every American, come to think of it. It’s like miraculously surviving Jim Jones’ Kool-Aid and then returning for seconds.
Of course, if this flourish of off-the-charts obsequiousness were limited to just McCarthy, it wouldn’t be such a big deal, even though he is House minority leader. But the pod people have taken over the GOP. And, frankly, it’s unlikely the Republican Party can ever go back to being merely evil after this. The delusional icing is just too thick on this cake.
