VIDEO: Trump Ready To ‘Run Like The Wind’ And Show the Jackals Who the Lion Is

By Dr. Derek Ellerman

Hoo boy. Donald Trump is known for being flashy, and ever since he formally entered the world of politics, he’s been known for producing (or at least sharing) some incredible, heavy-duty videos. 

Some, in fact, have been made by fans and supporters – and many times, those are just as good. 

While Trump has been flirting with another run for the Presidency – just a few weeks ago at a rally in North Carolina, he vowed “We are going to drain that damn swamp!” – it seems every move he makes begs us to ask the question of ‘will he or won’t he.’

The latest video shared by Trump (apparently produced by an outfit called The United Spot) will no doubt have his supporters raring and ready to go. 

Note: this video isn’t the one I’m referring to, but is hilarious nevertheless:

RELATED: Trump Says Biden’s ‘Armageddon’ Comments About Russia Is ‘Saying Exactly The Wrong Thing’

Enter The Lion

Trump’s video is overlaid with an epic, dramatic speech from Christopher Walken’s ‘Uncle Mike’ character from the early 2000’s film Poolhall Junkies. 

It’s a fairly well-known piece of film lore – legendary quarterback Tom Brady used it in a hype video before the playoffs in 2020.

The speech is a metaphor for the lion as king of the jungle – and he’s still king, even if some of the other, lesser denizens of the jungle need a reminder every now and then. 

Watch: 

Here’s the full monologue that plays throughout the video: 

“You got this lion, he’s the king of the jungle. Huge mane out to here. He’s laying down under a tree, in the middle of Africa, he’s so big, he’s so hot! He doesn’t wanna move. Now, the little lion cubs they start messing with him, biting his tail, biting his ears, he doesn’t do anything.

The lioness, she starts messing with him, coming over making trouble, still nothing. Now the other animals, they notice this, and they start to move in. The jackals, hyenas, they’re barking at him, laughing at him.

They nip his toes and eat the food that’s in his domain. They do this and they get closer and closer and bolder and bolder, till one day…that lion gets up and tears the shit outta everybody, runs like the wind, eats everything in his path, ’cause every once in a while, the lion has to show the jackals who he is.”

The jackals, as the video proceeds, are revealed to be Democrat impeachers Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, (who, it turns out, apparently knew that the first impeachment of Trump was unconstitutional, but went through with it anyway) Nancy Pelosi, and Never Trump Republicans Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.

The latter have already learned who the lion is – with Cheney losing her Republican primary in a landslide, and Kinzinger getting redistricted out of office by Democrats as their thanks for all his hard work on their behalf. 

Actually, it’s notable in how few jackals are shown. There are hundreds, if not thousands more that could be portrayed in this context. 

RELATED: Trump Celebrates ‘Lightweight’ Never Trumper ‘Liddle’ Ben Sasse’s Resignation From Senate

Amazing Videos

After the recent FBI raid of his home at Mar-a-Lago, Trump released another brilliant video – teasing that “The best is yet to come.” 

The video opens up with an ominous warning from Trump, and even more ominous thunderstorm sounds. 

After going through the economic and foreign policy calamities of the Biden administration, it ends on a positive note – with Trump sounding exactly like a man who is preparing to run for office again. 

Watch:

Trump isn’t the only one putting out melt-your-face videos either.

RELATED: Poll Shows Conservative Latinos With a Massive Swing Toward Republicans

The GOP Learning To Make Sweet Videos

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, seen by many as the eventual successor to Trump, kicked it up a notch in his own campaign for re-election. 

The former Navy man parodied Top Gun to teach conservatives how to deal with a hostile media. 

The results are incredible. 

Watch: 

Not to be outdone by any means, MAGA Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene also took to the skies – but in a helicopter. 

She wasn’t without weapons though, she brought along an AR and invited supporters to win a trip to hunt feral hogs with her. 

If Republicans can keep churning out videos like this, conservatives can say goodbye to Hollywood altogether. 

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Such an abuse’: Bill Barr delivers obvious facts to Fox News about Mar-a-Lago stash of documents

By now, you’ve probably heard that the disgraced former president, Donald Trump, seems to be something of a criminal. No, I’m not talking about his racist landlord violations from the 1970s. No, not his dubious interactions with contractors throughout the 1980s and 1990s. No, not his shady personal bankruptcies of the 1990s and 2000s. No, not even his two impeachments and the fact that there are numerous campaign violations that many believe need more criminal investigations. Trump seems to have broken a slew of laws surrounding the handling, hoarding, and possible treason of taking classified documents to keep at his private golf club and residence at Mar-a-Lago.

The Republican Party, sans a few neocons, is struggling to regain primacy in the toilet bowl that is the Republican Party circling the sewer of fascism. On Friday, former Trump attorney general Bill Barr went on Fox News and took a ginormous rain on the right wing’s parade by making the case—not once, but twice in a two-minute span—that Donald Trump had earned and deserved the search and seizure of government documents from Mar-a-Lago.

Yes, the guy who just a few months ago said he would still vote for Donald Trump were he to run in 2024, the guy who allowed Donald Trump to skate past clear recommendations from Special Counsel Robert Mueller that he should be investigated more thoroughly for breaking federal laws. That Bill Barr. And yes, that Fox News.

RELATED STORY: All you need to read from the memo Barr claimed cleared Trump on obstruction is a single footnote

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Let me premise this by saying that I personally believe Fox News is hedging its bets here. Murdoch and the brain trust at Fox News have already lost favor with Trump after being the news outlet to call Arizona for Biden in 2020. They have had to walk back their full-on dismissal of Trump, as the current GOP leadership didn’t have the backbone to stand up to Trump and offer their base a worthwhile alternative.* Letting Bill Barr come on and slam Trump while vapid hosts made faces and threw softball defenses up is a way for Fox News to have clips if and when Donald Trump ends up in an orange jumpsuit.

On Friday, Barr spoke to two vacuous Fox News mouthpieces and began by pointing out that the idea that Trump could or would make a blanket declassification was ridiculous, and that even if he did, it wouldn’t be much of a defense against any real legal challenges. Barr said he was “skeptical” of that claim in the first place, “because frankly, I think it’s highly improbable; and second, if in fact he sort of stood over scores of boxes, not really knowing what was in them, and said ‘I hereby declassify everything in here,’ that would be such an abuse, show such recklessness, that it is almost worse than taking the documents.”

One Fox deplorable decided the best tactic here was to ask Barr about how the FBI went to Donald Trump’s private residence to get said folders and files. You know, the old GOP chestnut: How could a rich, conservative white guy possibly break the law? Barr did a good job of pointing out that it seemed pretty clear the FBI had a very good idea that there were a lot of very serious documents in a very not-secure location, and Trump wasn’t willingly giving them back.

He then gave a very simple answer that maybe some of the people watching from their MyPillow recliners could maybe understand:

"People say the search was unprecedented. Well, it’s also unprecedented for a president to take classified information and put them in a county club. How long is the government going to try to get that back, you know? They jawbone for a year. They were deceived on the voluntary actions taken. They then went and got a subpoena. They were deceived on that—they feel. And the records are starting to show that they were being jerked around."

"People say this was unprecedented. Well, it's also unprecedented for a POTUS to take all this classified information & put 'em in a country club, ok? And how long is the govt going to try to get that back?" -- Bill Barr bodies Trump on Fox News even as anchors try to defend him pic.twitter.com/7HqOvf9xvp

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 2, 2022

*In the GOP leadership’s defense, they have no meaningful alternative to Trump. Trump is worth 1,000 Ted Cruzes or Josh Hawleys because Trump will unashamedly lie about giving conservative voters everything they want (lower health insurance costs, more and better jobs, all the oil they can guzzle). Most Republicans have spent the last few decades attempting to pretend they had policies that might do that in the face of failure after failure.

RELATED STORY: The classified documents in that DOJ photo were all found in Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago office

Fox News ‘legal analyst’ forgets the United States jailed Martin Luther King Jr.—dozens of times

Fox News continues its attempts to generate chaos in the United States by reporting on the U.S.-anti-vaxxer-funded trucker protests in Canada. If that sentence sounds convoluted that’s because the concept it is trying to synthesize is hogwash. What has been a relatively small protest by right-wing extremists against public health mandates has been blown so far out of proportion by the Fox News propaganda machine that one wonders if Fox News has more than a little “investment” in it.

On Monday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced he would be invoking the powers granted to him under the country’s Emergencies Act to try and bring an end to the protests, saying, "The blockades are harming our economy and endangering public safety. We cannot and will not allow illegal and dangerous activities to continue." 

On Tuesday, during one of the hate orgies of make-believe Fox News calls a show, “legal analyst” Jonathan Turley was brought on to speak about Trudeau’s announcement. It was … something to hear.

Turley began by saying the move to use emergency powers was “quite excessive.” Then, without a smirk, without even a smidgen of self-conscious reflection on what a true sociopath he sounds like, Jonathan Turley said this: "By this rationale, they could have cracked down on the civil rights movement. They could have arrested Martin Luther King."

Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley, on Canada PM Justin Trudeau invoking emergency powers to deal with the "Freedom Convoy" blockade: "By this rationale, they could have cracked down on the Civil Rights movement. They could have arrested Martin Luther King." pic.twitter.com/s9dwkcvihQ

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) February 15, 2022

That’s an amazing statement coming from the media outlet that truly hates Black civil disobedience (see: Black Lives Matter protests). It’s also deeply offensive, since it is complete make-believe. 

For one, one of the most famous essays written in American history was written in a Birmingham, Alabama, jail on April 16, 1963—by Martin Luther King Jr. In fact, Martin Luther King Jr. was in jail for “demonstrating without a permit.” He had been in jail for four days before he wrote his essay. Unlike the Canadian trucker convoy, King’s law-breaking had to do with a racist judge, in a racist state, saying that Black people couldn’t hold a protest.

If Jonathan Turley wants to speak to the history of “excessive” use and abuse of state powers, Turley need only look to the at least 28 other times Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested and jailed. Blackhistory.com has some of America’s lowlights:

January 26, 1956 -- He was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama as part of a “Get Tough” campaign to intimidate the bus boycotters. Four days later, on January 30, his home was bombed.

March 22, 1956 -- King, Rosa Parks and more than 100 others were arrested on charges of organizing the Montgomery Bus Boycott in protest of Parks' treatment.

September 3, 1958 -- While attempting to attend the arraignment of a man accused of assaulting Abernathy, King is arrested outside Montgomery’s Recorder’s Court and charged with loitering. He is released a short time later on $100 bond.

[...]

October 19, 1960 -- He was arrested in Atlanta, Georgia during a sit-in while waiting to be served at a restaurant. He was sentenced to four months in jail, but after intervention by then presidential candidate John Kennedy and his brother Robert Kennedy, he was released.

[...]

July 27, 1962 -- He was arrested again and jailed for holding a prayer vigil in Albany, Georgia.

[...]

February 2, 1965 -- He was arrested in Selma, Alabama during a voting rights demonstration, but the demonstrations continued leading to demonstrators being beaten at the Pettus Bridge by state highway patrolmen and sheriff’s deputies.

Those ellipses above skip over other frivolous arrests of a man fighting for the right to be treated like a person, not a bunch of dunderheads who want the right to be shitheads because they’re afraid of medicine.

Here’s a fun response.

Fox News analysts already reaping the benefits of banning books, I see https://t.co/zFRBULnb0r

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 15, 2022

Glenn Beck announces he has COVID-19 while doing commercials for diet bars

Remember Glenn Beck? He’s still around and he’s still doing what he’s always done: grifting away. His modern look includes spectacles and a sort of Kentucky Fried Chicken Colonel Sanders look. Surprising no one, Beck’s evidence-free conspiracy theory stylings, now common on the right, are focused on all of the same tropes of misinformation, disinformation, and anti-vaxxer clickbait that allows for making money on his BlazeTV network.

Wednesday night, on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by MAGA supporters hoping to install a dictator into the office of president, Glenn Beck released a video of his previously recorded interview with Donald Trump. Beck boasted of traveling down to Mar-a-Lago to talk with Trump about all the ways President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are trying to steal your freedoms. Also, Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to steal your penis or something. 

But guess who opened his special interview with the announcement that he has “been diagnosed” with COVID? Glenn Beck did, silly billy. No worries—the grift must go on and Glenn used his COVID diagnosis as a jumping off point to … hawk things during commercial breaks.

Beck, looking very red and like he was about to burst, told his audience that he was at home quarantining, but that you needed to watch his interview with Trump, as liberals want you to worry about the Jan. 6 attempted coup because they don’t want you to know about the gospel of Trump. Then came the first segment: 

  • Trump says something about how wind power and solar power are terrible because you have to update your windmills and solar panels every three decades or something
  • Says we are standing on “liquid gold,” and the push away from fossil fuels is all a part of China’s plan to win.
  • Glenn Beck tells Trump that Putin respects him but doesn’t respect Biden.
  • Oh, liberals are worried about Jan. 6 because they are “scare-mongerers”

Then a quick commercial break to try and scare you into buying a home security system because “your home may not be a secure as you think.” One person you shouldn’t let into your home now? Glenn Beck, who is selling you this as he sits in his home with a positive COVID-19 diagnosis.

Back to the show:

  • Business is being killed by “the mandates.” You should get vaccinated, or not, if you don’t want to, it’s up to you. Business!
  • Dr. Fauci is the new president of the United States. Donald Trump didn’t do most of what Fauci suggested. [Side note: Dr. Fauci was suggesting things to Trump back in January 2020. Looks at watch? Two years later. Excellent job.]

Quick commercial to tell you that “I think it is critically important that you get your finances in order.” You’re telling me. Back to the show!

Joe Biden is trying to pit our children against each other and throw parents in trouble.

We need to abolish public schools and let states decide what students should learn about our country’s history.

Something something “cancel culture.”

Time for a commercial! Beck has COVID-19, in fact he doesn’t have much of an appetite and he had just started a diet. You know what’s saving his life? Diet bars. You know what else? You can buy them by way of Glenn Beck’s diet bar commercial. Back to the show!

  • Trump got 100% of the vote (on something).
  • The impeachment was a “hoax.”
  • Blah blah blah, witch trials.
  • Our army is run by “television generals”
  • Glenn Beck doesn’t “know” if he can tell his son to go into the military these days.

A quick reminder: Glenn Beck was promoting violence in the name of American fascism against other Americans, long before Donald Trump hit the scene. You don’t have to watch the interview, but if you want to see Glenn Beck hawk products ...

InfoWars mob terrorizes mothers and small children arriving at a Catholic Charities facility

Remember Alex Jones? He is the guy that runs InfoWars, the conspiracy-smothered, fact-free dreck-machine that people like Donald Trump and the Republican Party rely on to confuse and obfuscate reality for them. Unlike Fox News’ Tucker Carlson—who spews very similar BS—Jones comes in a repellent package that embodies the hedonism, corruption, and narcissism of the conservative movement in our country. 

On Wednesday, Jones and his InfoWars sociopaths decided to try and one-up the Republican Party’s anti-immigrant publicity stunts by staging one of their own. According to the Daily Dot both Jones and Drew Hernandez—a self-described investigative reporter who believes Black Lives Matter is a “Marxist terrorist organization”—released video of themselves stopping child trafficking! Whoa, that’s big news! Except it’s the opposite of that. What the two men and their film crews did was in essence terrorize three mothers and their children, along with a man driving them from the Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley in the city of McAllen, Texas, to the Human Respite Center, also in McAllen.

In video that was posted by Hernandez and subsequently taken down on many sites, Jones can be seen in the middle of the afternoon on a McAllen street, standing and screaming at the occupants of a white minivan. Jones calls for the police while Hernandez points out that the children aren’t wearing seat belts and don’t have car seats. “No car seats. What organization is this? I want to know who the hell this is,” he demands. The Daily Dot reports that later in the video, in classic charlatan nonsensical histrionics, Jones yells, “If I drove around with three of my kids in the back of the car, I’d get arrested.” That’s not the law in Texas, to be clear. Also, Alex Jones not being allowed to drive with children might be more related to the fact that he’s had questionable judgement when driving. 

Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of the Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande, released a statement to reporters saying the video misrepresented what was happening. These children were not being “smuggled” anywhere; they were being driven from one place to another to receive some help from an organization that works to ameliorate poverty conditions for families. Pimentel did, however, say that the children should have been wearing seatbelts, but “unfortunately, this was not the case.”

“I urge you to look past the fear-mongering and mischaracterizations,” said Pimentel. “Remember to actually see the human beings fleeing persecution and their need for human dignity, which mirrors our own.”

Jones has long wrestled with clear personal issues. He is a bad person who has frequently preyed upon families in order to make his money. In recent years he has lost lawsuits filed by parents of children murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School for promoting the truly horrific conspiracy theory that the whole thing was made up and the parents were “crisis actors” pretending for years and years to have lost their children. To be Alex Jones is to be lost in the heart of darkness. Donald Trump’s mediocre mind and his popularity among the conservative movement created fertile ground for Jones and others to exploit the more openly white supremacist members of the right wing.

Tucker and guest go full racist: ‘We should not be bringing more Black children into the country’

The Fox News machine, along with the Republican Party, has spent the last 24 hours attempting to place blame for the power outages and electrical grid failures in Texas on environmentalism and “green energy.” This is because, as the entire state has been historically Republican-run, with its purse strings held by the fossil fuel industry, the real blame lies in corruption and a lack of infrastructure that Republican officials neglected to fix for the past few decades.

Tucker Carlson, to be clear, is a shitty misogynistic asshole and topped off the anti-green energy segment of his show by talking with former Texas governor and Trump-appointed Energy Secretary Rick Perry. While ending that interview and the first two-thirds of his show, which was dedicated to anti-environmentalism, Tucker literally said, “These people, go back to the gender studies department and stay away from our power grid.” Offensive and stupid on a few levels: That’s the Tucker Carlson brand.

Tucker wanted to end on a high note though, a note that he feels very at home in: white supremacy.

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So he brought on Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute. The Manhattan Institute is a pretend think tank that’s really just a place where conservatives who can’t publish legit scholarly work are allowed to pretend they’re scholars, and then go out into the world to preach against things like police reform, environmentalism, economic equality, higher taxes, and any other whatever actual facts the world has to offer. Heather Mac Donald is best known for being super racist against what she believes to be the myth of diversity, and a war on policing. She has been brought on Tucker Carlson’s show over the years, usually to talk about her expertise in telling Fox News viewers that America isn’t racist and Black people are mistreated by “bad apples” and frequently because Black people don’t behave correctly. That’s her thing. It’s a racist thing, but you don’t have systemic racism and a white supremacist power structure without white supremacists willing to talk about how bad people of color really are.

Anyway, President Joe Biden has promised to try and ameliorate the zero tolerance human rights catastrophe of the last administration, and this means accepting immigrants into our country—specifically immigrants that aren’t from germanic and nordic countries. The Republican Party is the party of racism, or better said, “the politics of whiteness.” Heather Mac Donald is here to stoke that fear of a Black planet, while also telling those viewers not to feel bad about being racist because racism isn’t really real.

HEATHER MAC DONALD: On the one hand as Biden said during the campaign, as he said in his inauguration speech, as he said since then: America is lethally racist. On the other hand we should break down every single reasonable, common sensical immigration control in order to bring in legally and illegally as many third-world immigrants of color as possible. Both positions cannot be true. If Biden believes that Black children are at risk of getting a shot every time they step outside, we should not be bringing more Black children into this country.

Tucker, in his most earnest of television reactions, says “You are so right,” and proceeds to expound upon how “liberals” and their “incessant talk about race” has been hurting the country. He attempts to transition into another question about what the “end game” is for liberals and how badly they want immigrants to be allowed entrance into our country and Black people stuff and Latino people’s rights. This question, like every question Heather Mac Donald answers in her public life, leads to her saying an even more racist thing than she said before. Whereas I said above that Mac Donald was there to tell the Fox News viewers that racism isn’t really real, the second part of that statement is that while it isn’t real, Black people are coming and you should be afraid because they inherently are different than you.

HEATHER MAC DONALD: They want to completely change the character of this country, the foundation of it, the norms, the traditions, and the demographics of it to be very honest. It is based in hatred towards a civilization deemed too white and too male, and they're going to do everything they can—whether it's spewing the poison of identity politics, teaching Americans to hate each other, to hate their past, or flooding it with mass low-skilled immigration that increases the wealth gap that hurts American Blacks and Hispanics.

She goes on to say that on top of all of this, immigrants are uppity when they come here because they hear the liberal white supremacist narrative, internalize it, and then feel entitled to things. She actually says all of that. That’s it, folks. If you are ignorant enough to see sense in this than you are a racist who has enormous sections of your education that need development.

Mac Donald comes on around the 33-minute mark. Trigger warning: She’s crazy racist.

Catalyst in chief: Democrats’ ticktock video of Jan. 6 is a searing indictment of Trump

Most Americans have seen any number of isolated snippets of video from Jan. 6, when a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol complex—rioters in one hall or another, lawmakers ducking for cover, Capitol Police trying to deter Trump's cultists, and the occasional first-hand video of one person's experience that day. 

But watching it all knit together in one chronological video documenting Trump's exhortations and the immediate responsiveness of his cultists is a different—and far more powerful—experience altogether. That's exactly what Democratic impeachment managers presented Tuesday to punctuate their opening arguments that Trump’s culpability is too undeniable and his transgressions too inexcusable by any objective measure to escape punishment.

"We will stop the steal," Trump tells his rallygoers in the opening frames of the video. "And after this, we're going to walk down—and I'll be there with you—we're going to walk down to the Capitol ..."

Cut to source video from the crowd, with multiple people yelling, "Yeah ... Let's take the Capitol!" Another Trumper in the crowd helpfully orients his peers to the Capitol, bellowing, "We are going to the Capitol, where our problems are—it's that direction." 

Text on the video notes that as "Trump continues his speech, a wave of supporters begins marching to the Capitol."

Action-reaction. Trump directs his cultists to the Capitol—they go to the Capitol. Trump tells them to "fight like hell," and they fight like hell. Trump says that when you catch somebody in a fraud, "you're allowed to go by very different rules," and they employ very different rules.

Then Trump sets up his vice president for a fall from grace among his devotees, concluding, "So I hope Mike has the courage to do what he needs to do."

As Trump very well knew, Vice President Mike Pence had already informed him that he didn't have the power to overturn the election results during certification.

On the floors of the House and the Senate, lawmakers are performing their constitutional duties as the Trump's rabid rioters breach the perimeter and soon after start roaming the halls looking for lawmakers. Pence is ushered off the floor of the Senate chamber, as is Speaker Nancy Pelosi from the House chamber. Lawmakers' speeches are abruptly ended as they are informed the mob is now inside the building and the ones who can be are evacuated. 

Action-reaction. Trump sends a tweet criticizing Pence for failing to overturn the election. Chants of "Treason! Treason!" erupt among rioters inside, while "Traitor Pence!" becomes a rallying cry outside the building.

Two hours after the Capitol insurrection began, Trump tweets a video of himself saying, "There’s never been a time like this where such a thing happened, where they could take it away from all of us, from me, from you, from our country. This was a fraudulent election, but we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You’re very special. You’ve seen what happens. You see the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel. But go home and go home at peace."

Back at the Capitol, angry rioters continue destroying the building, beating police officers, and destroying the equipment they confiscated from various journalists. 

In the end, the video notes, at least seven people lost their lives and more than 140 law enforcement officers suffered physical injuries, not to mention the mental trauma that remains with many others to this day. 

Four hours after the Capitol incursion began, Trump celebrated the lethal havoc that had just unfolded in the heart of our nation’s government. “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long," Trump tweeted. "Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!"

Watch it: 

Ayanna Pressley sums up why impeaching Donald Trump is about more than just symbolism

It’s been just over one month since pro-Trump insurgents rioted at the U.S. Capitol, creating both physical and emotional damages. Many who survived the riots have spoken out about their personal experiences, including, as Daily Kos covered, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has done two live videos detailing her trauma. For those of us who followed the insurgency from home, we know that after a group of countless white people invaded the Capitol, custodial workers—including many people of color—were left to clean their mess. 

Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley spoke to CNN host Jake Tapper about just that subject on Sunday morning, appearing on State of the Union. Her response is smart, moving, and emotional, and absolutely worth a watch. Let’s delve into it below.

Tapper referenced the one-month anniversary of the insurgency, as well as Donald Trump’s impeachment trial beginning this coming Tuesday. “You lived through the events of January sixth,” Tapper stated. “What do you say to people who say, ‘Come on, just move on’?”

“If we really believe that this is a moment of reckoning in every way, then we must act accordingly,” Pressley replied. “And that means that Donald J. Trump must be held accountable because he is culpable for having incited this insurrection by perpetuating this big lie. This House has twice done its job. He will forever be the twice impeached president by this Democratic-majority led House.

Now, the Senate must honor their oath and impeach Donald J. Trump to hold him accountable,” Pressley continued. “But also, to bar him from running for public office ever again. And then, we know that he had accomplices. Who told on themselves. In broad daylight. They aided and abetted this insurrection by perpetuating this big lie. And they must be expelled. And then we must continue to investigate, Jake, so that any individuals or agencies that enabled this insurrection are taken to account.

But let me just say this, for those that continue to feign great surprise about what happened on January 6th. As a Black woman, to be barricaded in my office, using office furniture and water bottles… On the ground, in the dark. That terror, those moments of terror, is familiar in a deep and ancestral way for me. And, I want us to do everything to ensure that a breach like this never occurs at the Capitol. But I want us to address the evil incurred that is white supremacy in this nation. This is not only about securing the Capitol to ensure that members, and our staffs, and custodial staff, and food services workers, are safe in the Capitol… It is that we are safe in America.

One of the images that I am haunted by,” Pressley continued, “is the Black custodial staff cleaning up the mess left by that violent white supremacist mob. That is a metaphor for America. We have been cleaning up after violent white supremacist mobs for generations. And it must end. So, impeach, expel, investigate.”

Tapper mentioned that some Congresspeople have expressed fear for their safety following the insurgency, and noted that they are not sharing Pressley’s location during the interview because of her “significant” security concerns and that many House colleagues blame rhetoric coming from some House Republicans. Surprising no one, Tapper mentioned Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene

“Simply put,” he asked. “Do you feel safe going to work?”

“Look, I feel safe,” Pressley said. “Living with threats and living with bigots, who are as vile in their rhetoric as they are in the policies that they seek and enact, and the harm that they seek to cause the most marginalized communities, Black Americans in particular, is not new. Again, this is familiar in an ancestral sort of way. So, it is not going to deter or obstruct me from doing my job for the American people.” Then Pressley discussed the importance of a COVID-19 response that leaves no one behind.

Here’s that clip.

“One of the images that I’m haunted by is the black custodial staff cleaning up the mess left by that violent white supremacist mob. That is a metaphor for America.” Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley discusses the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol and impeachment. #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/t2i5su99Gj

— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) February 7, 2021

On a related note, New Jersey Rep. Andy Kim tweeted about his personal experience cleaning up after the riots. The thread is quickly going viral and is well worth checking out, too.

It was a month ago when I found this broken eagle while cleaning the Capitol after the insurrection. I kept it as a tender reminder of the enormous work ahead to heal. This is one of several symbols I want to share with you as we think what comes next for our nation (THREAD) pic.twitter.com/u4SRgA8lxX

— Andy Kim (@AndyKimNJ) February 6, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The chant of “Fight for Trump” continues.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watch Florida Republican try to explain why he thinks Trump impeachment trial is ‘stupid’

Appearing on Fox News Sunday to chat with host Chris Wallace, Sen. Marco Rubio delved into his feelings on former President Donald Trump. What about Trump, specifically? Oh, just the articles of impeachment against him. In a word, Rubio said he finds the trial “stupid.”

In a very slightly more eloquent attempt to express himself, Rubio said he feels, “We already have a flaming fire in this country,” and that a trial would amount to “a bunch of gasoline.” Basically, just another way of arguing that a trial would rupture unity efforts, even though as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi argued last week, ignoring all that’s gone is actually what is more likely to sow division in the country. Why? Because we need accountability. 

As of Sunday morning, at least one Republican sees the impeachment trial differently than Rubio, however. We can check out more of what Rubio said below, as well as what one of his peers in the Senate argued.

Rubio said he does think Trump “bears responsibility for some of what happened” and that it was “certainly a foreseeable consequence of everything that was going on.” It would be fascinating to hear what Rubio qualifies as “some” of what happened when a group of pro-Trump rioters surged into the U.S. Capitol and effectively terrorized elected officials. Rubio, instead, stressed he thinks that is “separate” from the idea of revisiting it and “stirring” it up. 

Here’s that clip.

Marco Rubio acknowledges Trump "bears responsibility" for the Capitol insurrection, but insists holding him accountable with an impeachment trial is the wrong move because it'll "stir up" the country again pic.twitter.com/egtvNAgrS8

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 24, 2021

Also related to the Trump family, Wallace asked Rubio how he feels about whispers that Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, may run for a senate seat in Florida. Given that Rubio is up for reelection in 2022, a primary challenge is considerably important. Rubio, however, dodged the meat of the question by declaring that he doesn't “really get into the parlor games of Washington.”

He did say that if he wants to be “back in the U.S Senate, I have to earn that every six years” and that he doesn’t own his seat. Which is true, but would ring as a touch more meaningful if Florida didn’t have rampant voter suppression issues. 

Wallace also spoke to Sen. Mitt Romney about the impeachment trial, posing the same question to both Republicans. Did they agree with fellow Republicans who argued that the trial should be thrown out under the alleged basis that it’s unconstitutional to convict a former president? Rubio said yes, he’d definitely vote to nix the trial, but Romney thinks the proceedings are constitutionally solid. (Which, of course, they are.)

“if you look at the preponderance of the legal opinion by scholars over the years,” Romney explained, “the preponderance of opinion is that yes, an impeachment trial is appropriate after someone leaves office.” Romney, who did vote to convict in the first trial, however, did not say how he would vote either way a second time, noting they have yet to actually hear arguments and evidence from both sides.