The January 6 Hearings - Part Nine

A couple of takeaways from the ninth and possibly final public hearing of the January 6  U.S. House committee:

• Trump planned all along to declare victory before the election was held.  In fact, he more or less planned the whole insurrection.
• Trump tried stop the vote counting as of midnight on November 3/4, 2020, declaring that the Election Day deadline had passed and the vote counting must stop.  There's no such thing as an Election Day deadline; if the votes are not all counted on Election Day, the counting continues until it's done.
• A group of Proud Boys stood outside the rally area in front of the White House, without bothering to go through the metal detectors,  with the intention of marching to the Capitol bearing arms.  The Secret Service was aware of it.
• Trump demanded that the police allow the insurrectionists in to the rally site . . . with their weapons.  The Secret Service had already told Trump that they were armed.
• Trump admitted privately that he knew he'd lost the election.  But he refused to admit it publicly, insisting that the election was stolen in order to embolden his supporters . . . and also because he didn't want people to know he'd actually lost something.
• The leaders of Congress were in deep trouble.  Clips of Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer conferring in an undisclosed location during the insurrection filmed by Pelosi's daughter were screened for the hearing, and Speaker Pelosi was clearly beside herself, trying to rally the military and National Guard units in Maryland and Virginia.  The Speaker herself was ready to curse - "Oh, sh--" - and even as he was ready to say it in the holding room, the insurrectionists were doing it in the House chamber!
• Speaker Pelosi hoped Trump would march to the Cpatoil with his supporters so she could "punch him out" for trespassing on Capitol grounds.
• The committee subpoenaed Trump.  It remains to be seen whether he'll comply (spoiler: he won't!),

You know, sometimes I think of the late Liz Smith and how she "invented" Trump, personally disliking him but writing so incessantly about him in in her gossip column that she made him famous enough to go national and eventually become a reality TV host and run for President.  Smith said that Trump was "the king of hyperbole and he had just the requisite touch of Elvis vulgarity to endear him to the common man."

So that's it  - a gossip columnist writing for a New York tabloid created President Donald Trump.

And for that I can never forgive her.