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. 

Democracy Is Doomed

Writing a blog entry like this is probably not the best way to get back into Mark Zuckerberg's good graces and regain my privilege to post links to this blog on Facebook, but I must speak about this now, before forces of darkness even greater than the Z-Man curtail my right to speak out anywhere in the Internet.

This past week's successful effort by Senate Republicans to block a commission to investigate the January 6 pro-Trump insurrection on the Capitol to prevent the certification of Joe Biden's election to the Presidency, lest such a commission find out anything that would would embarrass the GOP during the 2022 midterm elections.  This allows Republican leaders to go after President Biden on immigration and crime while avoiding thorny questions about Trump supporters' efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election by force.  And with the Democrats holding a bare majority in the House, it's almost a certainty, given the historic occurrence of the party controlling the executive branch to lose seats in the legislative branch, that they'll lose their majority next time around.  The lack of an investigation in Republicans' efforts to prevent Biden's election just makes it easier for the GOP to regain power in at least one house of Congress in 2022 . . . and the 2024 presidential and congressional elections.

Even if Trump doesn't run for President again, he could easily get the party to nominate a Trump lackey to oppose President Biden - say, Florida governor Ron DeSantis.  While all of this is going on, the GOP is using its power in various states to not only gerrymander legislative districts and restrict the right to vote but also install election officials to make sure that votes from Democratic districts don't get counted.  The result?  The GOP takes over the White House and Congress and, in tandem with state Republican leaders, freezes out Democrats to ensure that they can never regain power - because they will always be outvoted in future elections.

And so we celebrate our quarter-millennial anniversary as a nation in 2026 under an authoritarian government masquerading as a democracy - not unlike apartheid-era South Africa.  And the only reason we won't be the target of an international boycott that costs us the 2028 Olympics is because, well, we have nukes.

"But Steve," you say, "a House select committee can investigate the Janu-" Shut up right there, bucko!  If you think a House select committee can get to the bottom of the insurrection, you're dumber than you look!  A select committee will be controlled by Democrats, and its findings will have a partisan tinge to it.  A minority report rom the Republicans will rebut every finding point by point and will have just enough plausibility to satisfy right-leaning independents who voted for Biden in 2020 but don't want to vote for Democratic House and Senate candidates.  And to be  honest, a bipartisan commission's findings wouldn't have changed many - or any - minds among Trump's diehard supporters.  Trying to convince Trump supporters to accept the truth of the 2020 election is like trying to convince hip-hop fans to listen to classic rock.  

And if I'm going to compare hip-hop fans to Trump supporters, I can understand why Facebook wants nothing to do with this blog.

The only way a House select committee could investigation the January 6 riot in a nonpartisan fashion is if they deliberately make it nonpartisan by, say,  having a twelve-member committee of six Democrats and six Republicans, with Republican House members who voted for the commission as opposed to yokels like Louie Gohmert, and have a thirteenth member as chair - a Democrat, because the House is controlled by Democrats (but not for long!) - who would only vote to break a tie.  Maybe get Debbie Wasserman Schultz to chair it, because she's hated on both sides - now that's bipartisanship!  All kidding aside, I suppose I could write my own congresswoman, Mikie Sherrill, and suggest a select committee constructed in just this fashion, but then I'm only a constituent.

And yeah, yeah, I know Trump is being investigated for corruption and could end up in prison, but a prison term for Trump wouldn't necessarily preclude another presidential term for him. Just remember this.  Hitler did time in prison before he became chancellor of Germany.  The end.  

I can imagine the worst that could happen as a result of Republican efforts to undermine and purge President Biden and his supporters and take over Washington completely, putting them in the position they were in when Trump became President in 2017 - thus allowing them to sack everything and become a permanent governing minority.   I swear, I can see the rise of a right-wing dictatorship the same way I saw the pandemic coming - like a tidal wave.    With one key difference - I tried to deny the full-blown impact of the pandemic.  I somehow convinced myself that the pandemic would be over in a couple of months with enough hand washing and testing. This time I'm not lying to myself.  We're going to lose our democracy.  And if there's any way to prevent that from happening, I don't know what it would be.

Brian's Song

U.S. Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick lived life to the fullest and loved his job as one of the officers protecting the headquarters of Congress.  Killed during the January 6 insurrection, he was memorialized in the Capitol rotunda when his ashes were brought to lie in honor there.  His remains have been interred in Arlington National Cemetery in recognition of not just his sacrifice at the Capitol but for his service in the Air National Guard.

Officer Sicknick's fate should fire up efforts to punish Donald Trump for inciting a riot against the legislative branch of the federal government, as his impeachment trial begins this coming Tuesday.  But Senate Republicans remain mostly noncommittal to the idea of conviction; an acquittal, now seen as inevitable, will squander Congress's last chance to ensure that Trump can't stand for the Presidency again in 2024.  But more importantly, it means that the Republicans will do nothing in standing up to the extremist, reactionary wing of their party, and the GOP could regain power in the 2022 midterms and the 2024 elections if the vote is close enough, whether Trump runs to get his old job back or not.  And thanks to redistricting and voter suppression, it just might.

Brian Sicknick's memory shouldn't be dishonored like this.  We learn almost every day new facts about how the insurrection came close to mass assassinations of elected officials.  Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D_NY), whatever you think of her politics, deserves sympathy for coming close to death on January 6 and having the relive her experience with sexual assault while the mob went about like the madmen they were to kill whoever was in their path. Ocasio-Cortez heard the cries of "Where is she? Where is she?" whiel in hiding and might very well have been convinced they were coming for her, so much has she become a bogeywoman for the Republican right.  The woman the mob was looking for was, more likely, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and that an institutionalist like Pelosi and a staunch progressive like AOC could inspire the same level of rage among these extremists is one of the most horrific ironies of the Trump base's extent of their hatred.

Yes, it makes no sense to acquit Trump, but we are told that this is inevitable.  News flash: So was a Hillary Clinton Presidency in 2016.  Nothing is really "inevitable." And if even if Trump doesn't get convicted in the Senate, he could still get convicted in a criminal court in New York State.  The state Attorney General's office there may very well see to that. 

Remove Donald Trump From Office. Now.

Donald Trump did this.

Donald Trump built up a base of rabid right-wing populists to sustain his lust for power and managed to fool enough people into believing that he was looking out for their interests when he was only looking out for his own.  He used that deception to enrich himself and his cronies - but mostly himself -  and give himself so much power through the office of the Presidency that he though the could serve as President for life and exact every last bit of power he could to make himself omnipotent.  He also lied to his supporters and convinced them that he had been rightfully re-elected against President-elect Joe Biden and, refusing to concede, urged them to "stand by" against the liberals, the minorities, the elites, and the so-called Deep State before exhorting them to march to the Capitol on the day of the congressional certification of the electoral vote for President and Vice President.  When they approached the Capitol, the inevitable happened.  

Trump specifically told his supporters to march on the Capitol to force his re-election.  His minions in Congress aided and abetted in planning to dispute the electoral votes of no fewer than six states.  He even tried to get Vice President Mike Pence to invalidate the vote, something Pence was constitutionally  unable to do and something he refused to do.  All indications are that Trump was enjoying the spectacle watching it on TV form the White House.  He has since condemned the violence, but without much if any sincerity, spewing lies about how he wanted and tried to bring order to the chaos by calling out the National Guard (Pence and the Defense Department actually did that).  All Trump did was throw his own supporters under the bus.  With the electoral vote having been certified for Joe Biden, Trump now admits he will no longer be President after noon on January 20.  But here's the problem - he will still be President before then.

In the eleven days left in his "Presidency," Trump, who remains deluded by his own lies, has control over the nuclear codes and has the ability to do a lot of damage even without launching a nuclear missile to some place like Iran.  Five people already died at the Capitol this past week because of him.  He is dangerous.  He must be removed immediately and Mike Pence should be President in the waning days of the current presidential term.  If the Vice President himself won't confer with what's left of the Cabinet (Elaine Chao, the Secretary of Transportation, has resigned, as has Education Secretary Betsy DeVos) and invoke Section 4 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, then Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer should do what they promised (or threatened) to do - impeach and convict Trump as quickly as possible.  I still doubt that Trump will leave the White House on his own despite his mealy-mouthed promise to do so this past Thursday, and so he must be removed by any legal means necessary.  The sooner the better.  America has had numerous figures from all walks of life, from politics to popular culture, that have brought disgrace upon this country because they have negatively embodied America in the eyes of the world, and I've written about a few of them here, but none of them have brought the magnitude of disgrace upon this country that Donald John Trump has.

It's time for him to go.