The January 6 Hearings - Part Two

Yesterday's January 6 hearing produced a new term - "team normal."

A hybrid of taped and live testimony centered on the comments of former Attorney General William Barr, Trump 2020 campaign manager Bill Stepien, former U.S. Attorney for Northern District of Georgia Byung Jin Pak, Republican election lawyer Ben Ginsberg (who represented George W. Bush on the 2000 Florida vote recount), and former Republican Philadelphia Commissioner Al Schmidt, who all looked into claims f afraid from Donald Trump at one time or another.  Among those testifying, Barr and Pak were Trump appointees, and Stepien joined the Trump 2020 presidential campaign late in the game to improve Trump's poll numbers against Biden.  All of them came to the conclusion that there was no fraud and that Trump. assuming he really believes he defeated Biden in the presidential election, doesn't know what he's talking about when he claims fraud.  These Trump aides and appointees were called "team normal" because they looked at the accusations of fraud objectively and thoroughly and ultimately told Trump what he didn't want to hear.  But "team normal" last to the crazies - including an inebriated Rudolph Giuliani - advising Trump.

Well, we all knew that.  We also knew, as former Fox News editor Chris Stirewalt testified yesterday, that once Biden won Arizona, there was no way Trump could win nationally.  So there were no bombshells today?  Well, there was this one.  January 6 Senior Investigative Counsel Amanda Wick revealed, in a pre-taped explanation, that Trump raised a quarter of a billion dollars off the lie that there was voter fraud and said it was going to fight voter fraud.  Instead, it went to conservative activist groups engaged in anything but that.

Everyone is calling yesterday a horrible day for Donald Trump.  But it was also a horrible day for President Biden - the Dow fell 876 points over worries of inflation and a possible recession.  To those worried that Trump might try to steal the 2024 presidential election - he actually might win it fair and square.

The danger on the rocks has surely not passed. 

Lost In Transition

Joe Biden has his work cut out for him.  Not just in serving as President, but to become President.

Trump refuses to concede the election and he refuses to allow the Washington bureaucracy to accommodate any transition.  He's also undergoing a massive PR campaign to fuel rumors that the election was stolen form him.  Meanwhile, he's suing every state he thinks he should have won to have the results in states Biden won overturned before the electors can be certified to vote in their state capitals in December.  Also, only a handful of  Republican members of  Congress acknowledge Biden's victory.  

And in the fantastic event that Biden actually makes it to being sworn in, he may still have to deal with Mitch McConnell stopping everything.  The Senate race in North Carolina has been called for Thom Tillis, bringing the Republican Senate caucus in the 119th Congress so far to 49 members and proving that North Carolina Democrats are an ever sorrier bunch that their Florida or Kentucky brethren.  (Another adulterer in an adultery-intolerant state, guys?)  Alaska's Senate race has also since been called for Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan.   Now the Democrats' only recourse  is in Georgia.  There, Democrat Jon Ossoff faces incumbent Republican Senator David Perdue and the Reverend Raphael Warnock, the other Democratic Senate candidate, faces appointed Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler in runoffs scheduled for January 5.  Despite the Democrats' new-found strength in the Peach State, the chances of the party pulling off a double win - even against certifiable crooks like Perdue and Loeffler - look exceedingly slim.

Meanwhile, Biden is readying a White House staff and assembling a COVID-19 task force, spelling out his health care agenda (more of that later), receiving calls, communiques, and congratulations from foreign leaders, and putting together a government - without help from a Trump administration that refuses to share vital information with the incoming President and continues to insist that the Donald will be taking the oath of office on January 20, ready to challenge the results right up to the counting of the electoral votes on January 6 under the watch of Mike Pence and in the presence of a Republican Senate as well as a Democratic House.  Expect challenges to the results from each state Biden will have won - especially Pennsylvania.

I wonder if Americans have any idea how appropriate it is that this election took place in the middle of a pandemic.  Biden's win may have treated a symptom, but the disease of Trumpism goes merrily on.