Trump is a symptomatic reaction to an Elitist power structure that looks down with total disdain on ordinary people. Trump is their way of saying F..U…
The effort to make January 6th the cause celeb for all that is wrong about American democracy only further highlights how disconnected the Elitist power establishment (the Deep State) is from any real concern over truly preserving democracy.
People can see the game is rigged and Trump’s their “man” for pointing it out. When he’s “gone” there will be someone else to take his place. Why? Because the game really is rigged.
If the Elitists were so concerned over preserving democracy, why has Hillary’s concocted “Russian Dossier” not raised any concerns? Or Hunter Biden’s laptop loaded with clear references to Joe Biden selling his political influence? Or Hillary’s rigging the democrat primary process against Bernie? Or why Trump’s request to post 20,000 National Guard troops outside the Capital on Jan 6th was turned down by Nancy Pelosi and DC Mayor Muriel Bowser? No Elitists want to address those questions because none of them help support the narrative….
The fact is that the rules for voting in 2020 were dramatically loosened — intentionally using COVID as the rational — all to make it far easier for democrats to ballot harvest and they did and it worked. Mark Elias lead a national effort to sue local election officials to force the rule changes. It was a deliberate strategy that worked. The result was the election of a guy who literally campaigned from his basement and won by absolutely the slimmest of margins.
If we’re going to “come together” as this article suggests we need to do, it means having to address a whole host of tough questions — and not just those concerning Trump and his supporters.
Coming together means coming together with mutual concern for the truth.
I’m not hopeful that will happen because this isn’t about “truth” — this is about political power and Elitists preserving it under the illusion of democracy…
"Or why Trump’s request to post 20,000 National Guard troops outside the Capital on Jan 6th was turned down by Nancy Pelosi and DC Mayor Muriel Bowser?"
I hadn't heard about this before, and it sounds pretty damning, so I looked into it further.
Trump seems to have made an offhand comment to his acting defense secretary about needing 10,000 national guard troops to protect the Capitol. There was never a formal request, and as far as I can tell nobody ever brought this up with Pelosi or Bowser at all. That part of the story is just completely fabricated.
I have sympathy for the argument that elites in America have too much power, but why do you have to use blatant lies to make your point? It makes me think that the truth doesn't support your position.
See interview with Kash Patel (who was Chief of Staff for the Secretary of Defense).
Unfortunately, you missed my whole point. Elites don't want the truth....they don't want to get to the bottom of tough questions that impact them.
If you truly care about the truth (and I'm assuming that you do), you would see that the issue of the National Guard troops is a question that needs to be asked. It is not a blatant lie. Something happened. I never said (as you alleged) that it was a fact. What I said was that it is a question that Elitists do not want to answer. They simply shout "LIE! LIE!"...
As I stated, this is not a search for the truth or to protect 'democracy' - this is a fraud by people who have an interest in covering up the events of January 6th and using them to their political advantage.
I wasn’t there. I’m assuming you weren’t there either, but Kash Patel was. He said it happened. Is he lying? Doesn’t sound like it. He says there’s written proof. As for people calling it a lie, what are they relying on? I’d like to know.
It completely undercuts the entire allegation that Trump’s speech on Jan 6th is what caused everything.
We now know - as Liz Cheney said - the FBI had prior intelligence that there would be trouble. Yet Trump was impeached because it was his speech that caused the problem.
Because it doesn't. Which is why such people have no choice but to resort to throwing out "just asking questions" types of accusations, so that when you call them on it they can deny that they were actually saying anything. Tucker Carlson has made a career out of this.
"I'm just saying it's a question that Elitists don't want to answer". Ignoring the fact that some "Elitist" apparently has answered it, and the fact that they don't keep talking about a misleading line of horse-shit must mean that "Elites" don't want to get to the bottom of "tough questions" that actually aren't tough, don't establish a damn thing, and are wholly irrelevant. And if you ask enough such questions, too many for most people to research or fact-check, you'll create an indelible impression that *something* must be going on and that the "Elites" are constantly lying to you.
Which is the whole point. The proverbial "firehose of falsehoods". As Hannah Arendt once said, to create the impression that "nothing is true and everything is possible".
I'm a liberal Democrat, never voted for Trump and never would. But even I am disgusted with this January 6 show trial. Trump was already impeached and acquitted for inciting the January 6 riot! How does this fact never seem to come up in the reporting on the committee?
Meanwhile the commission has revealed essentially nothing. If every politician who encouraged his supporters "to fight like hell' was guilty of some crime they would all be in jail. This author himself exhorts people to keep "fighting the good fight" two paragraphs later!
Congressional commissions, with their powers to subpoena, are supposed to research potential legislation, not act as unaccountable law enforcement agencies. The ghost of McCarthy looms large.
I do very much hope the Republican party moves on from Trump to someone I could consider voting for for even one second. His post-election scheming was absolutely inexcusable, among other things, if not illegal. But the 1/6 committee has generated no "momentum," it has been an embarrassing waste of time, just like the Russia collusion hoax before it.
Good post. One of the first objective and reasonable from a liberal Democrat about Jan-6 that I have read to date. In fact, the first I have ever read with this perspective. It will not be popular with your political cohort. They have fully adopted the Jan-6 insurrection narrative and are intent to keep playing it in and endless loop.
I voted for Trump, but he was forth on the list of Republican candidates I preferred. I think 2024 will be Ron DeSantis. If Trump runs, DeSantis will beat him in the primaries. And DeSantis will crush any Democrat in the general election in 2024. Especially if they run Biden or Harris.
What I know about the anti-Trump fervor in the Democrats and corporate media is that Trump is just their current obsession. They will do the same to any and all Republican Presidential candidates and president. If DeSantis wins, he will be branded an evil, greedy Putin-lover and they will seek out new show trials to influence the voters that it so.
I think there are a lot of misunderstandings about people who voted for Trump. Many who voted for him initially were voting against Hillary and against the DC establishment. Many who voted for him in '20 were voting for his policies, and against the danger that Biden would be manipulated by the left. I agree the January 6 committee is a political farce, and the time and money going into it would be best spent elsewhere.
Going forward, many Republicans, even if they liked Trump's policies, realize how divisive he was, and that someone new and younger should take his place in '24, to which I agree. My concern is that anyone who throws their hat in the ring is likely to be Trumpized by the media.
I am guessing that even yourself as a Liberal Democrat have some serious concerns about the state and direction of the country. I hope there are enough of you and Independents who are willing to put someone else up who can turn this train wreck around.
How is the committee a political farce? What problem do you have with the way they've conducted themselves?
Kevin McCarthy tried to make the committee a farce. He attempted to install two people who were Trump stooges - including one, Jim Jordan, who himself was a potential target of the committee. So Pelosi rejected both of those people and accepted the other three, and prompted him for replacements for the other two. At this point, McCarthy withdrew all of his nominations and refused to provide more, figuring that at if he couldn't sabotage the committee from the inside, he would attempt to project it as entirely political.
So Pelosi recruited two Republicans who have risked their careers and personal safety to stand up to Trump - the last thing in the world that anyone could sensibly call "political". Meanwhile, McCarthy continues to lie and say that Pelosi refused to let him appoint Republicans to the committee - almost humorously, accusing her of violating centuries of tradition, while running cover for the guy who actually violated centuries of tradition by refusing to concede the presidency.
Well Unset, saying fight "like hell" versus standing on Pennsylvania Avenue and directing your mob to march right up to the capitol and stop the certification are 2 very different things. "the ghost of McCarty looms"? You must be kidding me!
The fact that he wasn't convicted in the Senate does not mean he and his team did not commit high crimes and misdemeanors. Oh, and the Russian collusion was very, very real. You must be wittingly oblivious.
You're right, they are different things. One big important difference being the second one did not actually happen. You seem to be the oblivious one regarding the Russia hoax - I suggest you catch up on recent developments.
The fact that the mob didn't succeed in stopping the certification is irrelevant. The point is what Trump attempted.
And if by "recent developments" you're talking about that shamefully misleading editorial in the WSJ, "Hillary Did It", I'm sorry to tell you that you've fallen victim to propaganda pushed out by another Trump-corrupted institution - the WSJ editorial board, another Rupert Murdoch owned property which abruptly went Trump-friendly in late 2017, with a number of Trump-critical editorial board members leaving or being pushed out.
What Hillary "did" was say "OK" *after the fact* when told that her campaign had privately referred to reporters the issue of a Russian bank discovered to have communicated with Trump Tower in 2016. This issue has never been fully resolved, even though the FBI tried to pre-emptively squash it, and so some outlets reported it as a nothing-to-see-here based on the FBI's dismissal near the end of 2016.
But Hillary's campaign simply did what campaigns always do - tip off reporters to potential leads, so the reporters can then investigate, and if anything comes of it, the campaign can legitimately use it. In the end an article was written, and Clinton's campaign linked to it on Twitter - that's it.
If you don't believe me you can read this summary by Tim Miller, a former Republican campaign manager who used to run opposition research on Clinton for a living:
The truth is that the idea of a Russian "hoax" was always an act of goalpost shifting by people with either an axe to grind against the mainstream media or a soft-spot for Vladimir Putin (or both). The Alfa Bank saga was never a major part of things, and the Steele Dossier was a red herring the media had long moved on from while "Russia-hoax"-ers and Trump defenders were still painting it as the very basis for the investigation. A few minor leads that got over-enthusiastically chased down by the MSM while Trump was acting ridiculously guilty - publicly harassing his AG on an almost daily basis for recusing himself, publicly dangling offers of pardons to people who kept their mouths shut (which he delivered on, to the faithful), personally disparaging the members of Mueller's committee, etc. - do not make for a "hoax" when combined with everything we knew and everything that was turned up on investigation.
The results of the Mueller report were that they could not build a case for "criminal conspiracy" - a high bar to meet which does not disprove the general claim of "collusion", which isn't a legal term in this sense. The Mueller report showed plenty of evidence of what could be referred to as "collusion", as did the subsequent Republican-controlled Senate report. And of course, we all saw Trump sending smoke signals to Putin during the election and in various direct capitulations to Putin's denials of election interference and attempts to smear Ukraine.
In fact, if there's one silver lining to the Ukraine war, it's that it revealed to the world who the bad guy in the Russia/Ukraine saga actually is - and it discredited many of the people who'd been pushing the "Russia hoax" narrative, since they were the same people telling you that Russia wasn't going to attack Ukraine and that this was all a bunch of sabre-rattling being ginned up by the big evil U.S. intelligence community. And Trump has still been out there - in broad daylight, as he always does - appealing to Putin to dig up opposition research on his political opponents. In fact, in the most recent case, he began with "since you don't seem to like our country very much right now" - a blatant invitation to someone to act against America and a not-so-subtle appeal to remind him how much different things might be if Trump were back in office (you know, with a little help from some people).
Sorry, Unset, but it's the "Russia hoax" that was the real hoax.
You are wrong on the facts here. I suggest you review the work of Matt Tiabbi, Glenn Greenwald, and Peter Van Buren, among others. Not only was there no "Russian bank discovered to have communicated with Trump Tower in 2016," that was nonsense that the Clinton campaign itself fabricated! Just as with the Steele report! They then peddled both of these things to the FBI under false pretenses to put their opponent's campaign under federal investigation, which is a complete travesty. The Miller "debunking" you linked completely fails to even acknowledge any of that. Miller cites that New Yorker report about supposedly beneveolent apolitical "guardians of the internet" who produced the data in the first place. But we know now, thanks to Durham's investigation, we now know that they were in fact anti-Trump operatives with myriad ties to the Clinton campaign.
Talk about goalpost shifting! Now you are reduced to claiming "smoke signals" are solid evidence and the fact that Trump did not want to cooperate with a transparently political investigation instigated in no small part by his campaign opponent under false pretenses as evidence of his guilt. An opponent who, as we can easily recall, had no problem claiming Trump's victory was illegimate - on the basis of her own campaign lies and dirty tricks!
I have done enough reading of Greenwald, Taibbi, et al, and their reporting on our government and intelligence communities is as biased and uninformed as any media they criticize. So I don't put much stock in them.
As for Alfa Bank, it's a real Russian bank, and there were indeed communications with an mass email server used by Trump's hotels (not Trump Tower, my mistake there). What's in question is whether those communications were benign or meaningful, and I've read differing opinions on that. But it doesn't really matter. The Clinton campaign didn't fabricate anything - they tipped off the media to what independent researchers found.
As for Durham's filing, that actually has to do with information brought to the FBI about Russian phones in the vicinity of the White House during 2016 - when Barack Obama was in office. So it wasn't even specifically related to Trump. The guy who brought it to the FBI's attention was a lawyer for both the Clinton campaign and the research firm looking at the data from the White House. Right wing media - and apparently Durham - have tried to spin this as the Clinton campaign being "in cahoots" with the research firm. The jury in this trial disagreed, and it didn't take them long.
As I mentioned, those "independent" researchers were nothing of the sort - they were deeply mixed up with the Clinton campaign and they were anti-Trump partisans. They were fully aware that their data amounted to nothing - right from the start. As did the Clinton campaign itself when it laundered it to the FBI and media. Just as with the Steele report. This all came to light with the Durham investigation, just as the link I provided indicates. The jury verdict was strictly centered on the question of whether Sussman lied to the FBI about being in the employ of the Clinton campaign. He said he was open about it, and the jury believed him and not the agent who testified otherwise (wrongly I believe), but there is no question that he was. And it is pretty clear he knew the data was nonsense when he tried to get the FBI to open an investigation of Trump.
Firstly, I am stunned that you'd reference Trump's impeachment "acquittal" as some kind of an outcome that should be placed in higher regard than a bipartisan investigation committee. The reason it hasn't been mentioned is that it's completely irrelevant. As everybody knows, an impeachment "trial" is entirely political - the very definition of a show trial. Both Andrew Jackson and Bill Clinton got unanimous support from their parties (Johnson's trial went entirely along party lines). (Presumably Nixon would have gotten Republican votes against him, but we'll never know for sure because they were spared having to actually vote by Nixon's resignation.)
Mitch McConnel proved what a joke impeachments are in Trump's first "trial" when he admitted from the outset that he, a member of the so-called "jury", would be closely working with the president's legal team during the proceedings. Both he and Lindsey Graham, who explicitly said that he wasn't going to pretend to be an objective party, pre-emptively violated the constraints of an oath that they would take at the trial precisely requiring them to make an objective judgment. (This is what Trump taught them - brazen shamelessness.)
In the case of the second impeachment, Mitch McConnel had hoped that the Democrats would "take care of this son of a bitch for us". And he could have easily whipped up the 17 votes to make it happen if he'd wanted, but he was too much of a coward to defy his voters in that way. So while he still commanded a majority in the Senate (because the Democrats had to wait until the 20th to seat three of their incoming Senators), he refused to call the Senate back into session before Inauguration Day, and then had the gall to vote to acquit simply on the basis that Trump was no longer president! Even though the Senate *had already voted* on whether it was valid to have a trial to prevent him from running ever again, and the "yeas" won. In the end, Trump was "acquitted" simply because Mitch McConnell decided he should be - even though there were seven Republican votes to convict. (McConnell figured he'd make up for shirking his duty to his country by issuing some flabbergasted speech afterward blaming Trump and suggesting the possibility of prosecuting him criminally. We don't hear him talking about that anymore.)
As for Congressional committees, this idea that they are only allowed to research potential legislation is nonsense. It's been a convenient meme passed around since Trump's administration by his supporters who didn't want him to be subject to Congressional oversight - a long recognized and vital role of our legislature and an important check on the executive branch. In fact, select committees are normally commissioned precisely for investigative purposes. Watergate, the Church and Pike commissions, the Iran Contra commission - all of these are examples of committees tasked with investigating wrongdoing by the executive branch. Not to mention, executive malfeasance *is always* potentially relevant to the crafting of legislation to prevent such abuses in the future.
And this committee has actually performed real investigative work - in contrast to Trump and his wagon-circling politicians who have done nothing but toss out unsubstantiated accusations and dismissive claims with nothing to back them up but garbage dredged up from social media. They're showing people what they've found, and it's damning evidence that most Americans are apparently unaware of.
And I don't see how you can, in one paragraph, act as though the only thing Trump did was tell his supporters to "fight like hell", and then later on refer to his "absolutely inexcusable ... if not illegal" "post election scheming". That's the whole point of the committee - to show the American people what many of them haven't been paying attention to because they think that Jan 6th was just a "dust up" (in the words of Jack Del Rio). Trump plotted behind the scenes with lawyers and other political appointees to overthrow our constitutional order. He was close to overturning the command structure of DOJ and replacing them with yes-men who would illegally interfere with state elections - and he probably would have if he hadn't been threatened with a mass resignation of DOJ lawyers. He was surrounding himself with crooks and cranks who were telling him everything he wanted to hear - Mike Flynn was even prompting him to declare martial law, for Christ's sake. And most importantly, as has been stressed at the trial, this threat is ongoing. As the uber-conservative Judge Luttig emphasized, Trump and his political acolytes are plotting right in front of our eyes to steal the next election, and to protect those in power who participated in this one with the promise of corrupt pardons.
Many Americans don't know this stuff, and it needs to be entered into the Congressional record for posterity's sake, if nothing else. But this is the first time people are getting information from our elected legislature itself rather than from our bifurcated media environment where nobody listens to people who don't tell them what they want to hear. Few people have payed more attention to this entire saga than me, and even I've learned a few things, like people who requested pre-emptive pardons, and how Trump directly tapped the RNC to support his election lies. Much of what we saw, Trump did out in the open, and yet it has been laundered and sanitized by his GOP supporters, who refuse to do their duty to the people who elected them and tell them that Donald Trump is unfit to hold public office. So long as they continue in this regard, it will be easy for Trump's people to dismiss his crimes as exaggerations and political spin-jobs.
This committee is not a trial. It's likely not going to issue a referral to DOJ. It's laying out all of the facts for the public, and DOJ will likely be requesting information if and when it decides to prosecute anyone. But the information needs to be formally presented to America - that's what our elected representatives are supposed to be doing. I don't see how you can be a "liberal Democrat" and be disgusted by shining a light on the malfeasance of an entirely corrupted political party that is still in the grip of a traitorous seditionist and is right now attempting to install election-deniers in high posts across the country. We are in real trouble, Unset, and the people trying to stand up to it, including two Republicans who have sacrificed their careers (Kinzinger would have been doomed even if he hadn't been redistricted out) and compromised their personal safety, should be regarded as nothing less than American heroes.
The whole point of the January 6 was to investigate the January 6 attack on the Capital! As I said, Trump's post-election scheming, odious though it may be, is neither here nor there as far as the committee should be concerned. He may have gotten a lot of his supporters outraged and fired up, but there has never been anything illegal about that - it is standard issue for politicians. He never conspired to organize a breach the Capital building, or directed them to do so. As for Cheney, it is hard to think of many more vile people in politics, and I'm confident she'll find a prime place in hell next to her evil Dad.
The point of the January 6th committee is to investigate the attack and everything underlying and relating to it. I don't know where you are getting this idea that it was somehow restricted to only researching the attack itself. That's like saying the Watergate committee should have only been allowed to look into the hotel break-in. Nixon was going to be impeached because he engaged in a cover-up of illegal and unethical activity to get him re-elected, not a cover-up of a hotel break-in. When committees investigate things, they follow the evidence where it leads and get to the bottom of it. If something turns out to be the tip of the iceberg, they don't say, "well, we're not here for all that stuff beneath the surface".
Trump's post-election scheming was the entire point of the January 6th insurrection. There were plans behind it, and Trump knew exactly what he was doing when he led supporters to march on the Capital. Whether or not he intended for them specifically to break in is beside the point - he intended them to disrupt the proceedings and pressure Pence into carrying out his plot. A plot to do nothing less than overthrow our Constitutional order - one that he's plotting again for 2024 with knowledge of what went wrong this time - not enough of his cronies in powerful positions.
He encouraged them to protest peacefully - he explicitly said they were going to protest at the capital peacefully. That is perfectly legal. There has been no evidence that he intended for them to disrupt the proceedings by breaking into the building - in fact there has always been evidence that he did not intend for that at all. That is the whole crux of the matter!
I subscribe to several newsletters on Substack. Everyone of them that leans left has been stuck on Jan-6 articles for the last several months. Their focus on Jan-6 seems to coincide with the loss of their ability to successfully defend the accumulated performance and record of the Biden Democrats.
Given Biden's current poll numbers and the looming midterms, I would be very surprised if we don't see more distancing of Democrats from Biden and his policies.
Assuming that there were enough Republicans and Independents who hated Trump enough to vote for Biden in '20 to make him the winner, there should be enough now disappointed Democrats to turn the tide back in '22 and '24. If this doesn't happen, something is rotten in Denmark.
I think some of the Democrat congressional candidates will certainly attempt to distance themselves. But the talking points memo from the RNC to Republican contenders is that all House Dems have marched effectively 100% to the same ideological drum, and any that did not have been ostracized from the party, and so voters should not believe it when Dems try to distance themselves from the radical Biden and Pelosi agenda.
Democrats always vote for Democrats and never Republicans. Republicans will vote for Democrats; however, as I point out above, the last months have resulted in a lack of trust with Republicans for Democrat candidates to support their constituents over playing national politics. I think independents are also there... seeing the Democrat legislature as one collective that sucks in all members to the same radical, divisive and destructive agenda.
We will see some interesting things happen with the Democrats after the 2022 election.
If Joe Biden or Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton had ever done anything remotely similar to inspiring a mob to try to intimidate Congress into overturning an election, I would not make excuses for it, I would not minimize it, I would not play what about the other guy. The fact that some of the most frequent commenters on this site are unwilling to do the same when it's their guy is, to put it mildly, not in keeping with what Persuasion was supposed to be about.
There is so much common sense when the author says, "But, frankly, unless they broke the law we should let the outer circle move on from the spectacle of MAGA in whatever sordid way they please." But there is a gentler and possibly a more helpful way to articulate it. I'd say they will eventually move on to something else, as most ordinary humans do after an obsession.
The non-persuadable won't or can't be persuaded. I lived for ten years in Oakland, California as a moderate nonpartisan, and after having worked in California politics for a quarter of a century, I was able to accept the blood-sport of local politics there because I knew that extremisms ultimately burn themselves out. The Occupy movement looked to a lot of us like it would never end; our freeways and bridges were "occupied," the public plaza downtown was occupied for weeks on end, and it was hard to see any logical end to the movement. Similarly, my friends in San Francisco across the bay could not imagine what horrors their off-the-charts progressivism would bring.
Neither the occupiers nor the San Francisco progressives ended logically, but they went about as fer as they could go as the song says, and then were brought back by the inevitable gravity of the central core. Neither city is anywhere near conservative, just as MAGA isn't progressive, but extremism will almost always and almost only exist on the extremes, and if its demands can't be presented as reasonable or logical on a broad scale, any victories will be temporary, and corrected in a more sensible direction.
Since you can't reason someone out of a position they haven't reasoned themselves into, the only real solution has to be give the unreasonable passion time to cool. One of the worst parts of waiting right now is that too often one extremism simply replaces a former one, in what seems like an endless series.
But even in Oakland -- and in the modern Republican Party -- I see the center still holding. Having retired from politics, I can confirm what the Hidden Tribes report observed: the Exhausted Majority really does exist, it really is exhausted, and it really does have more votes than the polar margins do. Those votes are more broadly distributed throughout the population and not caring so much for the Daily Drama, they naturally attract less attention; and many of us don't want any.
But as the air comes out of Donald Trump, his audience, too, will disperse, just as the occupiers did, and the innumerable other movements from American history. And probably more rapidly, since our attention spans today are so much shorter. I suspect Mitch McConnell's waffling is little more than the patience of a party elder who recognizes that patience is his only tool. There will probably be more flare-ups in some states, and Judge Luttig's concerns about the 2024 election are my own. But from my perspective, that is only because too many states are putting into place election rules that will allow the remains of MAGA to cause mischief that could have nationwide implications in a 2024 vote count.
I trust the courts to sort that out -- unless, of course, the Democrats succeed in their current project to undermine the Supreme Court's credibility. I can only say that I hope that, too, is the kind of extremist fad that will fade away, and get replaced by something else.
From the article: “Never Trump” journalists like David French, David Frum, Sarah Longwell, and others who relentlessly hammer home the dangers and pathologies of the MAGA movement. "
Wasn't David Frum one of the major proponents for the Iraq War? I think people strolling in the Capitol on Jan 6 have received greater punishment than any of the people who pushed Iraq and the people who perpetrated the massive fraud called the Financial Crisis.
Hope we have hearing on those 2 events and Afghanistan.
People who "strolled in the Capitol" haven't been punished at all. They've been going after the people who broke in, ransacked the place, brought weapons, and most of all, the militiamen that actually plotted their break-in.
Basically, just try to unite libertarian left- and right-wingers, individualists of all colours, and fight against collectivism, populism, nationalism through visionary and meaningful politics, including by involving people to cooperate via decentralised communities
"Red states across America are already preparing the ground for a constitutional crisis if the 2024 election is a close call" This is a common misconception. States where Trump loyalists are in control will declare Trump won their state, regardless of the outcome of the vote -- even if the result is not close at all.
But the point is that if you have election-deniers in high places that could actually do things like refuse to certify results - as just happened in a recent primary before a court stepped in - we could literally have a crisis on our hands.
Trump is a symptomatic reaction to an Elitist power structure that looks down with total disdain on ordinary people. Trump is their way of saying F..U…
The effort to make January 6th the cause celeb for all that is wrong about American democracy only further highlights how disconnected the Elitist power establishment (the Deep State) is from any real concern over truly preserving democracy.
People can see the game is rigged and Trump’s their “man” for pointing it out. When he’s “gone” there will be someone else to take his place. Why? Because the game really is rigged.
If the Elitists were so concerned over preserving democracy, why has Hillary’s concocted “Russian Dossier” not raised any concerns? Or Hunter Biden’s laptop loaded with clear references to Joe Biden selling his political influence? Or Hillary’s rigging the democrat primary process against Bernie? Or why Trump’s request to post 20,000 National Guard troops outside the Capital on Jan 6th was turned down by Nancy Pelosi and DC Mayor Muriel Bowser? No Elitists want to address those questions because none of them help support the narrative….
The fact is that the rules for voting in 2020 were dramatically loosened — intentionally using COVID as the rational — all to make it far easier for democrats to ballot harvest and they did and it worked. Mark Elias lead a national effort to sue local election officials to force the rule changes. It was a deliberate strategy that worked. The result was the election of a guy who literally campaigned from his basement and won by absolutely the slimmest of margins.
If we’re going to “come together” as this article suggests we need to do, it means having to address a whole host of tough questions — and not just those concerning Trump and his supporters.
Coming together means coming together with mutual concern for the truth.
I’m not hopeful that will happen because this isn’t about “truth” — this is about political power and Elitists preserving it under the illusion of democracy…
Trump is an elitist, and trumpism is still minority movement, not a "people movement"
"Or why Trump’s request to post 20,000 National Guard troops outside the Capital on Jan 6th was turned down by Nancy Pelosi and DC Mayor Muriel Bowser?"
I hadn't heard about this before, and it sounds pretty damning, so I looked into it further.
Trump seems to have made an offhand comment to his acting defense secretary about needing 10,000 national guard troops to protect the Capitol. There was never a formal request, and as far as I can tell nobody ever brought this up with Pelosi or Bowser at all. That part of the story is just completely fabricated.
I have sympathy for the argument that elites in America have too much power, but why do you have to use blatant lies to make your point? It makes me think that the truth doesn't support your position.
https://grabien.com/story.php?id=380985
====
See interview with Kash Patel (who was Chief of Staff for the Secretary of Defense).
Unfortunately, you missed my whole point. Elites don't want the truth....they don't want to get to the bottom of tough questions that impact them.
If you truly care about the truth (and I'm assuming that you do), you would see that the issue of the National Guard troops is a question that needs to be asked. It is not a blatant lie. Something happened. I never said (as you alleged) that it was a fact. What I said was that it is a question that Elitists do not want to answer. They simply shout "LIE! LIE!"...
As I stated, this is not a search for the truth or to protect 'democracy' - this is a fraud by people who have an interest in covering up the events of January 6th and using them to their political advantage.
I wasn’t there. I’m assuming you weren’t there either, but Kash Patel was. He said it happened. Is he lying? Doesn’t sound like it. He says there’s written proof. As for people calling it a lie, what are they relying on? I’d like to know.
It completely undercuts the entire allegation that Trump’s speech on Jan 6th is what caused everything.
We now know - as Liz Cheney said - the FBI had prior intelligence that there would be trouble. Yet Trump was impeached because it was his speech that caused the problem.
Something is rotten in Denmark…
According to the DC police chief he requested more cops repeatedly.
Because it doesn't. Which is why such people have no choice but to resort to throwing out "just asking questions" types of accusations, so that when you call them on it they can deny that they were actually saying anything. Tucker Carlson has made a career out of this.
"I'm just saying it's a question that Elitists don't want to answer". Ignoring the fact that some "Elitist" apparently has answered it, and the fact that they don't keep talking about a misleading line of horse-shit must mean that "Elites" don't want to get to the bottom of "tough questions" that actually aren't tough, don't establish a damn thing, and are wholly irrelevant. And if you ask enough such questions, too many for most people to research or fact-check, you'll create an indelible impression that *something* must be going on and that the "Elites" are constantly lying to you.
Which is the whole point. The proverbial "firehose of falsehoods". As Hannah Arendt once said, to create the impression that "nothing is true and everything is possible".
I'm a liberal Democrat, never voted for Trump and never would. But even I am disgusted with this January 6 show trial. Trump was already impeached and acquitted for inciting the January 6 riot! How does this fact never seem to come up in the reporting on the committee?
Meanwhile the commission has revealed essentially nothing. If every politician who encouraged his supporters "to fight like hell' was guilty of some crime they would all be in jail. This author himself exhorts people to keep "fighting the good fight" two paragraphs later!
Congressional commissions, with their powers to subpoena, are supposed to research potential legislation, not act as unaccountable law enforcement agencies. The ghost of McCarthy looms large.
I do very much hope the Republican party moves on from Trump to someone I could consider voting for for even one second. His post-election scheming was absolutely inexcusable, among other things, if not illegal. But the 1/6 committee has generated no "momentum," it has been an embarrassing waste of time, just like the Russia collusion hoax before it.
Good post. One of the first objective and reasonable from a liberal Democrat about Jan-6 that I have read to date. In fact, the first I have ever read with this perspective. It will not be popular with your political cohort. They have fully adopted the Jan-6 insurrection narrative and are intent to keep playing it in and endless loop.
I voted for Trump, but he was forth on the list of Republican candidates I preferred. I think 2024 will be Ron DeSantis. If Trump runs, DeSantis will beat him in the primaries. And DeSantis will crush any Democrat in the general election in 2024. Especially if they run Biden or Harris.
What I know about the anti-Trump fervor in the Democrats and corporate media is that Trump is just their current obsession. They will do the same to any and all Republican Presidential candidates and president. If DeSantis wins, he will be branded an evil, greedy Putin-lover and they will seek out new show trials to influence the voters that it so.
I think there are a lot of misunderstandings about people who voted for Trump. Many who voted for him initially were voting against Hillary and against the DC establishment. Many who voted for him in '20 were voting for his policies, and against the danger that Biden would be manipulated by the left. I agree the January 6 committee is a political farce, and the time and money going into it would be best spent elsewhere.
Going forward, many Republicans, even if they liked Trump's policies, realize how divisive he was, and that someone new and younger should take his place in '24, to which I agree. My concern is that anyone who throws their hat in the ring is likely to be Trumpized by the media.
I am guessing that even yourself as a Liberal Democrat have some serious concerns about the state and direction of the country. I hope there are enough of you and Independents who are willing to put someone else up who can turn this train wreck around.
How is the committee a political farce? What problem do you have with the way they've conducted themselves?
Kevin McCarthy tried to make the committee a farce. He attempted to install two people who were Trump stooges - including one, Jim Jordan, who himself was a potential target of the committee. So Pelosi rejected both of those people and accepted the other three, and prompted him for replacements for the other two. At this point, McCarthy withdrew all of his nominations and refused to provide more, figuring that at if he couldn't sabotage the committee from the inside, he would attempt to project it as entirely political.
So Pelosi recruited two Republicans who have risked their careers and personal safety to stand up to Trump - the last thing in the world that anyone could sensibly call "political". Meanwhile, McCarthy continues to lie and say that Pelosi refused to let him appoint Republicans to the committee - almost humorously, accusing her of violating centuries of tradition, while running cover for the guy who actually violated centuries of tradition by refusing to concede the presidency.
Well Unset, saying fight "like hell" versus standing on Pennsylvania Avenue and directing your mob to march right up to the capitol and stop the certification are 2 very different things. "the ghost of McCarty looms"? You must be kidding me!
The fact that he wasn't convicted in the Senate does not mean he and his team did not commit high crimes and misdemeanors. Oh, and the Russian collusion was very, very real. You must be wittingly oblivious.
You're right, they are different things. One big important difference being the second one did not actually happen. You seem to be the oblivious one regarding the Russia hoax - I suggest you catch up on recent developments.
The fact that the mob didn't succeed in stopping the certification is irrelevant. The point is what Trump attempted.
And if by "recent developments" you're talking about that shamefully misleading editorial in the WSJ, "Hillary Did It", I'm sorry to tell you that you've fallen victim to propaganda pushed out by another Trump-corrupted institution - the WSJ editorial board, another Rupert Murdoch owned property which abruptly went Trump-friendly in late 2017, with a number of Trump-critical editorial board members leaving or being pushed out.
What Hillary "did" was say "OK" *after the fact* when told that her campaign had privately referred to reporters the issue of a Russian bank discovered to have communicated with Trump Tower in 2016. This issue has never been fully resolved, even though the FBI tried to pre-emptively squash it, and so some outlets reported it as a nothing-to-see-here based on the FBI's dismissal near the end of 2016.
But Hillary's campaign simply did what campaigns always do - tip off reporters to potential leads, so the reporters can then investigate, and if anything comes of it, the campaign can legitimately use it. In the end an article was written, and Clinton's campaign linked to it on Twitter - that's it.
If you don't believe me you can read this summary by Tim Miller, a former Republican campaign manager who used to run opposition research on Clinton for a living:
https://www.thebulwark.com/the-alfa-bank-hoax-hoax/
The truth is that the idea of a Russian "hoax" was always an act of goalpost shifting by people with either an axe to grind against the mainstream media or a soft-spot for Vladimir Putin (or both). The Alfa Bank saga was never a major part of things, and the Steele Dossier was a red herring the media had long moved on from while "Russia-hoax"-ers and Trump defenders were still painting it as the very basis for the investigation. A few minor leads that got over-enthusiastically chased down by the MSM while Trump was acting ridiculously guilty - publicly harassing his AG on an almost daily basis for recusing himself, publicly dangling offers of pardons to people who kept their mouths shut (which he delivered on, to the faithful), personally disparaging the members of Mueller's committee, etc. - do not make for a "hoax" when combined with everything we knew and everything that was turned up on investigation.
The results of the Mueller report were that they could not build a case for "criminal conspiracy" - a high bar to meet which does not disprove the general claim of "collusion", which isn't a legal term in this sense. The Mueller report showed plenty of evidence of what could be referred to as "collusion", as did the subsequent Republican-controlled Senate report. And of course, we all saw Trump sending smoke signals to Putin during the election and in various direct capitulations to Putin's denials of election interference and attempts to smear Ukraine.
In fact, if there's one silver lining to the Ukraine war, it's that it revealed to the world who the bad guy in the Russia/Ukraine saga actually is - and it discredited many of the people who'd been pushing the "Russia hoax" narrative, since they were the same people telling you that Russia wasn't going to attack Ukraine and that this was all a bunch of sabre-rattling being ginned up by the big evil U.S. intelligence community. And Trump has still been out there - in broad daylight, as he always does - appealing to Putin to dig up opposition research on his political opponents. In fact, in the most recent case, he began with "since you don't seem to like our country very much right now" - a blatant invitation to someone to act against America and a not-so-subtle appeal to remind him how much different things might be if Trump were back in office (you know, with a little help from some people).
Sorry, Unset, but it's the "Russia hoax" that was the real hoax.
You are wrong on the facts here. I suggest you review the work of Matt Tiabbi, Glenn Greenwald, and Peter Van Buren, among others. Not only was there no "Russian bank discovered to have communicated with Trump Tower in 2016," that was nonsense that the Clinton campaign itself fabricated! Just as with the Steele report! They then peddled both of these things to the FBI under false pretenses to put their opponent's campaign under federal investigation, which is a complete travesty. The Miller "debunking" you linked completely fails to even acknowledge any of that. Miller cites that New Yorker report about supposedly beneveolent apolitical "guardians of the internet" who produced the data in the first place. But we know now, thanks to Durham's investigation, we now know that they were in fact anti-Trump operatives with myriad ties to the Clinton campaign.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-are-those-techies-who-spied-on-trump-clinton-2016-election-durham-data-fusion-gps-joffe-11645139606?mod=djemalertNEWS
Talk about goalpost shifting! Now you are reduced to claiming "smoke signals" are solid evidence and the fact that Trump did not want to cooperate with a transparently political investigation instigated in no small part by his campaign opponent under false pretenses as evidence of his guilt. An opponent who, as we can easily recall, had no problem claiming Trump's victory was illegimate - on the basis of her own campaign lies and dirty tricks!
I have done enough reading of Greenwald, Taibbi, et al, and their reporting on our government and intelligence communities is as biased and uninformed as any media they criticize. So I don't put much stock in them.
As for Alfa Bank, it's a real Russian bank, and there were indeed communications with an mass email server used by Trump's hotels (not Trump Tower, my mistake there). What's in question is whether those communications were benign or meaningful, and I've read differing opinions on that. But it doesn't really matter. The Clinton campaign didn't fabricate anything - they tipped off the media to what independent researchers found.
As for Durham's filing, that actually has to do with information brought to the FBI about Russian phones in the vicinity of the White House during 2016 - when Barack Obama was in office. So it wasn't even specifically related to Trump. The guy who brought it to the FBI's attention was a lawyer for both the Clinton campaign and the research firm looking at the data from the White House. Right wing media - and apparently Durham - have tried to spin this as the Clinton campaign being "in cahoots" with the research firm. The jury in this trial disagreed, and it didn't take them long.
As I mentioned, those "independent" researchers were nothing of the sort - they were deeply mixed up with the Clinton campaign and they were anti-Trump partisans. They were fully aware that their data amounted to nothing - right from the start. As did the Clinton campaign itself when it laundered it to the FBI and media. Just as with the Steele report. This all came to light with the Durham investigation, just as the link I provided indicates. The jury verdict was strictly centered on the question of whether Sussman lied to the FBI about being in the employ of the Clinton campaign. He said he was open about it, and the jury believed him and not the agent who testified otherwise (wrongly I believe), but there is no question that he was. And it is pretty clear he knew the data was nonsense when he tried to get the FBI to open an investigation of Trump.
Firstly, I am stunned that you'd reference Trump's impeachment "acquittal" as some kind of an outcome that should be placed in higher regard than a bipartisan investigation committee. The reason it hasn't been mentioned is that it's completely irrelevant. As everybody knows, an impeachment "trial" is entirely political - the very definition of a show trial. Both Andrew Jackson and Bill Clinton got unanimous support from their parties (Johnson's trial went entirely along party lines). (Presumably Nixon would have gotten Republican votes against him, but we'll never know for sure because they were spared having to actually vote by Nixon's resignation.)
Mitch McConnel proved what a joke impeachments are in Trump's first "trial" when he admitted from the outset that he, a member of the so-called "jury", would be closely working with the president's legal team during the proceedings. Both he and Lindsey Graham, who explicitly said that he wasn't going to pretend to be an objective party, pre-emptively violated the constraints of an oath that they would take at the trial precisely requiring them to make an objective judgment. (This is what Trump taught them - brazen shamelessness.)
In the case of the second impeachment, Mitch McConnel had hoped that the Democrats would "take care of this son of a bitch for us". And he could have easily whipped up the 17 votes to make it happen if he'd wanted, but he was too much of a coward to defy his voters in that way. So while he still commanded a majority in the Senate (because the Democrats had to wait until the 20th to seat three of their incoming Senators), he refused to call the Senate back into session before Inauguration Day, and then had the gall to vote to acquit simply on the basis that Trump was no longer president! Even though the Senate *had already voted* on whether it was valid to have a trial to prevent him from running ever again, and the "yeas" won. In the end, Trump was "acquitted" simply because Mitch McConnell decided he should be - even though there were seven Republican votes to convict. (McConnell figured he'd make up for shirking his duty to his country by issuing some flabbergasted speech afterward blaming Trump and suggesting the possibility of prosecuting him criminally. We don't hear him talking about that anymore.)
As for Congressional committees, this idea that they are only allowed to research potential legislation is nonsense. It's been a convenient meme passed around since Trump's administration by his supporters who didn't want him to be subject to Congressional oversight - a long recognized and vital role of our legislature and an important check on the executive branch. In fact, select committees are normally commissioned precisely for investigative purposes. Watergate, the Church and Pike commissions, the Iran Contra commission - all of these are examples of committees tasked with investigating wrongdoing by the executive branch. Not to mention, executive malfeasance *is always* potentially relevant to the crafting of legislation to prevent such abuses in the future.
And this committee has actually performed real investigative work - in contrast to Trump and his wagon-circling politicians who have done nothing but toss out unsubstantiated accusations and dismissive claims with nothing to back them up but garbage dredged up from social media. They're showing people what they've found, and it's damning evidence that most Americans are apparently unaware of.
And I don't see how you can, in one paragraph, act as though the only thing Trump did was tell his supporters to "fight like hell", and then later on refer to his "absolutely inexcusable ... if not illegal" "post election scheming". That's the whole point of the committee - to show the American people what many of them haven't been paying attention to because they think that Jan 6th was just a "dust up" (in the words of Jack Del Rio). Trump plotted behind the scenes with lawyers and other political appointees to overthrow our constitutional order. He was close to overturning the command structure of DOJ and replacing them with yes-men who would illegally interfere with state elections - and he probably would have if he hadn't been threatened with a mass resignation of DOJ lawyers. He was surrounding himself with crooks and cranks who were telling him everything he wanted to hear - Mike Flynn was even prompting him to declare martial law, for Christ's sake. And most importantly, as has been stressed at the trial, this threat is ongoing. As the uber-conservative Judge Luttig emphasized, Trump and his political acolytes are plotting right in front of our eyes to steal the next election, and to protect those in power who participated in this one with the promise of corrupt pardons.
Many Americans don't know this stuff, and it needs to be entered into the Congressional record for posterity's sake, if nothing else. But this is the first time people are getting information from our elected legislature itself rather than from our bifurcated media environment where nobody listens to people who don't tell them what they want to hear. Few people have payed more attention to this entire saga than me, and even I've learned a few things, like people who requested pre-emptive pardons, and how Trump directly tapped the RNC to support his election lies. Much of what we saw, Trump did out in the open, and yet it has been laundered and sanitized by his GOP supporters, who refuse to do their duty to the people who elected them and tell them that Donald Trump is unfit to hold public office. So long as they continue in this regard, it will be easy for Trump's people to dismiss his crimes as exaggerations and political spin-jobs.
This committee is not a trial. It's likely not going to issue a referral to DOJ. It's laying out all of the facts for the public, and DOJ will likely be requesting information if and when it decides to prosecute anyone. But the information needs to be formally presented to America - that's what our elected representatives are supposed to be doing. I don't see how you can be a "liberal Democrat" and be disgusted by shining a light on the malfeasance of an entirely corrupted political party that is still in the grip of a traitorous seditionist and is right now attempting to install election-deniers in high posts across the country. We are in real trouble, Unset, and the people trying to stand up to it, including two Republicans who have sacrificed their careers (Kinzinger would have been doomed even if he hadn't been redistricted out) and compromised their personal safety, should be regarded as nothing less than American heroes.
The whole point of the January 6 was to investigate the January 6 attack on the Capital! As I said, Trump's post-election scheming, odious though it may be, is neither here nor there as far as the committee should be concerned. He may have gotten a lot of his supporters outraged and fired up, but there has never been anything illegal about that - it is standard issue for politicians. He never conspired to organize a breach the Capital building, or directed them to do so. As for Cheney, it is hard to think of many more vile people in politics, and I'm confident she'll find a prime place in hell next to her evil Dad.
The point of the January 6th committee is to investigate the attack and everything underlying and relating to it. I don't know where you are getting this idea that it was somehow restricted to only researching the attack itself. That's like saying the Watergate committee should have only been allowed to look into the hotel break-in. Nixon was going to be impeached because he engaged in a cover-up of illegal and unethical activity to get him re-elected, not a cover-up of a hotel break-in. When committees investigate things, they follow the evidence where it leads and get to the bottom of it. If something turns out to be the tip of the iceberg, they don't say, "well, we're not here for all that stuff beneath the surface".
Trump's post-election scheming was the entire point of the January 6th insurrection. There were plans behind it, and Trump knew exactly what he was doing when he led supporters to march on the Capital. Whether or not he intended for them specifically to break in is beside the point - he intended them to disrupt the proceedings and pressure Pence into carrying out his plot. A plot to do nothing less than overthrow our Constitutional order - one that he's plotting again for 2024 with knowledge of what went wrong this time - not enough of his cronies in powerful positions.
He encouraged them to protest peacefully - he explicitly said they were going to protest at the capital peacefully. That is perfectly legal. There has been no evidence that he intended for them to disrupt the proceedings by breaking into the building - in fact there has always been evidence that he did not intend for that at all. That is the whole crux of the matter!
I subscribe to several newsletters on Substack. Everyone of them that leans left has been stuck on Jan-6 articles for the last several months. Their focus on Jan-6 seems to coincide with the loss of their ability to successfully defend the accumulated performance and record of the Biden Democrats.
Conversely, it is too late for liberals to live up to their best traditions -- and turn on Biden.
Given Biden's current poll numbers and the looming midterms, I would be very surprised if we don't see more distancing of Democrats from Biden and his policies.
Assuming that there were enough Republicans and Independents who hated Trump enough to vote for Biden in '20 to make him the winner, there should be enough now disappointed Democrats to turn the tide back in '22 and '24. If this doesn't happen, something is rotten in Denmark.
I think some of the Democrat congressional candidates will certainly attempt to distance themselves. But the talking points memo from the RNC to Republican contenders is that all House Dems have marched effectively 100% to the same ideological drum, and any that did not have been ostracized from the party, and so voters should not believe it when Dems try to distance themselves from the radical Biden and Pelosi agenda.
Democrats always vote for Democrats and never Republicans. Republicans will vote for Democrats; however, as I point out above, the last months have resulted in a lack of trust with Republicans for Democrat candidates to support their constituents over playing national politics. I think independents are also there... seeing the Democrat legislature as one collective that sucks in all members to the same radical, divisive and destructive agenda.
We will see some interesting things happen with the Democrats after the 2022 election.
I hope most get voted out.
If Joe Biden or Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton had ever done anything remotely similar to inspiring a mob to try to intimidate Congress into overturning an election, I would not make excuses for it, I would not minimize it, I would not play what about the other guy. The fact that some of the most frequent commenters on this site are unwilling to do the same when it's their guy is, to put it mildly, not in keeping with what Persuasion was supposed to be about.
There were literally 10 separate Benghazi investigations. 10!
There is so much common sense when the author says, "But, frankly, unless they broke the law we should let the outer circle move on from the spectacle of MAGA in whatever sordid way they please." But there is a gentler and possibly a more helpful way to articulate it. I'd say they will eventually move on to something else, as most ordinary humans do after an obsession.
The non-persuadable won't or can't be persuaded. I lived for ten years in Oakland, California as a moderate nonpartisan, and after having worked in California politics for a quarter of a century, I was able to accept the blood-sport of local politics there because I knew that extremisms ultimately burn themselves out. The Occupy movement looked to a lot of us like it would never end; our freeways and bridges were "occupied," the public plaza downtown was occupied for weeks on end, and it was hard to see any logical end to the movement. Similarly, my friends in San Francisco across the bay could not imagine what horrors their off-the-charts progressivism would bring.
Neither the occupiers nor the San Francisco progressives ended logically, but they went about as fer as they could go as the song says, and then were brought back by the inevitable gravity of the central core. Neither city is anywhere near conservative, just as MAGA isn't progressive, but extremism will almost always and almost only exist on the extremes, and if its demands can't be presented as reasonable or logical on a broad scale, any victories will be temporary, and corrected in a more sensible direction.
Since you can't reason someone out of a position they haven't reasoned themselves into, the only real solution has to be give the unreasonable passion time to cool. One of the worst parts of waiting right now is that too often one extremism simply replaces a former one, in what seems like an endless series.
But even in Oakland -- and in the modern Republican Party -- I see the center still holding. Having retired from politics, I can confirm what the Hidden Tribes report observed: the Exhausted Majority really does exist, it really is exhausted, and it really does have more votes than the polar margins do. Those votes are more broadly distributed throughout the population and not caring so much for the Daily Drama, they naturally attract less attention; and many of us don't want any.
But as the air comes out of Donald Trump, his audience, too, will disperse, just as the occupiers did, and the innumerable other movements from American history. And probably more rapidly, since our attention spans today are so much shorter. I suspect Mitch McConnell's waffling is little more than the patience of a party elder who recognizes that patience is his only tool. There will probably be more flare-ups in some states, and Judge Luttig's concerns about the 2024 election are my own. But from my perspective, that is only because too many states are putting into place election rules that will allow the remains of MAGA to cause mischief that could have nationwide implications in a 2024 vote count.
I trust the courts to sort that out -- unless, of course, the Democrats succeed in their current project to undermine the Supreme Court's credibility. I can only say that I hope that, too, is the kind of extremist fad that will fade away, and get replaced by something else.
From the article: “Never Trump” journalists like David French, David Frum, Sarah Longwell, and others who relentlessly hammer home the dangers and pathologies of the MAGA movement. "
Wasn't David Frum one of the major proponents for the Iraq War? I think people strolling in the Capitol on Jan 6 have received greater punishment than any of the people who pushed Iraq and the people who perpetrated the massive fraud called the Financial Crisis.
Hope we have hearing on those 2 events and Afghanistan.
People who "strolled in the Capitol" haven't been punished at all. They've been going after the people who broke in, ransacked the place, brought weapons, and most of all, the militiamen that actually plotted their break-in.
Basically, just try to unite libertarian left- and right-wingers, individualists of all colours, and fight against collectivism, populism, nationalism through visionary and meaningful politics, including by involving people to cooperate via decentralised communities
"Red states across America are already preparing the ground for a constitutional crisis if the 2024 election is a close call" This is a common misconception. States where Trump loyalists are in control will declare Trump won their state, regardless of the outcome of the vote -- even if the result is not close at all.
But the point is that if you have election-deniers in high places that could actually do things like refuse to certify results - as just happened in a recent primary before a court stepped in - we could literally have a crisis on our hands.