January 6, Perverted Patriotism, and Trump's Cheerleaders
Plus, BBQ in the aftermath of tragedy.
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MONA CHAREN tries making sense of the perverted patriotism of the MAGA citizen’s arrest.
Stories of threats and violence aimed at ordinary Americans who are simply serving on school boards, supervising elections, holding public office, opening a mobile vaccine clinic, or having the effrontery to be elected as secretary of state are not new. It’s a mashup of pandemic-induced mania, social media misinformation, Trump-incited disinhibition, and something in the water.
Every now and then, usually through the vehicle of tort law, someone is held accountable, most recently in the case involving the notorious liars at Gateway Pundit. The site is being sued by two election workers, mother and daughter, after Gateway Pundit identified them as the election officials in Fulton County, Georgia who supposedly pulled fraudulent ballots out of suitcases. These malicious lies, according to the pleading, “devastated” their reputations and “instigated a deluge of intimidation, harassment, and threats that has forced them to change their phone numbers, delete their online accounts, and fear for their physical safety.” One went into hiding. And just in time. Crowds with bullhorns showed up at their homes.
The citizen’s arrest has become a theme running through some of the most sinister of the recent plots. It has a long pedigree, originating in English common law. In the U.S., it has been codified in a number of ways by states. Some require that a bystander actually witness a felony in progress to undertake a citizen’s arrest. Others forbid it except in certain situations (such as a shopkeeper holding an armed robber until police arrive). Some critics, like Professor Ira Robbins, have argued that these laws are harmful, giving rise to racial profiling and other harms. The Ahmaud Arbery case would seem to vindicate his warnings.
The way we work isn't working — fewer, more focused hours on the job can actually be more productive. And just because tech makes it possible to work at any time doesn't mean we should. Will the Great Resignation change our workaholic ways? Charlie Warzel joins Charlie Sykes on today's podcast.
AMANDA CARPENTER writes: Trump’s cheerleaders knew he could have stopped the riot. And they begged Mark Meadows to get him to do it.
Turns out, some of former President Trump’s biggest, most powerful fans/informal advisors at Fox News knew he did something terrible on January 6. And so did his family. And members of Congress. And Trump administration officials.
They knew he was enabling the riot.
How do we know this? Because they explicitly begged his former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to ask Trump to take action to stop the riot in real-time texts as the destruction unfolded that day. These texts—which are devastating in their detail, and depict Fox hosts acting more as crisis communications consiglieres to the president than as journalists covering his administration—were revealed by the January 6 Committee at a contempt hearing for Meadows Monday evening.
Trump, of course, did not take any action to stop his mob from storming the Capitol. Meaning, he let it happen. He let them violently interfere with the peaceful transfer of power. Today, many of those same supporters, including those on the airwaves at Fox, deny he could have much of anything to stop the violence that day. But on January 6, they knew better. They knew the truth.
🚨OVERTIME 🚨
BASE jump D.C. Area police have arrested a 70 year old man for trespassing into private property in the Virginia suburbs of D.C. to parachute off of.
“This whole thing is ridiculous. I don’t get how you can get arrested for something when no one had told me I had trespassed,” Moeser said. “I don’t think they have any proof I did anything like that.”
The Distinguished Gentleman 2.0. Have you heard? Rick Perry is running for Governor of Texas! No, not that Rick Perry, a different one, but it’s The Name You Know.
More voter fraud! Three Republican residents of The Villages, Florida (America’s friendliest hometown™) were caught voting in Florida and their former home states.
“It just needed to be done…”
Gov. Beshear should make him a Kentucky Colonel, stat.
Make some time for this.
As you can imagine, the spinmeisters from The Federalist handled it normally. I wonder what Mollie Hemingway’s text to Mark Meadows would have said?
That’s it for me. We’ll see you tomorrow.
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