January 6th Was a Success
Trump managed to turn his presidency’s darkest day into a political springboard. And now, he’ll seek retribution.
“When Donald J. Trump said Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could ‘go wild’ on health,” the New York Times reports in a great new piece on the corn-syrup industry in the red-state breadbasket, “he might not have expected his pick for health secretary doing battle against the president-elect’s own voters.”
Going to be an interesting four years! Happy Tuesday.
The J6 Presidency
by William Kristol
On January 7, 2021, President Donald Trump spoke to the nation:
I would like to begin by addressing the heinous attack on the United States Capitol. Like all Americans, I am outraged by the violence, lawlessness, and mayhem. . . . The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy.
To those who engaged in the acts of violence and destruction, you do not represent our country.
And to those who broke the law, you will pay.
Needless to say, Trump didn’t mean a word of it. He was trying to give Republicans a fig leaf to oppose articles of impeachment against him. He succeeded. The next week, only ten House Republicans voted to impeach; 197 voted no.
The only thing Trump said on January 7 that he actually believed was at the end of his remarks, when he made clear his intention for a political comeback.
And to all of my wonderful supporters, I know you are disappointed but I also want you to know that our incredible journey is only just beginning.
About this Trump was honest. He also turned out to be correct.
Four years later, he’s president-elect of the United States. And when he’s sworn in as president, Trump told Kristen Welker on Sunday, he intends to pardon on his first day all—or almost all—of those responsible for what he called four years ago the “violence, lawlessness, and mayhem” of January 6th. This will include many who were found guilty of assaulting police officers. “They had no choice,” Trump said.
As for the members of Congress who served on the January 6th Committee and tried to establish the truth about that day, Trump made clear his desire for them to be prosecuted. It was these people, Trump told Welker, who “committed a major crime.” Trump didn’t deign to specify what crime they might have committed. But “honestly, they should go to jail.”
And so, we have not just a normalization of January 6th, but the full recasting of it. One of the darkest days of our political history is whitewashed, a cause of shame turned into a cause célèbre.
Our next president instigated January 6th and is a full-throated defender of those who rioted that day. Our next vice president, JD Vance, is someone who says he would not—as Vice President Mike Pence did—have stood in the way of overturning the election. Trump’s nominee for attorney general traveled the country at the end of 2020 promoting the Big Lie and trying to pressure both the courts and Congress to nullify the election results. His nominee for FBI director was part of the effort within the government to undermine the election.
No one should be surprised, as the New York Times reported over the weekend, that applicants for political positions in the Trump administration are asked about January 6th:
The questions went further than just affirming allegiance to the incoming administration. The interviewers asked . . . what they thought about the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and whether they believed the 2020 election was stolen. The sense they got was that there was only one right answer to each question. . . .
[Some] applicants . . . said they gave what they intuited to be the wrong answer—either decrying the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 or saying that President Biden won in 2020. Their answers were met with silence and the taking of notes. They didn’t get the jobs.
This makes sense. Trump made no secret as a candidate of his pro-January 6th views. He makes no secret of them now. It will be a pro-January 6 administration, staffed with pro-January 6th appointees, supported by a party with a majority in both houses of Congress whose members either endorse or acquiesce in the legitimizing of January 6th.
One must conclude, four years after, that January 6th succeeded.
MAGA Media Shows Its Teeth
by Andrew Egger
More of Trump’s deeply unfit cabinet picks could still go down in the Senate. But if you want to understand how they could also make it through unscathed, look no further than Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa).
On paper, you’d be hard-pressed to find a Republican senator less likely to approve of Hegseth’s confirmation. Ernst was the Senate’s first female combat veteran; Hegseth has taken heat for saying on a podcast last month that “I’m straight up just saying we shouldn’t have women in combat roles.” Ernst is a survivor of sexual assault and in 2019 was the sole Republican to oppose a key Trump nominee, Gen. John Hyten, who had been accused of assault by a subordinate; Hegseth paid out a settlement to a woman who in 2017 accused him of rape, though he denies assaulting her. Ernst could even benefit professionally from Hegseth’s nomination falling apart: A longtime congressional leader on veterans’ issues, she is rumored to be on the shortlist for defense secretary herself.
Just days ago, Ernst sounded deeply unimpressed by Hegseth. “A number of our senators, they want to make sure that any allegations have been cleared,” she said last Thursday. “And that’s why we have to have a very thorough vetting process.”
Yesterday, however, Ernst had a second meeting with Hegseth—then changed her tone. “I appreciate Pete Hegseth’s responsiveness and respect for the process,” Ernst said in a statement. “As I support Pete through this process, I look forward to a fair hearing based on truth, not anonymous sources.”
As the Des Moines Register notes, Ernst used this cagey phrase—“support through this process”—several times yesterday. Does it necessarily mean she’ll support his confirmation? No. But it does signal she doesn’t want to be seen as a major obstacle in Hegseth’s way.
Some of this can be chalked up to Hegseth’s charm offensive. In an appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show last night, he tried to brush up “comments that have been misconstrued that I somehow don’t support women in the military,” saying that “some of our greatest warriors, our best warriors are women who served.”
But the bigger reason was that Ernst, by virtue of seeming unenthusiastic about Hegseth’s nomination, had become a massive target herself for the online right. MAGA e-celebrities like Charlie Kirk spent days denouncing the senator (who is up for reelection this cycle) as a RINO squish.
“This is not a joke, everybody,” Kirk said on his radio show Thursday. “If you support the president’s agenda, you’re good. You’re marked safe from a primary. You go up against Pete Hegseth, the president repeatedly, then don’t be surprised, Joni Ernst, if all of a sudden you get a primary challenge in Iowa. . . . We don’t get a mandate like this from the American people just to have it thwarted by a bunch of dorks that we’ve never heard of from the U.S. Senate twiddling their thumbs and protecting the war machine.”
It’s long been a major role of conservative media to crack the whip against Republican lawmakers. But today’s MAGAfied version is different—both in the interests it tries to protect and the ferocity with which it springs into action against transgressors. Guys like Kirk aren’t defending some body of conservative principles—if they were, senators like Ernst could try to make their case against guys like Hegseth on the merits. Instead, they’re a body of single-minded enforcers for whatever President Trump happens to want at any given moment; or whatever the libs don’t want.
And as the party grows more and more docile to Trump’s will over time, the MAGA media can afford to focus its all-out attacks on ever-smaller supposed transgressions against “the people’s president.” If Ernst gets this sort of ferocious blowback just for appearing skeptical of an alleged alcoholic and rapist with relatively little managerial skill running the Defense Department, it’s no wonder Republican lawmakers as a body are so cowed.
Quick Hits
PROFILES IN COURAGE: Texas Sen. John Cornyn’s hopes of being Senate majority leader have been dashed for now, but he’s apparently going to keep kissing the ring just in case. Asked by a reporter Monday whether he agreed with Donald Trump’s assessment that members of the January 6th Committee belonged in jail, Cornyn demurred: “Well, I mean, I heard what he said. You heard what he said. But I do not think that’s the function of the Senate in the confirmation process.”
Yeah, what would the Senate have to do with that, anyway! On an unrelated matter, Cornyn said Monday he’d had a good meeting with Trump’s pick to run the FBI, Kash Patel, saying he was “certainly inclined to support him, barring some unforeseen circumstances.” Cornyn is up for reelection in 2026 and doesn’t want a primary.
BEST-CASE SCENARIO: Matt Gaetz may be out of Congress now, but you can’t keep these sorts of truly malignant limelight hogs down for long. While Gaetz’s political career may not be over—you never know, he could run for governor of Florida!—his latest landing place is a bit of a surprise.
CNN reported last night that Gaetz is expected to join the rabidly pro-Trump One America News Network as an anchor. The “rabidly pro-Trump” bit isn’t a shock, of course—but really, Gaetz couldn’t do better than OAN? The network was on the upswing a few years ago, back when Donald Trump was in open war with Fox News and his base was looking for an even more Trumpier news experience—but most of the “too Trumpy for Fox” audience ultimately ended up at Newsmax, and Trump went on to patch things up with Fox anyway.
Cheap Shots
We’re sure it’s fine!
Bill: "One must conclude, four years after, that January 6th succeeded."
Only because the voters allowed it to. If the voters were good people, Trump would have been wiped off the face of the planet after his attempted coup. We now know that the voters *aren't* good people
The Joni Ernst story is critical to understanding Trump's power. Throw-in the death threats that MAGA likes to lob at folks, and you have a bulwark that is fractured.
If only the 'normal' republicans banded together they would actually have some power to change the trajectory of the Trump presidency. Unfortunately, they are too frightened to do the right thing.