I remember the day vividly! I was 68 and had never seen anything like it. My fear that Trump losing wasn’t the end of our problems was reinforced. A year on my fears for our democracy are even greater. I have 7 grandchildren, 2 held duel citizenship in NZ, I gave my daughter and so -in- law the $ to get their other 2 kids their duel citizenship. Just in case.
So, if the Jan 6 event was based on voter anger over BLM activist Micah Xavier gunning down five Dallas police officers... based on the acceptance of months of violent rioting and looting by left protestors over George Floyd... that would be have been considered a fine and acceptable protest.
But the fact that the protests were based on anger over the election process and directed at elite politicians... that is a constitutional crises and demands the all the power of the justice department to prosecute?
The protests were based on anger that their guy lost, the same guy who had been claiming it would be rigged well before the election (because he knew he would lose)- and continued repeating these powerful lies, while plotting with elected officials to disrupt certification. So, he did manage to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power- he had to destroy one more norm before leaving office. Every single member of congress who voted to object after the most litigated election in history AND the violence of the day is a traitor IMHO. They should be in the DC jail too- frankly they are more guilty than some who were misled.
Just the opposite. At 11 PM the night of the election the odds makers were 85% that Trump won.
Joe and Kamala... in the primaries two of the most disliked politicians to ever run for the top job.
Prior election failure of all polling that predicted Hillary would win in a landslide.
74 million votes for Trump... more than any other incumbent. 81 million... a record that clearly proved that dead people, homeless people and people that otherwise would never vote, had been harvested by Soros-paid bots of collectivism.
The rest is just a bunch of one-sided hogwash considering the previous Russia gate scandal. Has Hillary ever said she lost the election fair and square to Trump?
The meme that Trump disrupted a peaceful transition of power is complete nonsense when considering what the nation endured from Democrats throwing their 4-year political tantrum after the 2016 election and Obama's illegal spying on the Trump campaign before he was elected. Maybe the Jan-6 protestors should have just donned pink hats or black masks and just claimed "We Will Resist!"
"81 million... a record that clearly proved that dead people, homeless people and people that otherwise would never vote, had been harvested by Soros-paid bots of collectivism."
Jan Boongino is in fine form tonight. Normally he doesn't fit 4 unverified and preposterous statements into a single sentence, but he is really is showing off today. I don't even know what it means for a Soros-paid bot of collectivism to cast a ballot in a US presidential election, but if that's what it takes to get Trump out of office, thank goodness for the Soros-paid bots of collectivism. We Democrats are so devious!
Somehow this guy can’t fathom that a guy who lost to a dis-likable candidate in Hilary by however many millions votes would lose to someone else by more. 😂
JVL doesn’t allow comments on Triad, but just read his newsletter and it is POWERFUL STUFF. Everyone should read his 9/11 - 1/06 corollary. Definitely should be shouted out to everyone in this country as a warning sign to wake us the F up!
Thanks, Charlie, for compiling this. You are spot on - the way that Republicans (and their media allies) have tried to ignore the catastrophe of last January 6, and to persuade others that it was no big deal, has been profoundly amoral and disturbing. Their capacity for dishonesty is stunning, and their willingness to abjectly humiliate themselves and to sacrifice what little dignity and integrity that they have left is both sad and deeply disappointing.
However, even more concerning is their willingness to take things to the brink with former President Trump, and then almost immediately revert back to the patterns of behavior that brought us very near to the most serious Constitutional crises we have faced in our national history.
The next calamity will be worse.
And the time for political leaders to pretend to do something without following through with courage and resolve is past. If they will not do anything to stop the authoritarians, crackpots, and grifters in our midst, our Republic is surely doomed. Because the authoritarians, crackpots, and grifters are willing to take action, even if those actions destroy the Constitutional order.
If we expect that order to survive, it must have defenders willing to take action and to take risks. Right now, I don't see that sort of firm resolve on the national stage in either party, other than from the incorrigible Mr. Trump and his worst allies.
This morning, Charlie focuses on what's wrong with the Republican Party, including members' lack of courage and conviction regarding 1/6. Much needed. But let me ask another question - what the hell is wrong with the Democrats? Why is Congress not in session on 1/6? Why is the House and Senate not considering resolutions honoring police officers, condemning violence of the protesters, condemning the attempt to stop the counting of the electoral votes. It wouldn't be hard to write the resolutions in such a way that they express highly popular views about what happened on 1/6 yet many Republicans members of Congress will be pushed to vote against those resolutions by lunatic members of their base. Democrats continue to commit political malpractice.
So you are wondering why congress is not doing more performative politics instead of actually passing legislation to fix the problems? Seems odd to me, but Bill Kristol would like this tweet 10 times.
Well, obviously the Electoral Count Act should be modified. That should have been legislative priority No. 1 for the Dems. But resolutions are quick and easy and a great vehicle for making political statements. It's a piece of cake to tee them up and make the pro-insurrection Republicans look bad. And yet the Dems are taking a pass.
Because it is ineffective. Everyone either knows how bad this mess was or is actively retconning it. All the resolutions and statements in the world are beside the point.
Performance art is not performance... if you can't get the actual performance, then doing the performance art part of it is nothing more than a form of maturbation and/or virtue signaling.
I certainly don't agree it is "ineffective." Will it by itself move the needle? Absolutely not. But it's part of a message that needs to be repeated over and over again. That's how to do messaging. This is something Republicans understand, but Democrats don't. If a message doesn't work for Dems the first time, they just give u
Believe it or not, there are independent people out there and there are Republicans out there who aren't Trumpers. If you're not speaking to them, you're just leaving a messaging vacuum that the Trumpers will fill.
It is largely ineffective in our contemporary culture and media environment... especially once it gets folded, bended, stapled, and mutilated by the media. I say this from the perspective of someone who has studied/taught rhetoric and persuasion for decades.
There are not a lot of independent people out there. There might be a fair number of people who are not registered R or D and who call themselves independent--but they aren't really any more persuadable than a D or an R--they just jump back and forth between D and R on the basis of how they perceive things going for them when the time comes to cast their vote... at least, that is what the data and research says.
Persuasion is difficult and persuasion on the basis of reason or argumentation (vice emotional appeal or appeals to identity) especially so.
Voting behavior is largely non-rational and based upon identity and emotion rather than policy or actual results.
This is why D messaging usually sucks. They are too busy trying to be rational and make policy arguments. The Rs know that is a losing game.
Understood re voting behavior. But I would hate it for the Dems to become like Rs. there has to be a way to touch voters' emotions in a different way - the better angels of our nature?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Trumpe, patientia nostra? quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? quem ad finem sese effrenata iactabit audacia? nihilne te nocturnum praesidium Capitoli, nihil urbis vigiliae, nihil timor populi, nihil concursus bonorum omnium, nihil hic munitissimus habendi senatus locus, nihil horum ora voltusque moverunt? patere tua consilia non sentis, constrictam iam horum omnium scientia teneri coniurationem tuam non vides?
Listening to the pod the other day, and I agree with Bill Kristol when he says Dems need to make GOP take hard votes post Jan. 6, but doesn’t their shamelessness make you think that almost anything the Democrats do is futile? I too think they’re were issues with BBB, but you can kind of see the logic that given the complete bad faith of GOP actors that giving voters seemingly popular (according to polling) programs would help them with their base to ensure they have money and boots on the ground in the mid-terms. But then the progs and the moderates ate each other alive.
I really do think the only way forward is a disruptor candidate that can break through the GOP/Dem divide. We keep giving Dems a hard time like, “Oh, they should have done this or this,” but if it comes from a Democrat, the GOP can just swat it away with any justification, no matter how unreasonable or illiberal. That sets up this terrible dynamic of pitting moderates vs. progressives against each other in terms of legislating where one group continues to piss off another. Andrew Yang is forming his own political party, and I’m not sure if it’ll go anywhere, but he pointed out that over 60% of voters want a different choice than the GOP/Dem one we got. I am in that 60%, and a majority of my friends in my age group are as well.
But also I totally agree with Bill about Covid testing failure… that’s all on Biden. I know someone who is sending weed edibles to a family member in the UK in exchange for Covid tests because they get so many for free over there. These are the f#@king times we live in people! Happy New Year!
It's really hard to understand why so many people don't see the irony of the party of Benghazi attacking the bipartisan 1/6 Committee as a political witch hunt. I guess part of the explanation for that is that so many people believe Benghazi, all dozen dud investigations worth, was a legitimate investigation concerned with truth rather than with smearing a political opponent loathed by so many Americans.
So many lies, lies, lies. People actually believe Hillary Clinton had Vince Foster and Seth Rich killed, ran a child pedophile ring out of a fictitious basement in a DC pizza parlor, and that she did "Frazzledrip." Millions of our fellow Americans hate Hillary Clinton based on lies, and not just any lies, but obviously ridiculous, stupid lies that anyone with half a brain cell could tell are just absurd. The internet spreads misinformation, yes, but what can be done about someone stupid enough to actually drive from North Carolina to DC to do an "investigation" of Comet Ping Pong with his assault rifle?
And these folks get over-represented, from gerrymandering to the Electoral College, when it comes to electing our representatives. And still, they want to eliminate anything of democracy in our elections, because they've been lied to that Democrats are stealing elections, and that if Democrats take over, life as they know it will end. With so many voters, it's garbage in and garbage out, and apparently they're raccoons who just can't get enough garbage. They subsist on a diet of lies, they dumpster dive for more lies, then they poison the real world when their perverse fantasies impact us all. And then ten years from now too many of us will be wondering where democracy has gone, and why fascists have taken over. We'll look back sadly at the time when we could say, "Well, our side may have lost this time. But, soon enough, election time will come again."
These pieces do nothing other than to remind yourself that these guys are cowards that only care about one thing: power. This will not change minds as almost everyone can see the way this works. At first they said it is bad because they thought that would be the best maneuver to keep power. Then, they realized the people actually liked this and Trump was still on solid ground so they maneuver to say it was not that bad and actually we do support Trump in '24 - I was the one who overreacted. I am sorry for my mistake.
"The GOP and its media allies continue to dodge, deflect, and minimize the enormity of the event; and they have convinced much of their base to either look the other way, or actually applaud the assault on our seat of government."
I would note that the base didn't need much convincing. Since the arrival of Trump, it has been abundantly clear that there was a huge market for lies. Give up your honor and you can be a rightwing star.
The "mainstream" media isn't doing so hot either. Ari Melber of MSNBC just last night gave air time to Peter fucking Navarro of all people to spout his nonsense. Did Ari push back? Kind of. But Navarro just kept on and was able to get his bullshit out to everyone watching.
Stop legitimizing these people by giving them air time to spout their lies and coup plotting.
I'm surprised Navarro's "Green Bay Sweep" (Charlie has to hate the insurrection being tied to his beloved Packers) hasn't gotten more coverage. Navarro is, of course, peddling the narrative that Trump didn't want the violence because the violence interfered with their well-organized conspiracy to overturn the election results. As an aside, not sure why Navarro thinks it's helpful to implicate the President in a well-organized, quite likely illegal conspiracy, but he may not be a smart man.)
Part of Navarro's story makes zero sense. He says the plan was to use congressional objections to the electoral college votes and subsequent debate to force the mainstream media to cover Trump's position about the election and sway public opinion in favor of the President. When has any Trumper ever thought he could win the political debate if the mainstream media would just give them more coverage for their position? There is likely some truth to Navarro's narrative, but certainly not the media strategy part.
Ari Melber is an excellent legal analyst, but he's really weak on politics. He is very knowledgeable about hip hop though...but then again, what white Jewish male isn't? I joke.
Thanks SO much for doing this. We desperately need the reminder. We also need to ask ourselves what can cause a moment of honesty and risk to evaporate into thin air? Why did these people so thoroughly and immediately recant? I for one would be interested in your take on that question.
Money. All Ronna Romney McDaniel had to do was tell them you will not receive a donation for your campaign from the GOP national committee. Interesting note, a reporter for the Washington Post, announced on Twitter that GOP National Committee "has made a $1.5 million to Trump's legal defense fund." Wonder how the donors feel?
My conspiracy minded SyFy answer - Trump/Putin has some really, really bad dirt/threats against them. Then again, I'm beginning to think that is the answer. I hate to use the Hitler card, but I will - one reason Hitler (and Stalin and Mao and any mob boss) got away with it was to go after not merely the dissenters but their families as well. How else to explain how people that supposedly had some semblance of decency are staying quiet? I'm not just talking about McCarthy, et al, but also the ones who did resign or got fired. Their silence is deafening.
As much as I'd like to blame Putin for things like the Insurrection, that craziness is entirely home grown. Yes, Putin did a lot of disinformation and interference during the 2016 election cycle, but by 2020 he didn't need to do anything. The craziness is coming from inside our American house.
I remember the day vividly! I was 68 and had never seen anything like it. My fear that Trump losing wasn’t the end of our problems was reinforced. A year on my fears for our democracy are even greater. I have 7 grandchildren, 2 held duel citizenship in NZ, I gave my daughter and so -in- law the $ to get their other 2 kids their duel citizenship. Just in case.
So, if the Jan 6 event was based on voter anger over BLM activist Micah Xavier gunning down five Dallas police officers... based on the acceptance of months of violent rioting and looting by left protestors over George Floyd... that would be have been considered a fine and acceptable protest.
But the fact that the protests were based on anger over the election process and directed at elite politicians... that is a constitutional crises and demands the all the power of the justice department to prosecute?
Do I have that right?
You Sure Don't.
The protests were based on anger that their guy lost, the same guy who had been claiming it would be rigged well before the election (because he knew he would lose)- and continued repeating these powerful lies, while plotting with elected officials to disrupt certification. So, he did manage to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power- he had to destroy one more norm before leaving office. Every single member of congress who voted to object after the most litigated election in history AND the violence of the day is a traitor IMHO. They should be in the DC jail too- frankly they are more guilty than some who were misled.
"(because he knew he would lose)"
Just the opposite. At 11 PM the night of the election the odds makers were 85% that Trump won.
Joe and Kamala... in the primaries two of the most disliked politicians to ever run for the top job.
Prior election failure of all polling that predicted Hillary would win in a landslide.
74 million votes for Trump... more than any other incumbent. 81 million... a record that clearly proved that dead people, homeless people and people that otherwise would never vote, had been harvested by Soros-paid bots of collectivism.
The rest is just a bunch of one-sided hogwash considering the previous Russia gate scandal. Has Hillary ever said she lost the election fair and square to Trump?
The meme that Trump disrupted a peaceful transition of power is complete nonsense when considering what the nation endured from Democrats throwing their 4-year political tantrum after the 2016 election and Obama's illegal spying on the Trump campaign before he was elected. Maybe the Jan-6 protestors should have just donned pink hats or black masks and just claimed "We Will Resist!"
Did you forget the part where he tried to use military aid to hurt biden? Either way- great to meet you comrade.
LOL. You mean old Nancy bringing out the military for political theater and made them sit in the cold outside during COVID fear time?
What is it with you people and George Soros? Who will you blame when he kicks? Oh that's right: Bill Gates.
"81 million... a record that clearly proved that dead people, homeless people and people that otherwise would never vote, had been harvested by Soros-paid bots of collectivism."
Jan Boongino is in fine form tonight. Normally he doesn't fit 4 unverified and preposterous statements into a single sentence, but he is really is showing off today. I don't even know what it means for a Soros-paid bot of collectivism to cast a ballot in a US presidential election, but if that's what it takes to get Trump out of office, thank goodness for the Soros-paid bots of collectivism. We Democrats are so devious!
Somehow this guy can’t fathom that a guy who lost to a dis-likable candidate in Hilary by however many millions votes would lose to someone else by more. 😂
Sorry- I meant lost the popular vote!
JVL doesn’t allow comments on Triad, but just read his newsletter and it is POWERFUL STUFF. Everyone should read his 9/11 - 1/06 corollary. Definitely should be shouted out to everyone in this country as a warning sign to wake us the F up!
JVL is the best at keeping front-of-mind what is in the heads of the MAGA crowd.
Thanks, Charlie, for compiling this. You are spot on - the way that Republicans (and their media allies) have tried to ignore the catastrophe of last January 6, and to persuade others that it was no big deal, has been profoundly amoral and disturbing. Their capacity for dishonesty is stunning, and their willingness to abjectly humiliate themselves and to sacrifice what little dignity and integrity that they have left is both sad and deeply disappointing.
However, even more concerning is their willingness to take things to the brink with former President Trump, and then almost immediately revert back to the patterns of behavior that brought us very near to the most serious Constitutional crises we have faced in our national history.
The next calamity will be worse.
And the time for political leaders to pretend to do something without following through with courage and resolve is past. If they will not do anything to stop the authoritarians, crackpots, and grifters in our midst, our Republic is surely doomed. Because the authoritarians, crackpots, and grifters are willing to take action, even if those actions destroy the Constitutional order.
If we expect that order to survive, it must have defenders willing to take action and to take risks. Right now, I don't see that sort of firm resolve on the national stage in either party, other than from the incorrigible Mr. Trump and his worst allies.
This morning, Charlie focuses on what's wrong with the Republican Party, including members' lack of courage and conviction regarding 1/6. Much needed. But let me ask another question - what the hell is wrong with the Democrats? Why is Congress not in session on 1/6? Why is the House and Senate not considering resolutions honoring police officers, condemning violence of the protesters, condemning the attempt to stop the counting of the electoral votes. It wouldn't be hard to write the resolutions in such a way that they express highly popular views about what happened on 1/6 yet many Republicans members of Congress will be pushed to vote against those resolutions by lunatic members of their base. Democrats continue to commit political malpractice.
So you are wondering why congress is not doing more performative politics instead of actually passing legislation to fix the problems? Seems odd to me, but Bill Kristol would like this tweet 10 times.
Well, obviously the Electoral Count Act should be modified. That should have been legislative priority No. 1 for the Dems. But resolutions are quick and easy and a great vehicle for making political statements. It's a piece of cake to tee them up and make the pro-insurrection Republicans look bad. And yet the Dems are taking a pass.
Because it is ineffective. Everyone either knows how bad this mess was or is actively retconning it. All the resolutions and statements in the world are beside the point.
Performance art is not performance... if you can't get the actual performance, then doing the performance art part of it is nothing more than a form of maturbation and/or virtue signaling.
I certainly don't agree it is "ineffective." Will it by itself move the needle? Absolutely not. But it's part of a message that needs to be repeated over and over again. That's how to do messaging. This is something Republicans understand, but Democrats don't. If a message doesn't work for Dems the first time, they just give u
Believe it or not, there are independent people out there and there are Republicans out there who aren't Trumpers. If you're not speaking to them, you're just leaving a messaging vacuum that the Trumpers will fill.
Lifelong Dem here - agree the Dems today are very bad at messaging.
It is largely ineffective in our contemporary culture and media environment... especially once it gets folded, bended, stapled, and mutilated by the media. I say this from the perspective of someone who has studied/taught rhetoric and persuasion for decades.
There are not a lot of independent people out there. There might be a fair number of people who are not registered R or D and who call themselves independent--but they aren't really any more persuadable than a D or an R--they just jump back and forth between D and R on the basis of how they perceive things going for them when the time comes to cast their vote... at least, that is what the data and research says.
Persuasion is difficult and persuasion on the basis of reason or argumentation (vice emotional appeal or appeals to identity) especially so.
Voting behavior is largely non-rational and based upon identity and emotion rather than policy or actual results.
This is why D messaging usually sucks. They are too busy trying to be rational and make policy arguments. The Rs know that is a losing game.
Understood re voting behavior. But I would hate it for the Dems to become like Rs. there has to be a way to touch voters' emotions in a different way - the better angels of our nature?
Republicans are so good at messaging that I would have made that McConnell speech my closing argument in the Impeachment trial.
McConnell continues:
Quo usque tandem abutere, Trumpe, patientia nostra? quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? quem ad finem sese effrenata iactabit audacia? nihilne te nocturnum praesidium Capitoli, nihil urbis vigiliae, nihil timor populi, nihil concursus bonorum omnium, nihil hic munitissimus habendi senatus locus, nihil horum ora voltusque moverunt? patere tua consilia non sentis, constrictam iam horum omnium scientia teneri coniurationem tuam non vides?
Listening to the pod the other day, and I agree with Bill Kristol when he says Dems need to make GOP take hard votes post Jan. 6, but doesn’t their shamelessness make you think that almost anything the Democrats do is futile? I too think they’re were issues with BBB, but you can kind of see the logic that given the complete bad faith of GOP actors that giving voters seemingly popular (according to polling) programs would help them with their base to ensure they have money and boots on the ground in the mid-terms. But then the progs and the moderates ate each other alive.
I really do think the only way forward is a disruptor candidate that can break through the GOP/Dem divide. We keep giving Dems a hard time like, “Oh, they should have done this or this,” but if it comes from a Democrat, the GOP can just swat it away with any justification, no matter how unreasonable or illiberal. That sets up this terrible dynamic of pitting moderates vs. progressives against each other in terms of legislating where one group continues to piss off another. Andrew Yang is forming his own political party, and I’m not sure if it’ll go anywhere, but he pointed out that over 60% of voters want a different choice than the GOP/Dem one we got. I am in that 60%, and a majority of my friends in my age group are as well.
But also I totally agree with Bill about Covid testing failure… that’s all on Biden. I know someone who is sending weed edibles to a family member in the UK in exchange for Covid tests because they get so many for free over there. These are the f#@king times we live in people! Happy New Year!
*there were issues!!!! I can spell I swearz!!!
It's really hard to understand why so many people don't see the irony of the party of Benghazi attacking the bipartisan 1/6 Committee as a political witch hunt. I guess part of the explanation for that is that so many people believe Benghazi, all dozen dud investigations worth, was a legitimate investigation concerned with truth rather than with smearing a political opponent loathed by so many Americans.
So many lies, lies, lies. People actually believe Hillary Clinton had Vince Foster and Seth Rich killed, ran a child pedophile ring out of a fictitious basement in a DC pizza parlor, and that she did "Frazzledrip." Millions of our fellow Americans hate Hillary Clinton based on lies, and not just any lies, but obviously ridiculous, stupid lies that anyone with half a brain cell could tell are just absurd. The internet spreads misinformation, yes, but what can be done about someone stupid enough to actually drive from North Carolina to DC to do an "investigation" of Comet Ping Pong with his assault rifle?
And these folks get over-represented, from gerrymandering to the Electoral College, when it comes to electing our representatives. And still, they want to eliminate anything of democracy in our elections, because they've been lied to that Democrats are stealing elections, and that if Democrats take over, life as they know it will end. With so many voters, it's garbage in and garbage out, and apparently they're raccoons who just can't get enough garbage. They subsist on a diet of lies, they dumpster dive for more lies, then they poison the real world when their perverse fantasies impact us all. And then ten years from now too many of us will be wondering where democracy has gone, and why fascists have taken over. We'll look back sadly at the time when we could say, "Well, our side may have lost this time. But, soon enough, election time will come again."
These pieces do nothing other than to remind yourself that these guys are cowards that only care about one thing: power. This will not change minds as almost everyone can see the way this works. At first they said it is bad because they thought that would be the best maneuver to keep power. Then, they realized the people actually liked this and Trump was still on solid ground so they maneuver to say it was not that bad and actually we do support Trump in '24 - I was the one who overreacted. I am sorry for my mistake.
"The GOP and its media allies continue to dodge, deflect, and minimize the enormity of the event; and they have convinced much of their base to either look the other way, or actually applaud the assault on our seat of government."
I would note that the base didn't need much convincing. Since the arrival of Trump, it has been abundantly clear that there was a huge market for lies. Give up your honor and you can be a rightwing star.
The "mainstream" media isn't doing so hot either. Ari Melber of MSNBC just last night gave air time to Peter fucking Navarro of all people to spout his nonsense. Did Ari push back? Kind of. But Navarro just kept on and was able to get his bullshit out to everyone watching.
Stop legitimizing these people by giving them air time to spout their lies and coup plotting.
Jesus, what's it going to take?
I'm surprised Navarro's "Green Bay Sweep" (Charlie has to hate the insurrection being tied to his beloved Packers) hasn't gotten more coverage. Navarro is, of course, peddling the narrative that Trump didn't want the violence because the violence interfered with their well-organized conspiracy to overturn the election results. As an aside, not sure why Navarro thinks it's helpful to implicate the President in a well-organized, quite likely illegal conspiracy, but he may not be a smart man.)
Part of Navarro's story makes zero sense. He says the plan was to use congressional objections to the electoral college votes and subsequent debate to force the mainstream media to cover Trump's position about the election and sway public opinion in favor of the President. When has any Trumper ever thought he could win the political debate if the mainstream media would just give them more coverage for their position? There is likely some truth to Navarro's narrative, but certainly not the media strategy part.
Ari Melber is an excellent legal analyst, but he's really weak on politics. He is very knowledgeable about hip hop though...but then again, what white Jewish male isn't? I joke.
Thanks SO much for doing this. We desperately need the reminder. We also need to ask ourselves what can cause a moment of honesty and risk to evaporate into thin air? Why did these people so thoroughly and immediately recant? I for one would be interested in your take on that question.
Money. All Ronna Romney McDaniel had to do was tell them you will not receive a donation for your campaign from the GOP national committee. Interesting note, a reporter for the Washington Post, announced on Twitter that GOP National Committee "has made a $1.5 million to Trump's legal defense fund." Wonder how the donors feel?
My conspiracy minded SyFy answer - Trump/Putin has some really, really bad dirt/threats against them. Then again, I'm beginning to think that is the answer. I hate to use the Hitler card, but I will - one reason Hitler (and Stalin and Mao and any mob boss) got away with it was to go after not merely the dissenters but their families as well. How else to explain how people that supposedly had some semblance of decency are staying quiet? I'm not just talking about McCarthy, et al, but also the ones who did resign or got fired. Their silence is deafening.
As much as I'd like to blame Putin for things like the Insurrection, that craziness is entirely home grown. Yes, Putin did a lot of disinformation and interference during the 2016 election cycle, but by 2020 he didn't need to do anything. The craziness is coming from inside our American house.
The pollsters got to work and discovered the rightwing base was loyal to Trump and not the Constitution. Game Over.
So, one has to wonder if the rioters had actually found Pence and Pelosi?
My guess is there would have been dozens of rioters shot dead.
And one has to wonder why no House or Senate Republicans stayed in place to talk with the mob if they believed then what they now state on Fox.
Great point.
That is my favorite Faulkner quote