The first January 6th investigation committee's hearing was last Thursday, and I watched it. It was like reliving the violent coup attempt all over again. The videos were horrifying. The committee interviewed two witnesses. One was Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards and the other was Nick Quested, who was working on a documentary about the Proud Boys. Officer Edwards' testimony was especially compelling and very moving. We learned quite a bit from the committee last week, with more promised to come.
Today was the second hearing and Ted and I were front and center to watch.
I wonder if tRump and his cronies will be charged with anything? There seems to be piles and piles of evidence that they committed crimes but the Department of Justice (DOJ) hasn’t taken any actions. The Attorney General, Merrick Garland, has said repeatedly that DOJ is taking its time collecting everything and want to be sure any charges will stick. Lately, though, I’ve been seeing tweets and posts saying that DOJ is reluctant to act because they know there will be violence if tRump’s followers rise up if their beloved leader is arrested or charged.
Geeze. What a choice. Do the right thing and possibly be confronted with another violent uprising or let it all go and everyone realizes they can get away with whatever the fuck they want; that the GQP doesn’t have to follow the Constitution or any laws. Personally, I’d take the violent uprising and pray there are enough true patriots believing in democracy and following our Constitution to put down an uprising.
We just watched this morning’s hearings. There was a long delay; they didn’t start until well after 10:30 but it was because trump’s former campaign manager, Bill Stepien, had a last minute “emergency” and was unable to appear before the committee. He was in DC to testify before the committee but then got called home because his wife went into labor. How convenient. The committee put together his prerecorded testimony to use instead. The one witness that showed, Chris Stirewalt, a former political editor for Fox News, only had to answer a couple of questions.
I wondered why he was there and wondered why he was a “former” editor. It turns out that on election night, Fox News scooped the other media by announcing Arizona was going for Joe Biden. The tRump camp was absolutely astounded and angry. I imagine tRump saw this as a “betrayal” and their anger got Stirewalt fired. Man!
The wrath of tRump now extends to his precious daughter Ivanka who testified that then Attorney General Bill Barr saw no election fraud and she believed him. tRump went ballistic.
There was video clip after video clip showing different former top tRump aides testifying that they told him again and again that there was no election fraud and that he lost the election. This just made tRump angry and he ended up firing his “normal” legal team, which included Stepien. There were lots of clips of him nervously tugging at his color, sweating and saying “you know” almost every other word as he testified.
All the witnesses were tRump’s people. They all said tRump knew he’d lost the election. They tried to give tRump sensible advice about how to handle things but he went forward and lied to his base and to the American people, insisting the election was stolen. Is he so delusional he still believes that crap? Or is this just his narcissistic attempt to keep the presidency? He brought in a team of kooks led by former NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who drunkenly advised tRump to declare victory and stop the ballot counting. Giuliani and his group of nuts pursued all kinds of crazy conspiracy theories to feed tRump. Bill Barr finally gave up and quit on December 14.
During that time, tRump continued to spew lies and diatribes against voting machines. He refused to have anything to do with transitioning power and for many weeks, people wondered if he was going to refuse to leave the White House in January.
You know what gets me about this? All those top aides knew he was lying to the public. How could they not? The man was on TV and Twitter (until he was kicked off) loudly proclaiming he’d been robbed of the election. Why didn’t anyone come forward? If they were afraid of tRump’s vindictive vengefulness, why didn’t they all get together and denounce his lies? There is strength in numbers.
Were they all that afraid? Or did they think they were complicit? I’m totally disgusted with them all because no one had the integrity to step up and say, “Don’t listen to tRump. It’s a lie. The election was stolen.” They didn’t have to say tRump was a malignant narcissist. They could just say it was a health issue causing him to be delusional.
If they had discredited him from the get-go, maybe we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now. There would have been accountability earlier and we wouldn’t have all these right-wing extremist groups plotting another election coup. What makes this so alarming is how little attention this is getting from the press. Only NBC updated about the hearing this morning. The other major media is tripping out on inflation and gas prices. Geeze. With our democracy hanging in the balance!
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