Plan F

I’ve done a little more reflecting after watching these first 8 hearings.  During Watergate, there was a comic strip I followed avidly called “Doonesbury”.  I see that it might still be running although I thought Gary Trudeau had stopped it some years back.  Anyway, he had a radical character named Mark who worked as a deejay.  One day, referring to Nixon’s complicit Attorney General John Mitchell, Mark cried into the radio mike: “Guilty, guilty, guilty!”

That’s all I can think about with tRump.  He knew he’d lost the election.  He was told over and over and over ad nauseam and repeatedly by his sane legal team (not the “Clown Car”), aides and family that he’d lost the election.  Either he is so deranged he actually didn’t believe it or he just didn’t care.  His goal was just to have his second term.  I think that’s what it is, especially in view of the new information I’m reading about the subversive plans he and his cult had for Term 2.

It's a chilling plan and, apparently, it’s not dead.   I read about this plan in my Axios newsletter the other day.  https://www.axios.com/2022/07/22/trump-2025-radical-plan-second-term?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiospm&stream=top More about this plan in a minute.

TFG had a game plan he followed to overturn the election.  He started to spread the Big Lie amongst his cultish worshippers and had his various lawyers file over sixty lawsuits alleging fraud but without any proof.  As his court cases were thrown out by judges one by one, he was already starting on his Plan B:  pressure state officials in swing states to recount, review and throw the vote to tRump.  He smeared election workers just doing their jobs to amp up the pressure.  It didn’t look like B was working so before he gave up on it, he and his Clown Car was already work on C and D.

Plan C was pressuring Vice President Pence to thwart the official vote count in the Senate and throw the election to tRump.

And, when that failed, Plan D: set his bloodthirsty treasonous and violent followers on Pence and the Capital.

Then he maliciously sat his fat ass down in the Oval Dining Room to gleefully watch the coup attempt on Fox News.  Everyone begged him to DO something to stop the violence.  He refused.  He didn’t call for his mob to stop.  He didn’t call any agency to help stop the bloodshed and control the insurrectionists.  All he did was watch TV, probably licking his lips with anticipation at Mike Pence maybe getting hanged, calling his best Clown bud Rudy Giuliani, and, oh yeah, various senators hiding from the mob to urge them to continue delaying the counting of the votes.

He didn’t want to tell them to stop.  He LIKED what they were doing.  He thought they weren’t doing anything wrong because their violence was in order to force an illegal second (longer?) tRump term.  He had to be strong-armed into issuing two weak tweets to the insurrectionists to “keep peaceful.”  When he finally did ask them to go home, he nauseatingly added “We love you.  You’re special.”  Ugh.  I wanted to puke when I saw that video on January 6^th.  The hearing on Thursday showed raw footage of his reluctance to follow script, condemn the violence, or even admit the election was over.

Not only is he guilty, guilty, guilty, he is also evil, evil, evil.

He’s not sorry.  I believe his soul is defective or dead.  He has absolutely no remorse for the terror and destruction he set on the Capitol that day.  He has no sorrow or regret for the people who died (a protestor and several police officers, including those who later committed suicide).  He doesn’t care that he put so many lives in danger and that he encouraged our Capitol to be invaded and desecrated.

He only cares that he still and always will have lost the 2020 election.

I suppose there are a few “trusted” allies he hasn’t thrown under the bus yet and they’re involved with him in this new order they’re putting together.  It’s centered on one of his Executive Orders from 2020 called Plan F.  When President Biden took office, he reversed it and I’m glad he did because it’s evil.  If trump became President again, he could reinstate it.

Plan F would basically decimate federal employees who might influence policy by placing them in this category where they could be easily lose their protections by being transferred.  They could be fired easily too.  Who would replace them?  Well, TFG’s pals are creating databases of people considered “loyal” to tRumpism.  All those senior federal employees considered Plan F would be replaced by TFG’s supporters.  Not just in some agencies.  All of them.  This is very bone chilling when you think about it.

Quoting the article: “…Unions and Democrats would be expected to immediately fight a Schedule F order. But Trump’s advisers like their chances in a judicial system now dominated at its highest levels by conservatives.

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), who chairs the subcommittee that oversees the federal civil service, is among a small group of lawmakers who never stopped worrying about Schedule F, even after Biden rescinded the order. Connolly has been so alarmed that he attached an amendment to this year’s defense bill to prevent a future president from resurrecting Schedule F. The House passed Connolly’s amendment but Republicans hope to block it in the Senate. …”

Yeah.  Just in case any of us missed it.

That's Not All, Folks

Last night TB and I stayed up to watch the 8^th hearing of the January 6^th committee.  The chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, has contracted covid and so he had to isolate himself.  He did give an opening statement.  While he was speaking, our cat Gus got up in front of the TV.  It seemed like he was interested in what Rep. Thompson was saying so I took some pictures.  It was probably our big laugh of the evening.

 

The purpose of the hearing was to go into what tRump was doing for 187 minutes while his rioting insurrectionist supporters terrorized legislators, staff, and secret service details, injured hundreds of police officers, and trashed the Capitol Building.  Granted, I’d heard all the previous testimony so I knew damn well all he was doing was sitting his fat ass in the Oval dining room watching the coverage on Fox News while his advisors and family members begged him to do something to stop the violence.  I did appreciate the way two leads last night, Rep. Luria and Rep. Kinzinger, compared what was happening with tRump with what was happening at the Capitol.  That was effective.

Luria and Kinzinger went through that three hour period that just seemed to last forever when TB and I were watching it.  Not only did tRump refuse to do anything to stop the violence, he instigated more of it.  His tweet around 2:30 p.m. that day basically set a target on Vice President Pence’s back.  It inflamed the already out-of-their-minds insurrectionists to more violence.  One new thing I learned was that around the time of the tweet, VP Pence’s secret service team were so alarmed by the danger that they began calling their families to leave goodbye messages.  Geeze.  Shades of 9/11!

There were two nothing tweets from tRump, coerced out of him by family and advisors.  Still, they only said vague words like “stay peaceful.”  Say what?  The insurrectionists were smashing windows, destroying, defacing and stealing property, pooping everywhere, and physically hurting the police.  Legislators were very lucky they escaped rather quickly.  Still, VP Pence and his detail came within 40 feet of the insurrectionists.  What if someone had seen Pence as he was being whisked away?  Would the traitors have seized him and dragged him to the gallows they’d erected to hang him?

I wasn’t as emotionally horrified and upset as I was during the earlier hearings.  I guess it’s because I knew that tRump was evil personified and so I didn’t feel shocked that he just sat there enthusiastically watching the coup attempt.  Two people, both witnesses that testified last night, resigned that night.  Why didn’t the others?  Some said it was because they were afraid of what tRump might do if he only had the “Clown Car” (Guiliani, Bannon, etc) to advise him.

I wasn’t surprised at the raw footage of his videotaped statements released to send the traitors home and the address to the country.  He’d stop himself and object to having to say some of the things in the script.  He didn’t want to say that the election was over.  He didn’t want to condemn the followers who’d obeyed him and tried to stop the vote count.  It is so clear tRump violated his oath of office.  He did nothing to protect the Constitution nor the country from a terrorist action.

Yet, he walks free.  The Clown Car walks free.  People who did what he wanted are, in some cases, facing severe consequences.  He and the Clown Car have been obstructing, ignorning subpoenas and otherwise breaking all kinds of laws with no consequences.  They continue to terrorize and bully people.  One witness had to be disguised for testimony because of a pervasive fear among the staff their lives would be in danger if they testified openly.

This is America?

So what I felt wasn’t horror so much as it was disgust and worry for out future.  Judge Luttig and others are absolutely correct that the coup is continuing.  Sometimes I think my heart may break.

It's not over yet.  This hearing was supposed to be the last, but both Reps. Thompson and Cheney told us that they are getting so  much more  information, they will begin more hearings in September.  Good.  We need the whole truth, painful as it may be.