1/6 Footage to Carlson Secured Speakership -- Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) handed all 44,000 hours of video of the January 6^th insurrection including security footage previously withheld to Fox News conspiracy theorist Tucker Carlson as part of the congressman's deal to secure MAGA votes to become House Speaker, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) told NPR. Thompson, chairman of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6^th Attack on the United States Capitol, said the video footage turned over to Carlson was not part of his committee’s hearings last year because they show escape routes and the position of hidden cameras used by Capitol police for Congress members’ safety. Roughly 40,000 hours was available for the committee to show in nine public, televised hearings last year.

“It’s dangerous because some of the video we chose not to share in concert with the Capitol police because it would compromise the security of the Capitol,” Thompson told Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition. “And at no point did we want to make the Capitol more vulnerable by sharing that kind of information with the public.”

The additional footage identifies the position of certain cameras in the Capitol, which could make it more vulnerable in any subsequent attack, Thompson said. Carlson, who has hosted Fox News programs and documentaries with conspiracy theories and alternative histories of the January 6^th attack, according to Inskeep, is likely to use the footage to advance those alternative histories and show his audience what the Select Committee tried to “withhold” from the American public.

Fox News appears to be the only outlet to receive the footage from McCarthy.

“I understand he had to make certain commitments to become speaker,” Thompson said, “but in no way should these commitments jeopardize the security of the United States Capitol.”

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Trump Daughter, Son-in-Law Subpoenaed -- The Justice Department’s special counsel investigating the January 6^th Capitol insurrection, Jack Smith, has subpoenaed Donald j. Trump’s daughter Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner, The New York Times reports. Ivanka Trump was one of the former president’s closest White House advisors during his final months in office. According to the report, Smith’s subpoenas indicate how deep inside the 45^th president’s inner circle that the special counsel is getting and that “no potential high-level witness is off-limits.”

The Ivanka Trump/Jared Kushner subpoenas come two weeks after Smith subpoenaed ex-President Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, who has resisted testifying, claiming “legislative privilege” as he was president of the Senate during the administration. Though Trump’s daughter and son-in-law might be expected to fight the subpoenas themselves, the former president did not try to block them from testifying before the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6^th Attack on the United States Capitol, last year.

--TL

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...meanwhile...

WEDNESDAY 2/22/23

UPDATE: Speaking from Warsaw, President Biden reacted to President Vladimir Putin's suspension of participation in the last-remaining U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control treaty talks; "It's a big mistake."

Biden Meets with Bucharest Nine – President Biden spoke with the Bucharest Nine (B9) about the “destabilizing” military buildup along Ukraine’s border and the need for a “united, ready and resolute NATO stance for the collective defense of allies,” before preparing to return home from Warsaw Wednesday, according to a White House readout of the meeting. Biden stressed the U.S. commitment to “close consultation and coordination” with Transatlantic allies and partners in defense of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

B9 Leaders Attending: Bulgarian President Rumen Radev, Czech Republic Prime Minister Andrej Babis, Estonian President Alar Karis, Hungarian President Janos Ader, Latvian President Egils Levits, Lithuanian President Gitanis Nauseda, Polish President Andrzej Duda, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis and Slovakia Prime Minister Eduard Heger.

Where’s Orbån?: Significantly, Hungary sent its president rather than authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbån, who is considered sympathetic to, if not an outright ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. It should also be noted that Polish President Duda leaned authoritarian – a sort of “Orbån lite” who has fought the European Union over his attempts to dismantle an independent judiciary – during the Trump administration and roughly up to the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine after the Russian invasion a year ago.

Biden, who has made a point during his trip to Kyiv and Warsaw that Ukraine’s resilience in the war is a victory for democracy over authoritarianism, has an 82% approval rating among Poland’s populous is 82%, according to MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

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SOTU Boosts Biden's Approval Ratings -- President Biden's approval ratings hit a new high of 46% in an NPR/PBS News Hour/Marist poll of 1,300 respondents taken after his State of the Union address. Biden's approval rating had sunk to a low of just 36% last July. Of the 1,300 respondents in the poll, 1,200 were registered voters who gave Biden an approval rating of 49% in the same poll, according to NPR's Morning Edition.

--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

Facing growing criticism from Democrats as well as Republicans over slow White House response to a February 3 derailment near East Palestine, Ohio, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg wrote to Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw Sunday urging him to support stronger rail safety standards, The Hill reports. The derailment earlier this month resulted in the pileup of 150 freight cars, 20 of them carrying cargoes of hazardous materials. 

Republicans have suggested the derailment in a rural, politically “red” region in Ohio has been treated indifferently by the Biden administration.

Last Friday White House officials said they would welcome Congressional action to beef up safety standards for trains carrying hazardous materials, according to Roll Call. Officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Railroad Administration and Department of Health and Human Services are waiting for a report from the National Transportation Safety Board on the derailment.

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What do you think? Go to the Comments section in this column, or the one in the right column if that’s how you lean, or email editors@thehustings.news and type “for the left column” or “for the right column” in the subject line.

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Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) praised President Biden’s dangerous, surprise trip Monday to Kyiv, Ukraine, The Hill reports.

Biden’s visit with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was “the right signal to send at the right time,” Graham said.

Meanwhile, The Hill reports, Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said that Biden is neglecting domestic problems with his trip to Ukraine and Poland. 

“We have a lot of problems accumulating here in our country that he is neglecting.”

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Michigan GOP Sticks with Trump

Michigan’s Republican Party chose pro-Trump election denier Kristina Karamo over another pro-Trump election denier, Matthew DePerno, to be its leader going into the 2024 elections, Michigan Radio reports. This despite a fairly thorough rejection of MAGA hats in favor of Democratic candidates in last November’s midterms.

Karamo lost her bid to become Michigan secretary of state last November to Democrat Jocelyn Benson by 14 points, while DePerno lost to Democrat Dana Nessel by just eight points (both Democrats were incumbents).

Two moderate Michigan Republicans who did not make it to the midterms had something to say about their party’s inability to free itself from the grip of the 45^th president, ahead of Saturday’s leadership vote, The New York Times reports.

“In our state, this civil war is benefitting no one but the Democrats,” said former Republican Rep. Peter Meijer, who voted to impeach Trump after the January 6^th Capitol insurrection and was defeated in last year’s primary, with some help from the Democratic Party. “Part of what the Republican Party in the state of Michigan needs to get back to is being a broad tent. To me, the fundamental challenge is, how do you build trust in the state party after losses like we saw in November?”

“Sadly, it looks like they want an encore,” said former Rep. Fred Upton, another of the Republicans who voted in favor of Trump’s second impeachment. Unlike Meijer, Upton announced his retirement before he could be primaried by a Trump acolyte in 2022.

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What do you think? Go to the Comments section in this column, or the one in the left column if that’s how you lean, or email editors@thehustings.news and type “for the right column” or “for the left column” in the subject line.

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By Stephen Macaulay

Small-town Fourth of July celebrations often have a case where during the fireworks at the end of the day a rocket goes up and rather than exploding into a visual rendition of John Phillips Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever,” there is a disappointing fizzle. 

And for some people, that is the effect of the partial release of the findings of the Fulton County special grand jury looking into whether Donald Trump and his minions unlawfully interfered with the results of the 2020 presidential election.

No one should be surprised that a group of ignominious grifters who claim to be working on behalf of the public or supporters of the commonweal are likely to have committed perjury. These people aren’t in it for a greater cause. They lie and cheat because it goes to their personal benefit.

Does anyone actually imagine that except for the most delusional among them, these people truly thought that Trump won the election and therefore it was up to their machinations to maintain the sovereignty of the Republic in an unsullied manner? Or did they simply think that because they were in the good graces of the Boss this would redound to their well-being: Four more years of feeding on the stew of the Swamp that they, and he, loudly proclaimed they were draining.

And after he retired from office to his Schlagmetal-gilted palace, they thought they would have the opportunity to get a position at the Heritage Foundation or other group that once actually supported conservative beliefs only to surrender their values for a seat at the table where they could tug their forelocks and pledge fealty to a man who probably thinks Edmund Burke is the name of the title character of Burke’s Law. (For those of you who don’t remember the TV show of 1963-1966, Amos Burke was a millionaire L.A. police detective who was driven around in a Rolls — but at least he solved crimes and didn’t commit them.)

Back to the firework that didn’t have the anticipated explosive display.

Many people probably thought that the proverbial jig would be up for Trump, that he would be charged with not just something, but many things. What these people had long anticipated would finally come to pass.

And it hasn’t. This doesn’t mean that it won’t. It doesn’t mean that Trump has slithered away once again. It simply means that the old saw is right: “The wheels of justice grind exceedingly slow, but exceedingly fine.”

Let’s look at the situation from another perspective, one that has to do with things like discerning right from wrong and feeling shame for one’s bad actions.

Does anyone think that Trump was telling the truth when he told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “As you know, every single state … we won every state” or “There’s no way I lost Georgia. There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes”?

And by “anyone” this includes those who were brought before the grand jury. They know that was simply not so. But they also know that Trump was able to lie while in office some extraordinarily large number of times (The Washington Post calculated over 30,000, so even if we imagine that this is a “fake” calculation borne of Jeff Bezos owning the Post and we cut it down to 10% of that figure, that’s still 3,000 lies—and he was in office for 1,460 days, so that’s approximately a lie every other day.)

The surprising — and disappointing — thing is that people who claim to uphold laws like those codified in the Ten Commandments (a refresher — Nine: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor” — which simply means: “Don’t lie”), give this a pass and don’t shun the man but continue to work toward his elevation.

A dud firework is sad. This is simply pathetic. These people — including Donald Trump — should be ashamed of themselves.

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What is Right

We want to hear from you about …

•Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley becomes the second Republican, after former President Trump, to declare candidacy for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. Never-Trumper conservatives point to the fact that recent polls show the still-undeclared Ron DeSantis leading Trump by a significant margin, so any additional candidates dilute the Florida governor’s lead. Thus, some pundits have asked whether Haley is really running to be her former boss’ running mate.

•Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has called out Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-FL) proposal last year to push legislation that would result in reviewing Social Security and Medicare funding every five years.

•Coverage and analysis of President Biden’s State of the Union address, plus commentary by Stephen Macaulay, “Say Goodbye, Joe,” in this column and Ken Zino, “Biden’s Strategy Wins,” in the left column.

•Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ Republican response to Biden’s State of the Union address in this column, and Rep. Delia Ramirez’s (D-IL) “progressive” response on behalf of the Working Families Party, in the left column.

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What do you think? Go to the Comments section in this column, or the one in the left column if that’s how you lean, or email editors@thehustings.news and type “for the right column” or “for the left column” in the subject line.

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