Scroll down for commentary by Jim McCraw and Ken Zino on the season finale of the United States Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol hearings from last Thursday.
Read Twitter comments from the left between McCraw’s column, “Dereliction Everywhere,” and Zino’s column, “Dining on Dereliction of Duty.” Full coverage of the first seven hearings may be found on subsequent pages.
COMMENT: editors@thehustings.news.
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(FRI 7/29/22)
CHIPS Act passes … The Senate has passed the $52 billion CHIPS Act to boost domestic computer chip production, NPR says. Despite an effort by Senate Republican leadership to “punish” Democrats over the surprise Manchin-Schumer agreement on the Inflation Reduction Act, the computer chips bill passed 74-26.
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Stewart slams GOP for blocking vets bill… The Sgt. 1st Class Heath Robinson Honoring Our PACT Act that would compensate veterans exposed to burn pits did not fare quite so well. Comedian and former Daily Show host Jon Stewart slammed Republican senators who blocked its passage Thursday, according to The Hill. “Their constituents are dying,” he said of the 42 Republican senators who blocked the bill.
Among the Republicans denying cloture, Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) voted claimed the PACT Act would set up $400 billion in discretionary spending, The Hill reports. Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) shot back, saying Toomey had a problem with spending money on veterans.
“If you have the guts to send someone to war, then you better have the guts to take care of them when they come home,” Tester said.
Stewart had more choice words in his press conference outside the Capitol Thursday. Watch them here: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/07/28/politics/pact-act-burn-pits-jon-stewart/index.html
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Three-hour call … Chinese President Xi Jingping warned U.S. President Joe Biden against meddling in China’s relationship to Taiwan, the Associated Press reports. There was no indication from the unusually long, three-hour call that Xi and Biden made any progress on trade, technology or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) tentative plans to visit democratic Taiwan, which has been in a decades-long struggle to maintain autonomy from mainland China.
Xi also warned Biden against splitting the world’s two largest economies, AP says. Business executives and economists have warned that splitting the U.S. and Chinese economies would slow investment and raise costs.
Compare and contrast: Conversely, the $52-billion CHIP Act just passed by the Senate seeks to mitigate Chinese and Taiwanese chip production dominance, an issue that came to a head when the COVID-19 pandemic choked supply chains around the globe.
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Democrats propose police funding… The Congressional Black Caucus hopes to advance a pair of police funding bills that could counter Democrats’ image of being soft on crime going into the November midterm campaigns. CBC Chair Joyce Beatty (D-OH) reached preliminary agreement with Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) Thursday, Punchbowl Newsreports. The bills also would also provide for how police departments handle accusations of officer misconduct or improper behavior, necessary to get the Congressional Progressive Caucus to sign off as well.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) wants the House to take up the bills before leaving for August recess next Friday, and Democrats are hoping for a floor vote on the police funding bills, as well as an assault weapon ban, Punchbowl News says.
--Todd Lassa
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(THU 7/28/22)
GDP drops 0.9% … Real gross domestic product declined by 0.9% for the second quarter of 2022, compared with a 1.6% decrease in the first quarter, the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis reports Thursday. The BEA’s report cited an upturn in exports and a smaller decrease in federal government spending for the smaller decrease in Q2 versus Q1.
The politics: Republicans will be quick to describe two consecutive quarters of GDP decline as proof of a recession, while Democrats and the White House will say it is most definitely not a recession. Wednesday as the Federal Reserve announced another 0.75% interest rate hike, Chairman Jerome Powell said we’re not in a recession and that GDP rates are often revised later. Low unemployment versus high inflation seems to back the no-recession side though clearly we’re in an economic pickle that can’t easily be solved.
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Manchin is back on … Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has snatched the Biden agenda from the GOP’s jaws by agreeing with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on a climate and tax provisions bill. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 replaces the Build Back Better program that Manchin shot down last month, with $369.8 billion for clean energy and climate change programs and expanded health insurance subsidies for three years instead of two, according to Roll Call. Funding would come by closing tax loopholes on wealthy individuals and corporations.
The deal was announced Wednesday after the Senate passed the $54 billion “Chips Plus” package to promote U.S. computer chip production.
Timing: Schumer plans to get the Inflation Reduction Act through the Senate next week, ahead of Congress’ August recess. The bill is part of the Senate’s budget reconciliation, so it requires only 51 votes to pass. A spokesperson for Sen. Krysten Sinema (D-AZ) told Roll Call she will have no comment until she reads details of the bill.
On the House: Progressive Democrats will express some disappointment by the much pared-down bill, compared with Build Back Better. But the Manchin-Schumer deal represents a last-minute Democratic victory coming just in time for November midterm campaigns.
Read the bill here: https://www.democrats.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/inflation_reduction_act_of_2022.pdf
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No thanks, Mike, I’m good … One imagines that might be the response House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) gave Mike Pompeo, when ex-President Trump’s secretary of state tweeted; “Nancy, I’ll go with you. I’m banned in China, but not in freedom-loving Taiwan. See you there!” This was in response to Pelosi’s plan to visit Taiwan as tension has been growing that China is looking at taking back the breakaway region that split away after the 1949 Chinese Communist Party revolution, The Guardian reports.
Both China and the U.S. military have warned against the as-yet unscheduled Pelosi trip.
--Todd Lassa
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(WED 7/27/22)
Interest rates rise another 0.75% … The Federal Reserve has raised its benchmark interest rate by 0.75 points in its effort to slow inflation, which reached a stinging 9.1% in June. But the U.S. is not in a recession, Chairman Jerome Powell told reporters after Wednesday’s meeting of the Fed’s board, The Wall Street Journal reports. Wednesday’s hike marks the second consecutive three-quarter-percent increase for its benchmark rate.
Powell said that “2.7 million people hired in the first half of the year, it doesn’t make sense the economy would be in a recession.” He said he hadn’t seen the second-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) report due for release Thursday morning, but warned it would not be the final word on Q2 growth.
“Generally, the GDP numbers do have a tendency to be revised pretty significantly. You tend to take first GDP reports with a grain of salt.”
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SCOTUS retirement plan … Seven House Democrats have introduced a bill that would require Supreme Court justices to retire after 18 years on the court, with a bench of justices-in-waiting to be nominated every two years. The Tenure Establishment and Retirement Modernization Act would authorize a president to nominate a SCOTUS justice in the first and third years of his or her administration The Hill reports.
Whenever SCOTUS drops below nine justices, due to a vacancy, disability or disqualification, the justice who most recently achieved senior status on this “back” bench of pre-nominated justices would become the ninth SCOTUS justice.
Sponsors: Rep. Hank Johnson introduced the bill, with fellow Democrats Jerry Nadler (New York), David Cicilline (Rhode Island), Sheila Jackson Lee (Texas), Steve Cohen (Tennessee), Karen Bass (California) and Ro Khanna (California).
Forced retirement: Clarence Thomas will have served 21 years when SCOTUS begins its October term.
The bubble: Chief Justice John Roberts is going on 17 years, and Justice Samuel Alito has 16 years on the court. Justice Sonia Sotomayor has 13 years in, and Justice Elana Kagan has 12 years on the court.
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Justice Department breakthrough … Federal prosecutors have been questioning witnesses directly about ex-President Trump’s responsibility in trying to flip Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory in his favor, The New York Times reports, citing a source familiar with the testimony. Well duh? The report notes the Justice Department under Attorney Gen. Merrick Garland has been quiet about whether it has been pursuing the connection between Donald J. Trump and the electors’ plot (which Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis appears to have under control) and/or the January 6 Capitol attack.
--T.L.
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(PM TUE 7/26/22)
Step aside, I.G. … from your investigation into “erased” Secret Service texts from January 5 and 6, 2021, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee requested in a letter to Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari (per The Hill). The House Select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol Insurrection, which Thompson also chairs, had requested the Secret Service texts but were told they were lost in a phone equipment replacement program.
Upshot: Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), said last week he “smelled a rat” on the alleged erasures. There has been some discussion among the punditocracy that former President Trump had remade the Secret Service in his image.
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It’s happening again … Speaking of Number 45, Donald J. Trump told the America First Institute in his first appearance in Washington since he left the White House that a Red Wave in the November midterms is about “rescuing” the country.
“I’m here before you to begin to talk about what we must do to achieve that future when we win a triumphant victory in 2022 and when a Republican president takes back the White House in 2024, which I strongly believe will happen” (per The Hill).
In a gimme to historians and pundits who have been warning that January 6 was “dress rehearsal” for a full-on 2024 coup, Trump repeated, again, his claim that he won a second time; “That’s going to be a story for a long time, what a disgrace it was, but we may just have to do it again. We have to straighten out our country.”
Among his proposals: Impose the death penalty on drug dealers, relocate scores of homeless Americans and block transgender athletes from competing in women’s athletics, according to The Hill.
Among his audience: House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Trump senior counselor Kellyanne Conway.
Trump’s timing: Some Republican leaders have been urging Trump to wait until after the midterms to officially announce. On the one hand, he can simply keep hinting strongly and obviously for another three months. On the other hand, it would be interesting to see if his support falls assuming Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, New York Post and The Wall Street Journal do actually move on to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and perhaps even ex-Veep Mike Pence.
•••
Chips fall toward Biden … The current White House appears to be well on its way to a much-needed victory with impending Senate passage of the $54 billion “Chips Plus” competitiveness package. The Senate passed cloture on the bill Tuesday, 64-32, Roll Call reports. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) plans a floor vote Wednesday after voting on a budget point of order raised by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
Final Senate vote: Is11:30 a.m. Wednesday. The bill could get to President Biden’s desk before Congress’ late-summer recess starts August 1.
What’s in the bill: Five-year grants for semiconductor manufacturing and research, 5G WiFi deployment, a 25% tax credit for investment in semiconductor manufacturing through 2026, and funding authorization for the National Science Foundation.
T.L.
(TUE 7/26/22)
Making something of Biden’s agenda … Congress is rushing toward its August 1 summer break with two weeks for Democrats to pass same-sex marriage protections, the first major prescription drug legislation in more than 20 years, and funding for U.S. chip manufacturing, The Washington Post notes. The outlook …
Same-sex marriage: If Democrats cannot find 10 Republicans necessary to avoid a Senate filibuster, the bill protecting same-sex marriage rights becomes a major issue in the November midterms.
Medicare-negotiated drug prices: Very popular legislation that WaPo expects to easily pass (even as the prescription drug industry bombards Washington with lobbying and advertising in opposition).
Support for domestic semi-conductor production: This legislation has strong bi-partisan support, with $52 billion to boost U.S. development and production, while undercutting China’s dominance. A much-needed likely victory for the Biden White House.
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Marc Short appeared before the U.S. Justice Department’s grand jury investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection, the chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence told ABC News Monday.
“I was subpoenaed and I complied with that subpoena,” Short told Linsey Davis, making him the highest ranking Trump White House official to testify. Short declined to elaborate on the testimony, though he did comment on the House Select committee’s hearings.
“If the mob had gotten closer to the vice president I think there would have been a massacre in the Capitol that day.” He seemed to suggest the Secret Service protecting Pence would have prevailed; “I’m not so sure the Secret Services’ lives were the lives in danger… .”
Lock up the Electoral College: Donald J. Trump makes his first appearance today in Washington, D.C., since he left office January 20, 2021, The Guardian reports. He will give a keynote address before the America First Policy Institute, a thinktank formed by some of his former policy advisors. Trump is expected to speak about Republicans’ agenda on how to combat inflation and improve the U.S. immigration system, but there’s no chance he won’t raise his Big Lie regarding the outcome of the 2020 election.
--Todd Lassa
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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news
Scroll down for tweets on our recent Twitter poll on 1/6 panel Vice Chair Liz Cheney’s comments that former President Trump should not be allowed to hold any position of authority again. Scroll beyond these comments for Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay’s commentary on the eighth 1/6 hearing, “It’s Really Quite Evident.”
Full coverage of the first seven hearings may be found on subsequent pages. COMMENT: editors@thehustings.news.
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By Jim McCraw
The committee investigating the January 6th riot at the Capitol has now presented an amazing mountain of evidence, direct testimony, live witnesses, tweets, phone calls, emails, messages and comments from a small army of witnesses, almost all of whom are not only registered Republicans but also were members of government at some level.
The latest hearing, broadcast in prime time and carried by at least four networks, concentrated this time on the possible dereliction of duty by a sitting president of the United States in that he started a riot and refused to stop it even after blood was shed in the Capitol and the vice president’s life was threatened. Even after members of his own family implored him to make it stop.
Instead, the former president chose to sit on his prodigious ass in front of a TV tuned to Fox News for three hours, sending out more inflammatory tweets through the afternoon.
The former president has known since the morning after the 2020 election that he lost. He lost by a lot in the popular vote, and he lost by a lot in the Electoral College.
After 60 allegations of voter fraud were shut down by judges all over the country because there was zero proof, the Big Lie just got louder and wider and Stop The Steal was born.
For two months, aided and abetted by Republican officeholders and politicians from coast-to-coast, the Big Lie prospered while the democratically elected President-elect was trying to build his team while being attacked daily from the right-side media for having stolen the election from their boy.
There was no proof. The guy who lost never, ever offered any proof of fraud while The Lie Machine invented stories and videos about voting machines controlled from space, truckloads of ballots being removed, and secrets being passed in voting places, all of which was nonsense. The Attorney General of the United States, a devout Republican, said so.
The guy who lost stirred up so much anger, so much frustration, so much hostility that thousands of his deluded followers went to D.C. to show support. All the rest is on video for everyone to see.
The former president has committed crimes, including dereliction of duty. But there was dereliction of duty all over D.C. the night before, the day of, and the day after by so many, many more.
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From Our Twitter Poll
So there are a lot of anti-Americans out there. BFD. The leader of the cult should not be in the position of authority. He failed spectacularly when he was.
--GG
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He never should have been in the first place.
--Virginia Lynne Stevenson
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How can there possibly be 27% of Americans who have seen what we have seen think he could serve in authority anywhere?
--Elizabeth Beans
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Democracy was used to come to the conclusion that Trump should not be trusted with any authority position.
--Tokyoo
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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news
By Todd Lassa
Last Thursday’s prime time House Select committee hearing on the January 6 Capitol insurrection finally was too much for Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. In case you missed it, Friday evening The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board ran an opinion piece entitled “The President Who Stood Still on Jan. 6.”
“Shortly after Mr. Trump urged protesters to march on the Capitol, he was told violence was breaking out," the WSJ noted. "At about 1:30 p.m. he went to the dining room, where he stayed until 4 p.m. There is no official record of what he did, and the photographer was told no pictures. …
“All of MAGA world was texting Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that Mr. Trump needed to call off his supporters. …” (Including Murdoch's own Fox News pundits Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham.)
On NPR’s Weekend Edition media correspondent David Folkenflik suggested the editorial would give the WSJ’s traditional readership cover to move back to more traditional anti-regulatory conservatism. Murdoch’s flip on Trump will affect coverage on Fox News as well, where Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will get more positive coverage, though its prime-time pundit “personalities,” including Ingraham, Hannity and Tucker Carlson, may stick with Trump.
There is no sign extreme-right media outlets as One America News will back off support of Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 presidential election results. But Murdoch’s flip includes his working-class daily newspaper, the New York Post, which last Friday ran an “opinion/editorial” entitled, “Trump’s silence on Jan. 6 is damning.”
The upshot is Murdoch’s media outlets give the majority of Republicans – who have consistently polled that a majority of them believe Trump beat Joe Biden in 2020 – cover to finally move on. Traditional Republicans have been trying to do this since at least Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s February 13, 2021 speech blaming the former president for the Capitol attack, after voting against convicting him for it. The 1/6 committee replayed part of McConnell’s speech last Thursday night.
Since then, pundits have kept their licked fingers poked into the political winds to measure Trump’s ups and downs, and each time he looked to be out, he bounced back on the strength of his minority, hardcore base. If the extreme-MAGA outlets like OAN refuse to budge it would be reasonable to expect somewhere less than 30% of voters (his lowest approval rating was 29% when he left office, according to Breitbart, quoting a Pew Research poll at the time) will continue to back the Big Lie. But the 1/6 hearings may have proved too provocative and too water-tight since they began in June, even if most Republicans claim to be ignoring them. Rep. Liz Cheney’s (R-WY) co-leadership of the committee, and her sober warnings of the Big Lie’s threat to our democracy appears to have sunk in.
Perhaps if the 1/6 panel holds more hearings beginning in September, they finally will be covered live on Fox News?
(MON 7/25/22)
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Reactions to the 1/6 Hearings Season Finale (SUN-MON 7/24-25/22)
By Todd Lassa
We are headed for a civil war, said 50.1% of respondents to a poll released before Thursday’s eighth hearing of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. To be precise, this slight majority of 8,620 respondents “at least somewhat agree” a civil war will happen soon, The Hill reported Saturday, after that season finale.
UC-Davis researchers took the poll May 13 to June 2, ending a full week before the premier of the 1/6 hearings, and found that 47.8% “strongly disagree” a civil war is in our near-future. As with most such surveys, the poll breaks “agree” and “disagree” down, with 14% “strongly” or “very strongly” agreeing such a war is imminent, and 36% somewhat disagreeing. The good news, if it can be called such, is that two-thirds said a civil war would be a serious threat to democracy, and 90% say it’s “very” or “extremely” important for the U.S. to remain a democracy.
Perhaps the most startling warning about the future of our democracy comes from this: 40% said having a “strong leader” is more important for the United States than democracy. Two-fifths of respondents are OK with authoritarianism. Cue the old warnings that the January 6 insurrection was a “dress rehearsal” for the 2024 presidential election.
On Friday, The Hustings launched a Twitter poll [@NewsHustings] asking whether you agree, or disagree with Rep. Liz Cheney’s (R-WY) statement from Thursday’s hearing that Donald J. Trump “should never be trusted with any position of authority ever again.” No “strongly agree” or “somewhat disagree” gray areas here – just “yes” or “no.”
To be clear, this is not a scientific poll like the one conducted by UC-Davis, but a simple reader poll asking anyone with enough interest in the subject to reply.
At the conclusion of the poll Saturday, of 810 respondents 76.4% agree with Cheney that Trump should never be allowed near a position of authority, which means that 23.6% said he should.
Currently in the left column you’ll find an opinion piece by another of our contributing pundits, Jim McCraw, on 1/6 Hearing VIII, followed by tweeted comments on our Twitter poll. Comments in opposition to Cheney’s statement are in the right column.
Scroll down one file to find our original coverage and analysis of last Thursday’s prime time hearing in the center column with Ken Zino’s commentary in the left column and Stephen Macaulay’s (our never-Trumper conservative-leaning pundit-at-large) in the right column.
Submit your opinions in any of the comment boxes on this page, or email editors@thehustings.news.
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In a Twitter poll (unscientific) The Hustings conducted last weekend (@NewsHustings), 76.4% agree with Rep. Liz Cheney’s statement that Donald J. Trump “should never be trusted with any position of authority again,” while 23.6% disagree. There were 810 respondents to the poll.
Some comments from those who disagree are below. In the left column, scroll past contributing pundit Jim McCraw’s commentary to read comments from those who agree with Cheney…
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I don’t understand how anyone could say ‘yes.’ Do they not understand democracy?
--Carolyn
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Liz Cheney should never be trusted with any position of authority ever again. There. Fixed it.
--Dos Equis Virus
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Neither should @LizCheney! We may get our wish!
--American Patriot
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Liz Cheney is finished and the J6 committee members need to be investigated after the Red Wave.
--Rob Jeffcoat
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What a joke.
--wrayrae
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These are the same people who said he colluded with Russia and they were just covering up for Hillary, Obama and the DNC.
--Dambmad
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You lost me at ‘Liz Cheney says.”
--Sarah the Pittbull Dog (Jeff)
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Perfect time to ask this since thousands are attending the Trump Rally and are there supporting him and not answering fake news fake polls.
--Angie
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People love the establishment.
--Ryan
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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news
By Ken Zino
Once again the United States Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol advanced its case that Donald Trump knowingly sent an armed and dangerous mob -- 800 charged so far and half have pled guilty -- to the U.S. Capitol in furtherance of his Big Lie that the election was stolen. This has been abundantly refuted by his Attorney General, and White House counsel, among many other senior members of his cabinet and White House and reelection staffs.
There is a perverse irony in the strategy used by Trump and other Republicans and right-wing media outlets to personally attack the credibility of the increasing numbers of former Republican Trump-believers who continue to testify that the January 6 attack on the Capitol was the last and most violent act in his desire to retain power at all costs. These attacks prompt more and more Republican insiders to come forward to defend and assert that previous witnesses were telling the truth.
In last night’s testimony, Trump White House insiders testified they resigned the evening of January 6 because they would not defend the indefensible. More are on the way; the Select Committee will re-convene in September.
Republican vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming said last night “But in the course of these hearings, we have received new evidence; and new witnesses have bravely stepped forward. Efforts to litigate and overcome immunity and executive privilege claims have been successful, and those continue. Doors have opened, new subpoenas have been issued, and the dam has begun to break. And now, even as we conduct our eighth hearing, we have considerably more to do. We have far more evidence to share with the American people, and more to gather.”
Last night we learned that for 187 minutes on January 6, Trump watching Fox News in the dining room of the West Wing refused multiple requests by his aides and allies to intervene and call off the mob he unleashed. Neither the violent words of rioters on Fox News that he was watching, nor the pleas of capital police and Secret Service members who were in the midst of the ongoing riot moved Trump to take any action. Trump even ignored the pleas of his own family, including Ivanka and Don Jr., to send people home.
Why not? Simply put the mob he created was doing exactly what he wanted –- disrupting the count of the Electoral College votes of the election he lost.
“Even though he was the only person in the world who could call off the mob he sent to the Capitol, he could not be moved to rise from his dining room table and walk the few steps down the White House hallway into the press briefing room,” said Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS), via video feed.
“Where cameras were anxiously and desperately waiting to carry his message to the armed and violent mob savagely beating and killing law enforcement officers, revenging the Capitol, and hunting down the Vice President and various members of Congress. He could not be moved,” Thompson said.
Committee member Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA), who served 20 years as an officer in the United States Navy, provided the civic lesson:
“Article II of our Constitution requires that the president swear a very specific oath every four years. Every president swears or affirms to ‘faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States’ and, to the best of their ability, ‘preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.’
“The President also assumes the constitutional duty to ‘take care’ that our nation’s laws be ‘faithfully executed,’ and is the ‘commander in chief’ of our military. Our hearings have shown the many ways in which President Trump tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power in the days leading up to January. “With each step of his plan, he betrayed his oath of office and was derelict in his duty,” Luria said.
“I thought that January 6, 2021, was one of the darkest days in our nation’s history,” said former deputy White House press secretary Sarah Matthews last night. “President Trump was treating it as a celebratory occasion. So it just further cemented my decision to resign.” She did that night.
Matthew Pottinger, former deputy national security advisor also said in live testimony he immediately decided to resign when he saw Trump’s tweet denouncing Mike Pence’s refusal to go along with his plan to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.
Closing thought by Liz Cheney: “The defeated president turned his supporters’ ‘love of country’ into a weapon.”
Trump lied and continues to lie. People died. Let’s not let Trump kill our democracy. He needs to be held accountable for dereliction of duty.
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By Todd Lassa
If you think you’ve heard everything from the eighth hearing of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6thAttack on the United States Capitol before, it’s because you watched it in horror that day, and maybe watched most, or all seven, previous hearings.
Thursday night, the panel filled in Donald J. Trump’s 187 minutes of public “absence” that day with loyal Republican White House aides testifying he ignored their pleas to call off the mob as he tried to disrupt the ceremonial Electoral College count.
D.C. Metro Police Sgt. Mark Robinson testified on video that Trump wanted to return to the Capitol after Secret Service drove him back to the White House and put the motorcade on standby for 45 minutes. Trump knew within 15 minutes of returning to the White House that the Capitol had been breached, he said.
Trump then spent the next two-and-a-half hours watching Fox News from the White House dining room. From 11:06 a.m. to 6:45 p.m., the committee said, no calls to the president were entered into the White House logs.
But the president’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, called Trump for about four minutes beginning at 1:39 p.m., Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA), of the panel said, and at 1:49 p.m. the D.C. police called the attack a riot. Trump responded by tweeting a video of his speech at the Ellipse from that morning.
In his video testimony, Trump administration counsel Pat Cipollone testified that he and everyone else in the White House except the president wanted the president to call off the riot from the moment its intensity was apparent on TV.
Former Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Matthews, who testified live with former Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Pottinger (both pictured above) said Thursday she supported a move to get Trump to record a video from the press briefing room, less than a 60-second walk from the dining room, telling his followers to leave the Capitol.
Trump did not budge, and instead took an eight-minute call from Giuliani at 2:03 p.m. At 2:13 p.m., the Capitol building was breached and rioters entered. An anonymous White House security official testified on an audio recording that members from the vice president’s security detail, holed up with Mike Pence in his Capitol office, were beginning to fear for their own lives. The security detail were “close to pressing to use lethal weapons, or worse,” and were calling family with goodbyes.
Trump’s 2:24 p.m. tweet said that Mike Pence “did not have the courage to do what should have been done to defend our country and the Constitution,” and that prompted the mob to turn on the vice president and call for his hanging.
Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser who, in his opening remarks, praised Trump’s foreign policy on China trade and the Middle East Abraham Accord “decided to resign after that tweet. … I simply did not want to be associated with the events that were unfolding at the Capitol.”
Matthews, the former deputy press secretary, called it a “bad tweet” that “essentially gave the green light to these people.” Supporters “truly latch on to every word and every tweet” from Trump. The president called one of his minions, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), who had to end the call so he could evacuate himself from the Capitol. The 1/6 committee showed the infamous photo of Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) raising his fist in support of the insurrectionists, then moments later running away from the rioters inside the Capitol.
Trump tweeted at 2:38 p.m. and 3:13 p.m., calling on his supporters to “stay peaceful,” but Trump “already knew the mob was attacking the police,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) said. One rioter’s two-way radio broadcast said that Trump had told them to support the police, but said nothing about the safety of members of Congress.
Fox News personalities joined the White House staff in urging Trump to call off his supporters and to condemn their actions. Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) tweeted a video asking Trump to call it off and President-elect Biden told him to “demand an end to this siege.”
Finally, at 4:17 p.m., Trump tweeted a video from the Rose Garden telling rioters to go home, that they were “special” and he “loved” them. By now, the National Guard and FBI began to deploy on the Capitol.
Trump had rejected a Rose Garden script that asked his supporters to “leave the Capitol in a peaceful way. He instead began the message by repeating “fraudulent election” claims.
“I was shocked by the fact that he chose to begin the video by repeating the lie that the election was stolen,” Matthews said. She found it heinous that she may have to defend Trump’s words. “I knew I was leaving (the White House job) that evening.”
Kinzinger showed Trump’s last tweet of the day, from 6:01 p.m., in which he begins, “These are the things that happen when a sacred landslide victory is so unceremoniously and viciously stripped away … remember the day forever.”
“He showed absolutely no remorse,” Kinzinger said.
Testimony bled into January 7, when both Pottinger and Cipollone officially resigned. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley said White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows described to him that Trump was “very emotional and in a very bad place.”
January 6 panel vice chair Liz Cheney (R-WY), standing in for COVID-stricken chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS), who briefly appeared via video, concluded the hearings saying Trump should not “be even trusted with another position of authority again.”
The committee continues its investigative work in August, when its first report is due, and its next set of hearings are scheduled to begin in September.
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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news
By Stephen Macaulay
Gallup has been tracking the confidence that Americans have — or perhaps I should say “don’t have” — in newspapers since 1973 (the year Roe v. Wade was decided; Nixon was sworn in; the Watergate hearings began; the OPEC oil embargo caused a rise in gas prices) and TV news since 1993 (the year NAFTA was signed; the World Trade Center was bombed; and two former police officers were convicted of violating the civil right of Rodney King).
As of the latest polling, Gallup says 5% have “a great deal” of confidence in newspapers and 4% feel the same way about TV news. The polling organization adds to those figures those who express “quite a lot” of confidence so as to make the numbers not quite as pathetic: 16% for newspapers and 11% for TV news.
While the numbers for those who have “some” confidence are, well, OK, 37% and 35%, respectively, those numbers should be considered in the context of the “very little” numbers: 43% for newspapers and 49% for TV news.
Who knew that the likes of David Muir and Lester Holt were held with such skepticism?
As you may recall, Donald J. Trump, when president, called the media “the enemy of the American people” on more than one occasion. In 2017 the Gallup “great deal/quite a lot” combined numbers for newspapers were at 27%, and TV news at 24%. There has been a fairly consistent decline since. After all, who wants to read or watch things they have no confidence in?
(A digression: There is often criticism expressed by the likes of Trump and his acolytes, minions and enablers that the “mainstream press” is some how fake or otherwise misleading. It used to be that people who were Republicans believed in the “free market,” including the free market of ideas. To be sure whether we are talking about NBC or The Washington Post, these outlets are owned by giant corporations. Consequently, one might think that is in and of itself a restriction on what gets reported or how it gets reported. (Yes, Fox News is owned by a giant corporation, as well.) But the point is, these corporations became giant, in large part, because of their appeal to a large percentage of people the same way that McDonald’s has sold billions of burgers. The mainstream press needs to appeal to the majority of the people because if it doesn’t, then it will likely lose those who are willing to spend time with it, the same way that McDonald’s would lose patrons if it suddenly decided that it would serve only ostrich burgers. Yet because the mainstream press didn’t — and doesn’t — see the world in the same way that Trump sees it, it is somehow bad. Which is bizarre to consider vis-à-vis the claims of his landslide victory: There is an insufficient number of people on either side of the bell-shaped curve in order to have a majority. Therefore the mainstream is the place where most Americans are.)
Where do these Americans who have little confidence get information regarding the findings of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (think about those words: Attack on the United States Capitol)?
Well, it seems that a prime-time broadcast isn’t going to have a heck of a lot of effect nor the reporting by a whole room of Pulitzer Prize winners.
So maybe those people are simply a lost cause. The majority of people who believe what can be considered “accepted reality” (e.g., no, there was no Venezuelan manipulation of voting machines, nor satellites beaming data to Italy) are the ones who need to be addressed. Period.
“Just remember, what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”—Donald J. Trump
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“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”--Article II, Section 1, Clause 8
Yes, the Constitution. The document that codifies the laws that Americans are supposed to uphold because if they don’t, then they are in violation of the rules of the Republic. Most Americans are simply born in the U.S. and consequently don’t swear an oath to uphold the Constitution. But in some cases — including assuming the office of the Presidency — there is, hand on Bible, an affirmation that its defense will be undertaken, a defense of the democracy, something bigger than any one person, something for which legitimate patriots have died for during the years since 1788, the year the Constitution was ratified.
While the Committee members have done a masterful job, once again, dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s of what happened on, and adjacent to, January 6, let’s put that aside.
So far as I know there has been no conspiracy theory that all of the video that has been displayed on the Attack on the United States Capitol is fake.
What we have seen was happening.
So we stipulate this: There was an attack on the United States Capitol by an armed force.
It is similarly clear that the objective of those attackers was to “Stop the Steal.” Under those particular circumstances said stopping was to be accomplished by preventing Congress from undertaking its legal duty to certify the 2020 Presidential election.
“The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted; -- The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President. . . .”--from the 12th Amendment
Which brings us back to that oath.
“. . .the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Armed attackers trying to subvert the Constitution.
The “best” of his ability was to watch TV?
Here’s the thing: it isn’t hard to understand that:
“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
“The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.”—Article III, Section 3
Those who attacked the U.S. Capitol were trying to overthrow the government. They were armed. And we’ve learned they were organized.
Did Donald Trump try to stop them?
Doesn’t “we love you, you’re very special” sound like aid and comfort?
Let’s put that aside.
“[H]e shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”—Article II, Section 3
Did Trump fulfill his Constitutional duty?
It doesn’t take a prime-time broadcast to make people willing to think know what Donald Trump did—and what he didn’t do.
People who are willing to believe his self-serving lies are seemingly beyond redemption.
Forget the fringe. Let’s do what’s right for the majority of Americans who put their hands over their hearts and say “. . .and to the Republic, for which it stands. . .”, those people who obey the law, even if it is a local ordinance about parking.
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Ready for Thursday’s eighth hearing of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol? Read our coverage and analysis of the first seven hearings, with commentary by Stephen Macaulay and Ken Zino by scrolling down this page, and on to Pages 2, 3 and 4.
Leave your own comments on the hearings and/or other political news and issues in the comments sections or email us at editors@thehustings.news.
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The House Select Committee … concentrates tonight on ex-President Trump’s 187 minutes of radio silence during the January 6th attack on the Capitol, with the panel’s chair, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) tuning in virtually because he has COVID-19.
Hearing VIII: Begins 8 p.m. Eastern time Thursday. Read our coverage/analysis and commentary Friday in this space. Add your comments in the boxes in any of these three columns, or email editors@thehustings.news.
Expected to testify live Thursday are Matthew Pottinger, former deputy national security advisor, who resigned the White House on January 6, 2021, and Sarah Matthews, former press aide. The Select Committee has not confirmed these names.
Report due: The 1/6 panel has confirmed it will publish an interim report on the Capitol attack in September.
About those Secret Service texts: The Department of Homeland Security’s watchdog Office of Inspector General learned last February that the Secret Service had killed most of the smartphone texts related to January 6, The Washington Post scoops, citing sources familiar with the situation. The Inspector General’s office also was ready to issue a public report in October 2021 that the Secret Service was stonewalling on requests for records and texts in connection to the Capitol insurrection, WaPoreports.
Can’t happen again?: Bipartisan groups of Senators proposed two bills designed to reform the 1887 Electoral College Act and end any doubt that an incumbent presidential candidate, like Donald J. Trump, could disrupt the Electoral College count (per Roll Call). The Electoral College Reform Act, sponsored by Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) would require at least one-fifth of both the House and Senate to object to a single state’s Electoral College votes, up from the current requirement of a single Congress member, as per the 1887 law. The Collins/Manchin bill also would remove an 1845 law that allows a state legislature to declare a “failed election” and specify that the date of a presidential election could be moved for “extraordinary and catastrophic events.”
Eight more Republicans and five Democrats have joined Collins and Manchin in supporting this potential closing of loopholes that some historians warned of prior to the November 2020 presidential election. A second and complementary bill, supported by five Republicans and seven Democrats, would double the maximum federal penalty to two years in prison for anyone convicted of intimidating or threatening election officials, poll watchers, voters or candidates, and boost penalties for stealing, destroying, concealing or altering election results, to a $10,000 fine and two years in prison, Roll Call reports.
The two bills will advance through two different Senate committees.
•••
Speaking of the above … Donald J. Trump’s attorney and former America’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani has been subpoenaed by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney for District Attorney Fani Willis’ grand jury investigation of the former president’s alleged Electoral College tampering in Georgia, according to Politico. Queue the recording of Trump’s phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger; “I just want 11,780 votes … .”
Speaking of the above, Part II: The government rested Wednesday in its Contempt of Congress case against former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, after calling a congressional staffer and an FBI agent to the stand, The Washington Post reports. Defense countered that Bannon had been speaking with the House Select 1/6 panel as recently as last week, and that the defendant was negotiating, and not refusing, to hand in documents or testify.
--Todd Lassa
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...meanwhile...
(WED 7/20/22)
Georgia AG targets false electors … As Democratic frustration continues to build over U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s lack of action while the House Select Committee investigates the January 6 Capitol insurrection, Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis has deemed 16 Republicans who falsely signed Electoral College certificates in late 2020 to be criminal “targets,” (per Politico). Willis revealed the determination in a court filing to fend off a legal move to disqualify her from leading the grand jury investigating the effort to overturn Georgia’s Electoral College vote for Joe Biden. The filing was by one of the alleged false electors, Burt Jones, who is a candidate for lieutenant governor for the state.
•••
MAGA Republican wins Maryland primary … Term-limited Gov. Mark Hogan is a popular moderate Republican in an otherwise deep-blue state, but his hand-picked successor, Kelly Shulz, is projected to lose the state’s GOP gubernatorial primary Tuesday to Trump-backed state legislator Dan Cox, the AP reports. Cox had criticized Hogan’s “restrictive and protracted” COVID-19 lockdown efforts, and unsuccessfully sought to impeach him over the issue.
With provisional and mail-in ballots yet to be counted, the Democratic race is too close to call, AP says, with Oprah Winfrey-backed celebrity author Wes Moore leading Tom Perez, Labor secretary for the Obama administration who served as Democratic National Committee chairman during the Trump administration.
Upshot: Hogan was an early moderate Republican critic of then-President Trump and is considered a likely candidate for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination.
•••
Latest on those Secret Service texts … The Secret Service claims deleted texts from January 6, 2021, are not recoverable, The Washington Post reports. The National Archives has called on the agency to report back within 30 days about their “potential unauthorized deletion.”
--Todd Lassa
______________________________________
(TUE 7/19/22)
Georgia AG targets false electors … As Democratic frustration continues to build over U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s lack of action while the House Select Committee investigates the January 6 Capitol insurrection, Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis has deemed 16 Republicans who falsely signed Electoral College certificates in late 2020 to be criminal “targets,” (per Politico). Willis revealed the determination in a court filing to fend off a legal move to disqualify her from leading the grand jury investigating the effort to overturn Georgia’s Electoral College vote for Joe Biden. The filing was by one of the alleged false electors, Burt Jones, who is a candidate for lieutenant governor for the state.
•••
MAGA Republican wins Maryland primary … Term-limited Gov. Mark Hogan is a popular moderate Republican in an otherwise deep-blue state, but his hand-picked successor, Kelly Shulz, is projected to lose the state’s GOP gubernatorial primary Tuesday to Trump-backed state legislator Dan Cox, the AP reports. Cox had criticized Hogan’s “restrictive and protracted” COVID-19 lockdown efforts, and unsuccessfully sought to impeach him over the issue.
With provisional and mail-in ballots yet to be counted, the Democratic race is too close to call, AP says, with Oprah Winfrey-backed celebrity author Wes Moore leading Tom Perez, Labor secretary for the Obama administration who served as Democratic National Committee chairman during the Trump administration.
Upshot: Hogan was an early moderate Republican critic of then-President Trump and is considered a likely candidate for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination.
•••
Latest on those Secret Service texts … The Secret Service claims deleted texts from January 6, 2021, are not recoverable, The Washington Post reports. The National Archives has called on the agency to report back within 30 days about their “potential unauthorized deletion.”
--Todd Lassa
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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news
And write this way, to add your civil comments on hearings by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol. Hearing VIII begins 8 p.m. Eastern time Thursday on most news channels and online (or check C-Span, like we do). You can find coverage and analysis plus commentary by Ken Zino and Stephen Macaulay by scrolling down this page, and by going to Pages 2, 3 and 4.
Submit your opinion, civilly, in the comments box in any of these columns, or email editors@thehustings.news.
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Scroll down this page and turn to Pages 2, 3 and 4 to read our complete coverage and analysis on all seven hearings held so far by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol, featuring left-column commentary by Ken Zino and right-column commentary by Stephen Macaulay.
Leave your own comments on the hearings and/or other political news and issues in the comments sections or email us at editors@thehustings.news.
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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news
(Fauci, pictured ... scroll down for story)
PM UPDATE
Texts ‘unrecoverable?’ … The U.S. Secret Service delivered “thousands of pages of documents” but not the requested texts related to the January 6 Capitol insurrection to the House Select committee investigating the attack, The New York Times reports. Secret Service spokesman Anthony Gugliemi said the phone records are probably not recoverable.
•••
House marriage equality bill gets some GOP support … The House of Representatives passed the Respect for Marriage Act to protect LGBTQ+ rights by a 267-157 vote, with 47 Republicans voting with all the Democrats, The Hill reports. The bill is a reaction to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ warning that gay marriage rights are next, after the court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Considering that relatively strong support by House Republicans, the question now is whether at least 10 Republicans help move the bill through the Senate without threat of filibuster – which would deflate Democrats ability to use the issue in the November midterms.
--T.L.
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(MON 7/18/22)
Deleted text messages expected today … The House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection expects to receive deleted January 5 and 6, 2021, text messages today from the U.S. Secret Service, according to committee member Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), a committee member. The committee subpoenaed the texts last Friday after learning the messages had been deleted as part of a device-replacement program.
•••
Fauci retires … Hero of the pandemic maskers, foil of pro-MAGA media Anthony Fauci (above) announced he will “almost certainly” leave his job as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases says The New York Times. Fauci, 81, the top medical advisor to presidents Joe Biden and Donald J. Trump says he has a time frame in mind for when to step down and it almost certainly will be prior to the end of Biden’s current term in January 2025.
•••
White House aides to testify … Matthew Pottinger, ex-President Trump’s deputy national security advisor and Sarah Matthews, a former press aide, will testify during Thursday in the House Select Committee’s eighth, and potentially final televised hearing into the January 6 Capitol attacks, the Associated Press reports, citing an anonymous source. The hearing scheduled for 8 p.m. Eastern time Thursday will investigate Trump’s actions or lack thereof as he sat in the White House and watched his followers beat police officers and breach the Capitol to stop the Electoral College vote procedings.
--Todd Lassa
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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news
Did the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, deserve the criticism and acrimony from Fox News and other right-wing media over his pushback on former President Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic? Leave your comments on this or any other recent issues – including our coverage, analysis and commentary by Stephen Macaulay and Ken Zino on the January 6 hearings -- in the comments section, or email editors@thehustings.news.
Find coverage of and commentary on last Tuesday’s seventh hearing by scrolling down this page. Hearings V and VI are on page 2. Hearings III and IV are on page 3, and coverage of and commentary on the first two hearings are on page 4.
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