Last night Chris Hayes mused a bit on the earnest Trump staffers who testified to the J6 Committee about the moment they acknowledged Trump was not behaving well.
The two staffers who testified Thursday, for example, both decided to resign on January 6. And I’m glad they did, and I am grateful they chose to testify, but damn. What took them so long? And even now I’m not sure they’ve fully faced the truth about the pile of avarice and ignorance that Trump really is, and how much damage he did to the nation.
It may be significant that today, the editorial boards of both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post — both Murdoch media — are calling Trump’s failure to act on January 6 shameful. The WSJ editorial board cannot resist throwing some shade at the committee hearings, of course, but they slammed Trump hard, at long last. “His only focus was to find any means — damn the consequences — to block the peaceful transfer of power,” the Post writes. “There is no other explanation, just as there is no defense, for his refusal to stop the violence.”
Well, yeah. But will that stop the Post from endorsing Trump’s presumed 2024 bid to go back to the White House? Or, if not Trump, some other authoritarian pile of bigotry?
At the New York Times, Michelle Goldberg writes about the myth of the good Trump official. She writes that the parade of Republican witnesses to the committee, all of whom had stood by Trump when he did other underhanded, damaging things, were all fulsomely praised by co-chair Liz Cheney for their integrity and courage. And, of course, that integrity and courage showed up a tad late to the party.
It is a sign of the committee Democrats’ love of country that they have allowed the hearings to proceed this way. They are crafting a story about Jan. 6 as a battle between Republican heroism and Republican villainy. It seems intended to create a permission structure for Trump supporters to move on without having to disavow everything they loved about his presidency, or to admit that Jan. 6 was the logical culmination of his sadistic politics.
If you believe, as I do, that Trump’s sociopathy makes him a unique threat to this country’s future, it makes sense to try to lure Republicans away from him rather than damn them for their complicity. There is a difference, however, between a smart narrative and an accurate one. In truth, you can’t cleave Trump and his most shameless antidemocratic enablers off from the rest of the Republican Party, because the party has been remade in his image. Plenty of ex-Trump officials have come off well in the hearings, including the former deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger, the former acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and, in video testimony, the former White House counsel Pat Cipollone. That shouldn’t erase the ignominy of having served Trump in the first place.
Consider Rusty Bowers, the Arizona speaker of the state house whose testimony in the fourth hearing underscored the Trump campaign’s lack of evidence for its election fraud claims. Even after his clear and forthright testimony that was devastating to Trump, he declared he would still vote for Trump in 2024. Say what? Since then, he has had some second thoughts. I don’t see how any rational person could know what Bowers knows and still even fleetingly entertain the idea of voting for Trump again. I have little forgiveness for anyone who voted for him the first time, never mind twice.
And it’s not just Trump. Now that Trump has paved the road to fascism, there are plenty of other politicians eager to take that road. Ron DeSantis, for example, is currently more popular among the base than Trump himself. He’s Trump without the baggage, they are saying. At Vox, Zack Beauchamp writes that DeSantis isn’t patterning himself after Trump but after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Even worse. And at New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait wrote that Ron DeSantis Would Kill Democracy Slowly and Methodically.
So, yeah, just “moving on” from Trump isn’t good enough. Republicans need to step back from the brink of right-wing authoritarianism, period. And they are no where close to doing that.
Jonathan Swan at Axios has been writing about a Schedule F executive order that was launched 13 days before the 2020 election. Basically, this was a plan to fire key career career civil service employees whose work impacts policies and replace them with Trump loyalists. Do read this; it’s terrifying. See also “Trump’s Revenge,” also by Swan. This plan would have gone into full effect in Trump’s second term, which he mercifully never got. But another authoritarian right-wing administration could revive it.
At this point, it’s possible the powers with the money, like the Murdochs, might have decided Trump is done and they are ready to move on to another tool. Hence, the editorials in the Wall Street Journal and New York Post.
In other news — there are reports this afternoon that the missing Secret Service texts have been found.
Today’s knee slapper — from this Kansas City Star editorial about Josh Hawley and what a waste he is, I learned that he has a new book coming out next year from Regnery Press. The title? Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs.
Heh.
