December 21, 2021
Summarizing U.S. political news these days sometimes feels like following two entirely different threads. On the one hand, there is the story about what’s happening in the White House and among the Democrats in Congress, who are trying to pass laws that are really quite popular—like the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Build Back Better bill—and to shore up the democratic alliances that have been central to our place in the world since World War II.
On the other hand is the story of the January 6 insurrection and the ongoing attempt of the Trump Republicans to undermine our government and seize power.
Yesterday, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol asked Representative Scott Perry (R-PA) to appear before it voluntarily to explain his role in the attempt to install Department of Justice attorney Jeffrey Clark as attorney general. The committee was deferential, recognizing the sensitivity of asking a fellow representative to appear before it. The committee also asked Perry to produce documents.
The plan to replace acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen—who took office when Attorney General William Barr resigned on December 23—was an attempt to use the Justice Department to overthrow the election. Clark wanted the department to tell the public the election was fraudulent, thus giving credence to Trump’s lie that the election was stolen.
Committee chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) told Perry that “multiple witnesses,” including Rosen and his deputy attorney general, said Perry had played “an important role.” Thompson also said that the committee knows that Perry texted and otherwise communicated with Trump’s White House chief of staff Mark Meadows about installing Clark, including communications on the encrypted Signal app.
Perry also asked the Justice Department to look into “things going on in Pennsylvania” in support of Trump’s attempt to overturn the election results there.
Today, Perry tweeted that he would not cooperate, calling the committee “illegitimate” and an attempt of “the radical Left” to distract from its failures. Trump made a similar argument in his attempt to block the subpoena requiring the National Archives and Records Administration to hand over the White House records for a period around January 6. When the U.S. District Court for D.C. rejected Trump’s request on December 9, it concluded the committee is legitimate: “[T]here would seem to be few, if any, more imperative interests squarely within Congress’s wheelhouse than ensuring the safe and uninterrupted conduct of its constitutionally assigned business.”
The committee says it will use “other tools” to get the information it seeks from the Pennsylvania congress member.
Perry is not the only one trying to avoid testifying. The committee has also subpoenaed Clark, who says he will invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. John Eastman, a lawyer who wrote a memo outlining how Vice President Mike Pence could overturn the election, has also taken refuge behind the Fifth Amendment, as has political operative Roger Stone. So, too, has conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who participated in the January 6 rally.
Trump ally Stephen Bannon ignored the committee’s subpoena; Congress voted to hold him in contempt of Congress, and a grand jury indicted him. Congress voted to hold Meadows in contempt as well when he declined to testify; his case is now in front of prosecutors.
This morning, former national security advisor Michael Flynn filed a request for a restraining order in Tampa, Florida, against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and a temporary injunction against the committee’s subpoena, claiming it violates his right to free speech. In November, the committee issued a subpoena to Flynn along with other key figures in the attempt to overturn the election. Flynn, it said, attended a meeting in the Oval Office on December 18 that reports at the time said descended into a shouting match as participants discussed seizing voting machines and Flynn advocated that Trump declare martial law.
It appears that the circle closest to Trump is not going to try to deny involvement in the attempt to overturn the election, but rather is challenging Congress’s authority to ask about their actions. This is an extraordinary position to take: they are declaring that they are not bound by our laws (although they are apparently eager to try to use them to reduce their exposure).
At the same time, there is a rush among Trump supporters in Congress to avoid association with the January 6 insurrection. Representatives Perry, Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Mo Brooks (R-AL), Jim Jordan (R-OH), Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), and Lauren Boebert (R-CO) all are denying their involvement.
But there is a noticeable uptick in the culture warrior language and violent rhetoric embraced by those associated with the pro-Trump right, suggesting the need to rally their supporters around them. Last night, a political conference organized by the right-wing college campus organization Turning Points USA featured Kyle Rittenhouse, the 18-year-old who killed two men and wounded a third in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in summer 2020 when he attended a protest against police brutality; in November he was cleared of all charges. “You’re a hero to millions,” Turning Points USA leader Charlie Kirk told him in front of an audience that gave Rittenhouse a standing ovation. Rittenhouse told the crowd he might sue the media for the way it covered his trial.
Fox News Channel personality Jesse Watters used violent language to urge attendees to ambush infectious disease specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci to silence him. Watters urged them to use a “kill shot,” for example, although he was ostensibly talking about ambushing him with questions.
Representative Boebert said: “I am tired of having Godless people who hate America run this country! You and I are going to take this country back!” Representative Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) told the audience of college students that they should drop out of school. “I think you should home school. I was home schooled all the way through. I am proudly a college dropout. Unless you are becoming a doctor or lawyer or engineer, I highly encourage you to drop out.”
Today Boebert posted a video of lawmakers calling her out for her Islamophobia; the video ended with her winking as a gunshot rings out.
A piece by The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell yesterday reported that Trump “appears deeply unnerved” as the committee’s work brings it closer and closer to him. More than 300 witnesses have talked voluntarily and the committee has more than 30,000 documents to examine. He is complaining about Meadows’s having given the committee documents; he is unhappy that his aides are taking the Fifth rather than simply ignoring the committee’s subpoenas. As his legal challenges falter, he has taken to issuing statements attacking the committee as ‘highly partisan political hacks.”
Meanwhile, the Republican Party is purging those who don’t support Trump. Senators have been more likely to hold the line against the extremism in the House, but five senators from the “governing wing” of the party—Richard C. Shelby (R-AL), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Richard Burr (R-NC), Rob Portman (R-OH), and Patrick J. Toomey (R-PA)—have all announced their retirement. Senator John Thune (R-SD), the number 2 Senate Republican, has indicated he is thinking of retiring (at 60). And Republican-dominated state legislatures are preparing a new wave of voting restrictions before the 2022 midterm elections.
Last night we got the story of the Build Back Better bill, which is stalled in the Senate despite its popularity because Republicans, who represent 40.5 million fewer Americans than the 50 Democrats do, refuse to consider it. Tonight we have the story of the attempts of Trump loyalists to overturn a legitimate election and their refusal to answer to Congress, which represents the American people, to explain what they did. And Republican legislatures intend to cement those loyalists into power.
For all that I don’t have the space to follow both these threads every night, they are really two parts of the same story: who should have a say in our democracy?
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Notes:
Notes:
https://apnews.com/article/kyle-rittenhouse-trial-kenosha-3febaa501c57a6b54e168353fe0b2a26
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/scott-perry-rejects-jan-6-committee-information-request
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/20/capitol-attack-investigation-closes-in-trump
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/21/us/politics/scott-perry-january-6-committee.html
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/scott-perry-rejects-jan-6-committee-information-request
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/12/21/kyle-rittenhouse-standing-sue-media/
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/21/us/politics/john-thune-senate-retirement.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2021/12/21/jesse-watters-fox-fauci-kill-shot/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/20/trump-2022-biden-extremism/
"...the ongoing attempt of the Trump Republicans to undermine our government and seize power."
*Trump* Republicans?
As though there were any other kind?This implies a distinction without effective significance. Not withstanding a few Republicans in Congress for whom the Jan 6 insurrection was a bridge too far and a few pundits, the entire apparatus of the Republican party did everything it could - and much they could not do legitimately, and much they ethically ought not to have done - to put Trump in office, to obstruct any oversight of his activities, to keep him in office past his expiration date, and to deflect and deny responsibility for Jan 6, for the very purpose of undermining our government and seizing power.
In fact, ever since since Ronald Reagan declared government the enemy, Newt Gingrich set out to burn down the House, Trent Lott made a bullwhip his badge of office, Sarah Palin made 'lock and load' a GOP slogan, and the Republican majority on the Supreme Court enshrined the NRA misreading of the Second Amendment and gutted civil rights protections - rhetorical, political and procedural violence to the institutions of government has been Republican business as usual. Physical violence was sure to come.
Undermining government is intrinsic to the Republican 'small government' agenda. The party reveled in anti-tax militant Grover Norquist's statement "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." (Interview on NPR's Morning Edition, May 25, 2001) and did not repudiate his saying "We're sending a message here. It is like when the king would take his opponent's head and spike it on a pole for everyone to see." (from the National Review, quoted in The Republican Noise Machine by David Brock, Crown Publishers 2004, pg. 50)
Yes, it is very much like that. And each subsequent generation of Republican officials is more bludgeon than scalpel - Trump for Reagan, Lott and then McConnell for Dole, McCarthy for Gingrich, Kavanaugh for Scalia. There is a direct line from the rhetorical and procedural violence of GOP officials to its physical expression on the ground.
After the bombing of the Federal building in Oklahoma City by right wing domestic terrorists, Republican officials publicly stepped back from their embrace of armed militias for an eyeblink moment, although not from arming them and although playing footsie with them. By the time armed anti government militant Ammon Bundy seized and occupied a Federal facility, Republican officials openly supported him.
The Republican insurrection on Jan 6 and the sacking of the Capitol has recent right wing precedent and a GOP pedigree. And the GOP's big money paymasters are still hedging their bets that a GOP dystopia of unregulated violence and greed will sustain their unconscionable wealth and their outsized influence. No matter the cost to everyone and everything else.
Republican descriptions such as "radical", "fraudulent", "illegitimate", "highly partisan", "political hacks" aimed against anyone and everyone who questions them are tactics that every authoritarian has exhibited. It's not a surprise that both the tactics and labels are most applicable to those who make and use them. They spend a lot of time in front of their media mirrors preening themselves.
Republican rallying cries like "purging" their ranks, "kill shot", "martial law", as well as applauding those who promote or have used violence, using violent symbols, images and sounds that refer to guns are all tactics to incite violence, intimidate and create fear. It's no surprise that Republicans have been leading the pro gun movement without restrictions or regard for safety or law enforcement to protect the unarmed.
All of these character traits and activities are easily traceable to past and present authoritarian regimes regardless of economic ideology. It remains a pointless distraction to add "Nazi", "fascist", "communist" or any other label to what authoritarians do and the violence they rely on. We are dealing with a clear and present danger to our lives, our democracy and the future of mankind.
We must support our institutions, our leading democracy advocates whether they be Joe Biden, OAC or Liz Cheney and our business leaders who actively support democracy.
We must criticize and comment on all media that present this contest incorrectly. FOX of course promotes the authoritarians. Other media presents both sides as being equally justified. Some like PBS Newshour are insufficiently informed, asking questions that invite inappropriate doubt about our present administration, covid19 measures, legislation, etc. For example, we have had vaccine going to waste while about 30% of Americans refuse to vaccinate due to Republican political posturing and constant conspiracy theories that vaccinations are not safe or don't work. Yet PBS questions the administration if they are doing enough, have they made mistakes, is the vaccine working? And saying that Biden's low approval ratings are a result of "what he and Democrats are not getting done" as if they had control over the numb skulls who thrown wrenches into the works every waking hour.
On BBB, PBS harps on Joe Manchin and Democrats for not passing this, giving all 50 Republicans in the Senate a pass. I don't recall Walter Cronkite being this deferential to the roots of our dilemmas in his time.