I mean, we knew contemporaneous with his inaction that he was literally happy that his street warriors were doing his thing. It never was unclear. Take his claim to Kevin McCarthy that he thought the marauders were antifa for one cool minute, before leaning into the phone to say that the people who were rioting care more about the election than McCarthy did. Antifa would not have cared. Trump knew full well who those folks were.here's raw footage of Trump recording his January 7 video message, getting mad and lashing out, and not wanting to say "the election is over" pic.twitter.com/jIJ2hbO901
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 22, 2022
And that was what was behind his phoning Senators that day, despite what the White House logs have to say about anything. When better to make one's case about what to do, than when one has a gun at someone's head? When Trump told his rioters that he loved them and they should go in peace, did he think they were antifa? No. he knew they were his people. He knew. He called them there, he wanted to lead them to the Capitol. He approved of what they did.
But the revealing thing is the out-takes of Trump just unable to say the election is over, because we know this minute he was still harassing state officials as of last week. That's a thing that should not be considered sane. I rankled a bit at the testimony of people who were describing Trump's absolutely deliberate Tweets regarding Mike Pence on 1/6 as "not helpful" and other lukewarm things. How about--murderous? Trump was putting crosshairs on Mike Pence.
He wanted his VP killed. I'm sorry, but there are only so many ways to interpret what he wanted there. And what he wanted was batshit crazy--to just have someone declare him the winner even though he lost. He was still pretending he won in a landslide when he...just absolutely did not. There is and has never been proof of voter fraud. Although I note with no small amount of glee that the 1/6 Committe has subpoenaed Phil Waldron to fork over documentation of some of his stupid, spaghetti at the wall claims.
So hell yeah, election deniers--you are getting an investigation into your claims after all. What's good?
Anyway, the takeaway should be that GOP leadership should have publicly stepped away from Trump at their nearest opportunity and their supporting him by supporting a coverup is absolute shit. Also, too, he isn't worthy of it because he was a shitty president because leading an insurrection is kind of the exact opposite of doing national security right. He showed his whole ass 1/6, and it was obvious.
But he's not the only one who can't admit he lost, apparently. Much of his party is still defending him as if he still had power to protect them. I'm not sure how long he can protect himself.
