Update 1/8/2020 3:53 pm CST: an AP article from about an hour ago reports that Democrats in the House will introduce articles of impeachment on Monday, with a vote to take place as early as Wednesday. It's unclear what the level of Republican support in the Senate will be. Concurrently, Democratic Congressional leadership continues to urge Vice President Pence and the president's cabinet to sideline the president via the 25th Amendment. Personally, I don't think that's feasible. The same AP article reports that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has spoken with the Joint Chiefs of Staff about preventing the president from taking even-more-unthinkable actions during his remaining days in office, with the nuclear codes(!)
My thoughts on the 25th-amendment remedy are: (1) it would be entirely fitting to force Republicans to take primary responsibility for cleaning up the mess their party leader created, with their complicity; but (2) the remedy doesn't seem applicable, because the president is not unable to discharge his presidential duties. He is unwilling, but not unable. (3) It doesn't seem likely that those loyalists in his cabinet who have held on this long (including after yesterday's string of resignations) will now turn on him. (4) With a diminished number of cabinet officers, and with some of them possibly having the word "Acting" in front of their titles (i.e. never confirmed by the Senate), it's unclear that the remedy would have the appearance of legitimacy, even to those who aren't blindly loyal to the president.
Update 1/7/2020 1:15 pm CST: Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) has been one of the very few Republican elected officials willing to speak up against President Trump in the wake of November's election. After yesterday's debacle, he is now calling for an invocation of the 25th amendment. "The president caused this. The president is unfit. And the president is unwell."
https://twitter.com/RepKinzinger/status/1347207878801846276?s=20
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A friend sent me this seven minute Twitter video, consisting of on-the-ground video footage, apparently taken by iTV. Pretty compelling. One warning: it includes footage from a moment when someone was shot inside the Capitol - presumably the woman who died of a gunshot wound.
https://twitter.com/swinshi/status/1347171609086464002?s=20
I wasn't able to watch much live coverage yesterday - by the time I could pull myself away from work, most of the activities had ceased. What news coverage I saw yesterday late afternoon and evening was from a great distance away, outside the Capitol. This video is different - the footage is captured from the midst of the mayhem.
My sense of the mob is that they look just like the men (seems it was nearly all men) whom I would see at, say, a major league baseball game or an NHL hockey game. I don't know whether alcohol was fueling yesterday's events, but this video gives me that "feel".
Yup, just a bunch of happy sports fans after a few beers.
ReplyDeleteThe distance between the two sets of people is not very great. I think they're overlapping sets.
DeleteWow. You and I could not disagree more. Surprise, surprise.
DeleteWhat did you see yesterday? Who were those guys running and shouting through the corridors of the Capitol?
DeleteI think sports mania and what happened yesterday are perhaps both related. I'm not saying at all that they are equivalent. But to a degree sports are a "legit" outlet for an impulse to physical violence, which is apparently still hard-wired into human beings. Of course the ones yesterday gave it free rein, and raised hell and put a brick under it.
DeleteYou cannot conflate the behavior of drunken sports fans who riot and start bonfires for a night after the home team wins a playoff, and insurrectionists who will continue to believe Trump's lies and their sick conspiracy theories long after they've sobered up.
DeleteI don't think most rowdy sports fans are mental cases, but I believe that the insurrectionists and conspiracy believers are.
DeleteYeah, my point exactly. Jim's comfy little comparison of them to rowdy sports fans is just astounding. Possibly emblematic of the inability Republicans have recognizing the toxic elements in their party.
DeleteThe insurrectionists were drunk on self indulgence. Just about every one of them was recording on a cell phone. Can a country survive that has so many morons in it?
Delete"You cannot conflate the behavior of drunken sports fans who riot and start bonfires for a night after the home team wins a playoff, and insurrectionists who will continue to believe Trump's lies and their sick conspiracy theories long after they've sobered up."
DeleteSigh. I'm not conflating their behavior. I'm saying they're some of the same people.
You may want to get out to a few more sporting events, and rub elbows in a few more bars, if you don't believe that some of the young men who buy tickets to a hockey game are capable of the spectacle we witnessed yesterday.
Those were our neighbors, our nephews, our parishioners running amok yesterday. They're not "other". They're some of us.
"Jim's comfy little comparison"
DeleteNothing comfy about it. It should make you, and all of us, exceedingly uncomfortable. If you can't see the possibility of you, or those you love, doing what those idiots did yesterday, then your grasp of human nature disappoints me.
Of course they're "us." I'm pretty sure some of my in-laws were at that rally. And I'm pretty sure my brother thought it was about damn time someone torched Congress; he's always talking about it and how Castro shot JFK. I simply think you trivialize yesterday's behavior with sports-fan analogies, as if these people will be OK once they sober up.
DeleteComparison with BLM might be in order. To satisfy BLM, the police need to stop murdering black people at the drop of a hat. To satisfy the Trumpers, we merely have to hand over our government to an unelected, deranged madman for, I suppose, life.
ReplyDeleteAs for sports fans, the Pittsburgh Steelers recently lost to the Buffalo Bills. PA Lt. Gov. John Fetterman tweeted that this was only because Dominion software was used to power the scoreboard.
Did he really say that? The blood is still pounding in my ears today, so my ability to detect satire or appreciate humor is totally off. I told Raber to hide the matches so I wasn't tempted to burn down the Trump shrine our neighbors have on their lawn that was lit up with floodlights all night last night.
DeleteFetterman is a piece of work. Very funny guy and a quote machine. He has been asking the TX AG to send him the promised $1M in Sheetz coupons since he found an example of voter fraud in PA. Some guy somehow had his dead mother vote for Trump. At 6'8" with tattoos, Fetterman admits he doesn't look like most politicians. He says he doesn't even look like most people.
DeleteI see Fetterman is thinking about a Senate run. And, you're right, he doesn't look like most people!
DeleteOne thing I am still puzzled about, did it seem to anyone else that security wasn't up to par for yesterday's events? I was under the impression that unauthorized people weren't supposed to be on the capitol plaza itself. Yet apparently demonstrators freely came on to it, and police were unable to stop them from surrounding the building and breaking and entering. We saw footage of them smashing windows, and apparently that was easy to do. K commented that he was surprised that the windows didn't have shatter-proof glass. I'll bet the replacement ones will be shatter-resistant.
ReplyDeleteThere are a few accounts of people taking selfies with the guards (I assume before the violence started). If that is true it seems strange.
Inquiries need to be made. It is possible that capitol cops were so busy rounding up staffers and members of Congress and getting them to their hideouts and standing guard there that they were stretched thin in the building itself.
DeleteMy leftist friends are all jabbering about how the cops colluded with the mob and that's why we should defund the police. I think that speculation is really pretty premature.
The exterior glass looked shatter resistant. The mob really had to pound away at the one I saw to get it to break.
My big puzzlement is why, knowing that there would be a mob, and knowing Trump would incite them just before the congressional counting began, there wasn't more police presence.
DeleteCome to think of it the windows we saw getting smashed were interior.
DeleteI did read that there were a number of cops out with Covid or quarantined because they had been exposed.
DeleteI don't know what Mayor Bowser's powers are to lay on extra cops and National Guard troops in the city--which is where they were really needed. There was some of that flimsy fencing around the Capitol, but that was breached really fast. There were not enough cops in a cordon around the Capitol building to prevent the yahoos getting in. One of the clips from the Crypt area--likely near where Congress was holed up--showed about a dozen cops outnumbered by members of the mob. They were smacking people with batons, but they had no riot shields and were not drawing guns. Whether they turned those intruders away or what, I don't know. The raw footage kept coming in on the live coverage, but there were no reporters there to explain what we were seeing a lot of the time.
DeleteWell one wonders how much the DC powers really cared about protecting Congress? Many probably have similar bad feelings about Congress but for different reasons than the protesters.
DeleteAlso there were not that many people at the Trump rally. I am sure DC officials have some sense of how many people were coming into the city for the rally. They certainly were not the tens of thousands that might have triggered a big plan to protect Congress.
And of course the FBI and Secret Service are under Trump's control. If some of them became concerned they might also have had motivation to let Congress find out for itself what the Republicans in it have fostered.
The mayor of DC said that her forces can only be used in the government buildings if called in by the federal police. There is a separation of jurisdiction unique to DC. I still think a lot of the police were sympathetic. This needs to be thoroughly investigated.
DeleteThe rally permit listed an estimated 30,000 participants. That ought to have concerned law enforcement.
DeleteYes, the strange rules about cops in DC and in federal buildings likely hampered response as well as COVID thinning the ranks somewhat.
I'd like to see an inquiry, but the government is going to be stretched pretty thin dealing with vaccination plans, economic recovery, and rational border control. I don't know how much heart and energy people will have for pursuing malfeasance by Trump and his army of whack-a-doos.
Here's the statement Trump issued this morning through Dan Scarvino (because his Twitter account is temporarily suspended). How anybody would find this reassuring is beyond me:
ReplyDelete“Even though I totally disagree with the outcome of the election, and the facts bear me out, nevertheless there will be an orderly transition on January 20th. I have always said we would continue our fight to ensure that only legal votes were counted. While this represents the end of the greatest first term in presidential history, it’s only the beginning of our fight to Make America Great Again!”
I would hope that some way can be found to strip Trump of his Secret Service protection after his presidency is over. I can't imagine how it would be to have to protect with your life an enemy of the Constitution. The only protection he deserves is from correction officers while he's imprisoned.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that would have to be one of the least enjoyable jobs, right up there with waste treatment technician at a hog confinement.
DeleteThere ought to be some way to bar Trump forever from running for any public office again. Inciting a riot should be enough to do it, but I'm not sure that it is.
The News Hour and now other outlets like the WaPo have suggested that impeachment and conviction, even after Trump leaves, would preclude him from running.
DeleteInterestingly, a felony conviction does not stop someone from running for office. Witness Eugene V. Debs, who served prison time for sedition. He ran for prez four times.
Yes, Adam Kinzinger seems like a rational and sensible individual. He was on Colbert last night along with Sen. Amy Klobuchar. Both segments are worth watching.
ReplyDeleteAnd Sen. Mitt Romney's speech last night was also a breath of fresh air. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfZDSbwjJgk
Josh Hawley's speech is worth watching only so you can see Mitt Romney staring a hole in the back of his head.
OK, I confess that my blood is still boiling. And also that this hits home personally as a citizen of the DC area community as well as an American.
ReplyDeleteThis insurrection was incited by trump - it is the first serious attack on the Capitol since the British attacked it in 1814. But it should have been expected as part of the coup trump has been attempting for two months now. That he started planning for last summer, with an army of lawyers to litigate if he lost. But he has also continuously fed lies to his “base” in order to keep them at boiling, willing to fight for him. Not for our country, but for him, for his lust for power, for his sick, narcissistic ego, for his protection from litigation as a civilian.
The seeming lack of preparation at the Capitol must be investigated. The Capital Cops (as they are fondly referred to around here) are relatively few in number, and not necessarily trained extensive for hostile crowd control – especially for an unruly mob hopped up by the so-called president of the United States. However, there are questions about how some behaved – the selfies, opening barriers to let people through, etc. A friend of my son has been working on the Hill for 17 years. It’s a very large building, and can be a real maze, trying to get around. He is wondering how these domestic terrorists managed to find some crucial offices and rooms so quickly and is a bit suspicious that at least a few of the Capital Police members were sympathetic to their cause and helped them get where they wanted to go. He said that he sometimes has trouble finding his way around to a new meeting room or office even after working there for so many years. But some members of the mob had little trouble finding the offices and rooms they were looking for.
Mayor Bowser has no authority to call up the National Guard. DC is not a state. It’s the nation's federal city. It has only non-voting representation (one, non-voting person sits in Congress and conveys DC concerns to them) and the local powers are limited. The feds control most of what goes on in DC. The municipal police do not work on the Capitol grounds unless a request is put in and authorized. I don’t think that the PTB on the Hill actually thought that these people would storm the Capitol. It’s almost sacred ground – it would be like storming St. Peter’s in Rome. Even more unthinkable for them was that such an attack would be made by their OWN CITIZENS, incited by the president of the United States. They are more prepared to handle the lone nutcases, or even possible suicide bomber terrorists, and to evacuate if the Capitol is the possible target of foreign terrorist attacks by plane, suicide truck bomb, etc.
THESE insurrectionists were AMERICAN citizens – who had the arrogance to parade both American flags (they know nothing of what America stands for) and the Confederate flag. Some wore Nazi sympathizer symbols on tee-shirts.
I think most of the GOP pols STILL believed that trump would not go THAT far- but of course, those without blinders were not surprised. There has been a willful blindness among trump apologists, from the WH staff , through the GOP leadership in Congress and in the states, all the way down to the rank and file from whom trump drew his troops - refusing to see how far he would go to attack the election process in spite of clear signal after clear signal of his intentions.
According to what I have read, the delay in calling up the National Guard was due to trump – he did not want them called in – his staff had to beg him, and it was Pence who finally gave the order. Eventually the Maryland and Virginia police were requested to help. But they can’t go in uninvited.
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Compare this to how the BLM protests were handled – trump called in numerous police from different federal agencies (such as ICE, Homeland Security etc). He called in military helicopters. He wanted to call in troops from Fort Myers, just across the river from DC. I believe that Esper quashed that but agreed to position them just across the bridges to Virginia. Esper was fired in December and replaced by Miller – one presumes this was done in order to have a lackey in place to follow trump’s orders, even if illegal.
ReplyDeleteThe BLM protestors were gassed, shot with rubber bullets, beaten with batons. If they had actually stormed the Capitol, or the White House, it is likely that they would have been met with assault rifles. Too many of the protesters in June were black, or sympathized with the BLM movement. The members of the mob that attacked the Capitol were white.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/07/us/police-response-black-lives-matter-protest-us-capitol/index.html
Trivializing this attack by comparing it to drunk sports fans is just one more example of normalizing trump's aberrant behavior, his anti-American actions. His treasonous actions.
And a personal note.
When I came to DC, my sister was already here, working for a Congressman from California. I shared an apt with two friends from college in Calif, both of whom worked on the Hill. A lot of our social life was centered on the Hill – not just on the people who worked there in private friendships, but there are many social events that take place there that we attended as young, single women. Later on, we still occasionally attended social events held in the Capitol, including my LMU alumni events. Fortunately it has an extensive system of tunnel walkways from building to building (including connecting the Capitol building to the Senate and House office buildings) as well as a subway. I gather that the members and staff were evacuated through the tunnel system.
So, in addition to seeing this as an attack on our country, it was somewhat personal for me, and for most of those who live in the DC area. Think about how you would feel watching your own Bishop incite a mob to attack your city’s Cathedral.
What frightens me now is that he may not be done with his campaign against America. There may be more to come. His cult followers are already talking on Parler and other far-right social media sites.
Let’s pray that the PTB will be better prepared the next time. They won’t get any help from the man in the Oval Office, who WANTS these people to avenge him.