“News outlets are publishing more and more videos, photos and testimonials from Wednesday’s pro-Trump riot on Capitol Hill. And it’s becoming clear that as heinous as the attack looked in real time, on live TV and in our social feeds, it was even worse than we knew then,” CNN reports.
“It was even more violent. It was even more treacherous. And Trump’s behavior was even more disturbing.”
Seth Masket says political scientists warned us that something like insurrection at the U.S. Capitol would happen.
“Since 2015, we’ve been warning about the dangers he posed. Not because of the policies he advocated, but because of the threats he posed to American democracy…”
“Here’s another warning: This isn’t over. Maybe there will be more violence between now and Joe Biden’s inauguration, maybe not. But the forces that created Wednesday’s violence are still very much active and pose a significant threat to American democracy. The next time this crops up, let’s not say this can’t happen here. It already has, and it’s still happening.”
“President Trump is considering having Rudy Giuliani and Alan Dershowitz defend him if he faces another impeachment trial,” CNN reports.
It’s worth remembering that this Senate trial is almost certain to take place after he is out of office.
The Maricopa County Republican Committee voted Saturday to censure Cindy McCain, calling the longtime Republican a “troubled individual” who has supported “leftist” causes and candidates who run counter to conservative values, the Arizona Republic reports.
“Vice President Mike Pence has not ruled out an effort to invoke the 25th Amendment and wants to preserve the option in case President Trump becomes more unstable,” CNN reports.
“The source said there is some concern inside Pence’s team that there are risks to invoking the 25th Amendment or even to an impeachment process, as Trump could take some sort of rash action putting the nation at risk.”
New York Times: “Over the past several months, Parler has become one of the fastest-growing apps in the United States. Millions of President Trump’s supporters have flocked to it as Facebook and Twitter increasingly cracked down on posts that spread misinformation and incited violence, including muzzling Mr. Trump by removing his accounts this past week. By Saturday morning, Apple listed Parler as the No. 1 free app for its iPhones.”
“But hours later, Apple said it had removed Parler from its App Store. Google had made a similar move a day earlier.”
“Career officials at the State Department filed a second unprecedented dissent cable condemning President Trump for inciting the violent mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and urging top administration officials to consider invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office,” Foreign Policy reports.
“The dissent cable is the second such cable sent to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo this week, reflecting widespread shock and anger in the diplomatic corps at Trump’s actions and Pompeo’s own response to the political crisis.”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi is accusing the Trump supporters who rioted in the Capitol this week of choosing “their whiteness over democracy,” the AP reports.
Said Pelosi: “It has been an epiphany for the world to see that there are people in our country led by this president, for the moment, who have chosen their whiteness over democracy.”
Vice President Mike Pence will attend the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, NBC News reports.
“Days after a mob of pro-Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, dozens of heavily armed people gathered outside the Kentucky Capitol building Saturday to rail against socialism, communism, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell and Gov. Andy Beshear,” the Lexington Herald Leader reports.
Beshear denounced the protesters on Twitter, saying he wouldn’t be bullied.
The grieving family of a woman who died in Wednesday’s riot at the Capitol is blaming Donald Trump for her death, saying the 43-year-old got caught up in the president’s lies about election fraud and it “cost her her life,” the AP reports.
President Trump at one point in the White House on Friday “literally yelled” the words, “I’M NOT GOING TO RESIGN,” before launching into a tirade about how Democratic lawmakers will regret their push to impeach him a second time, and that they are hurting “the country” by doing so, the Daily Beast reports.
“According to two sources with knowledge of the matter, the president and several close advisers are now discussing the possibility of Trump sitting for multiple media interviews in the coming days, in an attempt to boast about his time in office.”
Jack Shafer: “It makes sense that Trump would want to build his own impregnable forum where nobody can police his speech. He maintains his base by communicating with it at all hours of the day and night. He desperately wants to maintain that continuity to preserve the momentum he has achieved over the past four years. He rightly worries that his pack will ditch him for someone more compelling or entertaining, ergo, he needs to lay plans now or face oblivion.”
“But then as now, the business challenges to launching a TV channel or other high-profile media property seem beyond the talents, resources and patience of Trump and his crew. This isn’t to predict that Trump won’t enter the media business, only to record that if he does, he won’t get very far.”
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) joined calls on Saturday for Republican Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Ted Cruz (R-TX)) to resign after they supported objections to the 2020 Electoral College results on Wednesday.
Said Brown: “If they do not resign, the Senate must expel them.”
“White House officials pushed Atlanta’s top federal prosecutor to resign before Georgia’s U.S. Senate runoffs because President Trump was upset he wasn’t doing enough to investigate the president’s allegations of election fraud,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) told Fox News that he thinks President Trump has “committed impeachable offenses.”
David Blight: “One hundred and fifty years after the emergence of the Confederate Lost Cause ideology, a new Lost Cause invaded the U.S. Capitol with the incitement of the president of the United States. Waving American, Confederate, Gadsden and, especially, Trump flags, Donald Trump’s loyalists desecrated the greatest symbolic edifice of America.”
“Trumpism has already become a lethal Lost Cause. It does not quite have martyrs and a cult of the fallen in which to root its hopes and dreams. But it does have a self-destructive cult leader about to leave power in a defeat that has been transformed into a narrative of betrayal, resistance and a promise of political revitalization.”
“The important Lost Causes in history have all been at heart compelling stories about noble defeats that were, with time, forged into political movements of renewal.”
Hillary Clinton had a succinct response to news that President Trump was permanently suspended from Twitter.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.