Today, Rep. Liz Cheney read off a list of text messages that were sent on January 6 to President Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows:
These texts leave no doubt: the White House knew exactly what was happening at the Capitol. Republican members of Congress and others wrote to Mark Meadows as the attack was underway:
"Hey, Mark, protestors are literally storming the Capitol. Breaking windows on doors. Rushing in. Is Trump going to say something?"
"We are under siege up here at the Capitol."
"They have breached the Capitol."
"There's an armed standoff at the House Chamber door."
"We are all helpless."
Dozens of texts, including from Trump administration officials, urged immediate action by the President:
"POTUS has to come out firmly and tell protestors to dissipate. Someone is going to get killed"
"Mark, he needs to stop this. Now"
"TELL THEM TO GO HOME"
"POTUS needs to calm this s*** down."
Indeed, according to the records, multiple Fox News hosts knew the President needed to act immediately. They texted Meadows that:
"Hey Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home...this is hurting all of us...he is destroying his legacy." Laura Ingraham wrote.
"Please get him on tv. Destroying everything you have accomplished." Brian Kilmeade wrote.
"Can he make a statement?...Ask people to leave the Capitol." Sean Hannity urged.
As the violence continued, one of the President's sons texted Meadows:
"He's got to condemn this s*** Asap. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough." Donald Trump, Jr. texted.
Meadows responded: "I'm pushing it hard. I agree."
Still, President Trump did not immediately act.
Donald Trump, Jr. texted again and again, urging action by the President: "We need an Oval address. He has to lead now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand."
None of this is a surprise. Virtually everyone—Democrat and Republican alike—condemned the insurrection at the time it happened. Over time, however, Republicans steadily beat a retreat, and within a couple of months they were all saying that Democrats were making a mountain out of a molehill. That's what they were saying in public, anyway:
The best thing about the Meadows texts is how it's embarrassing to people who were willing to be half-way patriotically decent in private but not in public.
— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahDispatch) December 14, 2021
These text messages will do nothing to sway the MAGA crowd, since they believe the insurrection was a righteous affair and have only contempt for folks who might have panicked in the moment. But they should certainly have an impact on all the rest of us.
I lollered when I saw that El Jefecito had to communicate with his dad thru Meadows.
Jr. really can't admit his dad hates him.
very logan/roman roy relationship. i wonder if Jr has sent daddy a dick pic too.
My guess is yes. El Jefecito used to step out with Aubrey O'Day from Danity Kane, & Danity is close to Daddy in his phone address book.
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Interesting, but changes nothing. Those people would let white supremacists stab them in the chest with a flag pole as long as they got to stay in Congress.
What "white supremacy"??? These people do not like white history. They like Semitic history. Hence their broken identity. They should just come clean and and admit their Zionism. Say they have no interest in indoeuropean culture.
Impaled to pwn the libz.
Tapes solutions.
Tepes.
A small point.
"POTUS needs to calm this s*** down."
"He's got to condemn this s*** Asap."
The word Liz Cheney read in Congress today is "shit." That's the word that aired on C-SPAN. That the word I heard later on MSNBC. That's the word used in the story at the NYT.
Kevin -- and more important, his source == doesn't need to sugarcoat it for us. Much better not to. We're grown-ups. We can handle the truth. In fact, Americans need the truth now more than ever, and we need it hard. Every little bit helps.
It still burns me up that a maga mob got away with it.
Nope. But your learn that in a few weeks.
Fake News!!! Benghazi!!!
And Chris Wallace left just in time...to not have to deal with this revelation.
Fox New reporting on this....nada...
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/14/media/january-6-fox-news-reliable-sources/index.html
This is nothing new. Everybody was surprised.
If they ever give the time stamps for those texts, and those are juxtaposed with what was happening in the Capitol, it will look even worse for Trump.
That said, It is interesting that the Chair, Bennie Thompson, had Cheney read out those texts. I suspect a mix of reasons:
She's one of the most energetic & passionate members.
GOPers willing to listen will find her believable.
She's very good at this (clear, direct presentation).
Good points about Cheney. Of course the MAGA crowd will just hate her, but not all Republicans are MAGA's. And even less so independents.
I wouldn't have believed that I would ever say this about a Cheney, but if democracy survives in this country (even such as it is), she will have played a big part in that.
Should be an interesting New Year.
It's kind of a shame they didn't actually catch Pence or some of those congress people. It would have been interesting to see the result. The whole incident is a disgraceful episode in American history, but so few people actually care anymore.
I'm guessing they won't try again. Too many ended up arrested to make it worth the effort.
I’m sorry, why exactly should I care about these texts? There will be 0 consequence for anyone involved, from Trump down to Ingraham. What makes this high-minded “patriotic” shit any different from all the other shit that this blog tells us is no big deal?
We live in country where there's mass shootings almost daily, that we narrowly avoided being destroyed by WMD by utilizing our military offensively, metal detectors in school, fame is the aim, and next day delivery - free!
Of course some DM's to the Vulgarian's staff fell on "deaf ears." He had his phone on vibrate.
So, his phone was in his bunghole?
Yeah, yeah. Tool rocks.
Let me say: Maynard James Keenan not being MAGA is a mild upset. Given Glenn Danzig; the singer from Eagles of Death Metal; Jon Schaeffer from Iced Earth; & James Hetfield, it seems Trumpism appeals to hard rockers. (Dishonorable mention to Bob Ritchie & Ted Nugent, who don't rock nearly as hard.)
Your grasp of cultural news is as awe-inspiring as it is incomprehensible to me.
Tool seems closer to prog rock than death metal, to me at least. I saw them when they had King Crimson open for them. But they aren’t real prog rock because they have women fans.
It's CounterIntelligence. Meadows gave the panel a lot but no one knows how much. You spook his network to see who reacts and how to help guide future subpoenas.
" they should certainly have an impact on all the rest of us"
Why? As you say, none of this is a surprise. I also wonder if any of those texts were actually sent as legal cover, so the send could say "see, i had NO IDEA this was being planned!" if the coup failed and there was an investigation.
I continue to believe that Trump and the Republican Party dodged a bullet on 1/6/21: the death toll wasn't large enough to shake the country to its core. It's a sad commentary on how, by the end of Trump's reign, America had become (gradually) desensitized to right-wing extremism and violence that a massive assault on the heart of US democracy didn't result in a stronger response because "only" a few of the Capitol's defenders were slain.
But had Trump's minions been more "successful" and managed to penetrate the building's inner sanctum (and killed a few dozen members of Congress), the result wouldn't have been a successful coup. Rather, the outcome would have been a furious, anti-MAGA backlash. At least I think so.
What, a half dozen dead? Compared to COVID, that's a rounding error.
If they would have caught up with Pence the result would have been the death of at least several Trump minions. Secret Service Agents were guarding him (and the “football”) with their lives and they wouldn’t have hesitated to shoot. I’m almost sorry it didn’t happen.
Everybody even peripherally involved with the planning and the day itself should be feeling the impact-- ctownwoody is right, imo. If the committee is willing to read out stuff that fingers specific media shills by name and quotes yet-unnamed individual congresscritters, you have to ask yourself what else they could have from the Meadows document dump and their 200+ interviews and other documents. And you have to realize that they won't be shy about making any of this public.
A few of the people involved have deep enough pockets to pay 6 or 7 figures for decent lawyering and PR. Others, like (obviously) Meadows, didn't have the jack or didn't think about the fact that you can need really expensive representation and advice just for dealing with the committee if you were halfway involved in any of this. It isn't only about criminal defense. And not everybody is a Bannon and wants to be known as a real bad-ass who wants to break things. Some of them will actually care something about their reputations, if only for job and income reasons.
So I think the careful reading-out of these texts must have significantly raised the pucker index in a lot of places.
They killed cops. And Republicans are just fine with that.
As with previous article about Covid, "normal" people don't care about Jan. 6. Plague deaths or the overthrow of the Republic are met with a shrug; "normal" people are worried about twenty cents on a gallon of gas.