All the Godfather’s Capos

Trump’s Capos, ready to do the orders of their ‘Don’.

It’s a classic scene in almost every mob movie of the past century: someone inside the mob was ratting out the Outfit, being a cheese eater against the Godfather. So, the Don calls his boy in, his capo, and tells him to ‘take care of it’. The capo nods, kisses the ring, and is off…

… To subpoena Apple for phone and email records. Of course we’re talking about Donald Trump. Yes. there have been a lot of half-jokes about Trump being a 'mob boss' and the head of a crime family, but as the revelations show, it's not a joke. Trump used the Department of Justice, under both AG Sessions and Barr to go after political enemies and their families, including minor child.

A child.

Barr and Sessions have tried to blame others, (of course they did) but they were the people in charge of an agency that decided to heavily politicize their operations, and the denials they’re issuing now of Trump's non-involvement in going after Democrats and reporters is laughable nonsense. Trump was constantly calling for investigations of those who dared to criticize him (“Enemies of the People” after all), and the DOJ responded and bowed to his will. Trump lives for that crap. The demands for records went out when Devin Nunes was head of the investigative committee, and some people investigated were his colleagues on the committee (Rep. Adam Schiff, lead Democrat). As Nunes was constantly issued threats and lawsuits against anyone who crossed him (including a couple parody Twitter accounts, like ‘DevinNunesCow’), I doubt this was a coincidence. Trump’s supporter’s are as thin-skinned and paranoid as their leader.

Trump’s DOJ 'investigated' journalists and Democrats. It was all political. And Trump was the smiling cobra at the center of it all, grinning and directing behind the scenes. He's the Ernesto Blofeld of the GOP, stroking his cat (he hates cats) and directing his minions to hurt and kill but keeping his own hands clean. Of course, he can never really keep them clean, his pudgy fingerprints are all over this political payback.

The closest thing in recent history to compare it to would be Watergate, but this isn’t all that close. This is beyond 'Watergate'. John Dean, former Nixon lawyer who famously turned on the president, testifying for hours before congress, called Trump's actions, "...beyond Nixon, yes. It's Nixon on stilts and steroids." 

Nixon on stilts and steroids.

What else will turn up, now that Trump sycophants no longer control access to the files, now that gag orders imposed run out, now that former aids and insiders write their books or donate their papers?

My guess we’ll be seeing a lot more revelations coming out, and probably even worse than what we’re currently seeing. And we really haven’t even started on things like an involved investigation into the leaders behind the January 6th insurrection. Lord knows what will be found there, but it won’t be pleasant.

So many rocks to turn over, so many things trying to scuttle off to the protection of the night. It’s take years to turn them all over.

Trump may be out of office, but he is not out of influence. He may have led the party when they lost the White House, the House and the Senate, but he is still the head of the GOP, the most popular member to the membership. He may be a loser, but he still calls the shots. And the GOP is desperately trying to please him

And that's the problem, isn't it?

Trump doesn't care if he burns down the country, as long as he doesn't have to admit he lost the election to Joe Biden. He just doesn't care. Trump is all, and Trump only cares about Trump. He will do anything to prove himself right. If he destroys the country doing so, that's fine with him. And the GOP is more than ready to help him.

As long as he wins, it doesn't matter.

Let the country burn.

The flames won't reach Trump Tower.

Michael Flynn Goes Full-Traitor

General Flynn as a cowboy. Hee-ha.

"I want to know why what happened in Myanmar can't happen here?"

The questioner from the audience at Dallas, Texas Q-Annon conference asked former National Security Director and confessed felon, General Michael Flynn.

The audience cheered and applauded.

"No reason. I mean, it should happen," said Flynn.

They cheered and applauded even more.

In Myanmar, a democratically elected government was overthrown in a military coup, the leaders of the government seized and imprisoned. When the people protested, the military then turned on their own citizens, killing some 800 Burmese people, including at least 40 children. This is according to Myanmar's Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. More than 4,000 citizens people have been arrested and are being held in the continuing aftermath.

This is what Flynn, and the right, are now calling for here in America. Demanding that the United States military install Q-Anon’s favorite ‘strong’ man, presidential loser Donald Trump as a dictator-in-chief.

This is, simply, treason.

And Flynn called for this during the weekend reserved for memorializing and remembering those we have lost in our nation’s wars. He either forgot about honoring them, or didn’t care.

It should be no surprise to anyone Flynn decided to go full-on traitor, he’s been dancing on that line for years, especially since joining Donald Trump on the Trump campaign trail. He was bound to fall over the line sooner or later. He worked behind the scenes with foreign entities to advance the Trump campaign, and lied to the FBI about it. He confessed, and then (once Sydney Powell stepped in to start spewing right wing conspiracies about Flynn) withdrew his thrice confirmed confession. Then AG Barr tried to undermine the case, and several prosecutors resigned in disgust. The fight over Flynn’s guilt and sentencing continued until he was pardoned by Trump.

During the last days of the election, and in the months after, Flynn was a man unleashed and unhinged. He, Powell, (who had briefly joined the Trump defense team before being pushed out for being too crazy even for them) and Trump advisor and some-time lawyer Lin Wood during the post-election lying seemed to compete with one another over who could be the craziest and make the biggest, most treasonous statements. He even took the Q-Anon ‘pledge’.

Flynn in December was pushing Trump to declare martial law and seize the reigns of power, regardless of the election outcome. As news of this push leaked out, Flynn stated on NewsMax (one of the Trumpier of the right-wing ‘news’ pushers):

"People out there talk about martial law like it's something that we've never done. Martial law has been instituted 64 times." (68 times actually, never in an election)

No big deal, nothing much to see here, just taking over the government with the military and installing a dictator. Please, go about your business.

Calls for outright violence have been louder, shriller and more desperate and Trump’s lies of a ‘stolen’ election were absorbed and amplified until they spurred the violence of January 6th at the Capitol. That violence, that attempt to overthrow the election is celebrated by Q-Anon and many on the right, and new violence is constantly advocated, constantly escalated. Again, as if the most outrageous statement wins.

This new statement is Flynn being more explicit about violent overthrow. As a retired general, as a former Trump official, Flynn is a rock star to Trumpers, one they listen to, believe, and follow. To call for a military coup from this platform is irresponsible and utterly dangerous. We’ve seen where this shouting ends. During the last five years we have all seen what the overheated lies and violent rhetoric can do to a crowd ready and willing to do the bidding of those yelling the loudest.

All they need is to believe.

Mitch Has a Message For America

Mitch might be putting up a thumb, but he’s really thinking ‘middle finger’.

There was a time, and I’m not completely crazy here, when politicians actually tried to help people other than themselves. Or at least they helped other people while helping themselves. Something got done, benefits at least trickled out occasionally to ordinary Americans and the country lurched slowly forward.

 Yeah, those were good… times?

All that’s done now, and has been for the last few decades. Helping people had its run, but we’re on to other things now. We’re in the age of announcing, via statements to the DC press, that we’re helping ourselves as policy and acting as if that is a benefit, as if that was what we were elected to do in the first place. Hurting the country and their own voters as if that is what those voters wanted all along. “Please, make sure our lives are harder, our struggles more painful so you win more power!”

“Can do!”

Kentucky Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is always one to put his own power and that of his party before the good of the country. We saw that under Obama with McConnell’s proclamation that his job was to make Obama a ‘one-term president’. Fought everything, from healthcare for the uninsured, to stimulus designed to get us out of a financial disaster presided over by Obama’s Republican predecessor. This opposition lengthened the recovery by years, needlessly causing financial pain to Americans. Now, he’s at it again.

This time McConnell has said “One hundred percent of my focus is on stopping this new administration.” Not on helping the American people, not on getting the country back to sanity after a devastating pandemic that killed well over a half million people, not trying to revive the economy, no. Petty politics is where his head is, preserving his own power at the cost of the country is his goal, but then it always was.

Not only did he try to kill the covid relief bill, now he’s trying to kill infrastructure, voting rights, and a bi-partisan investigation into the origins and happenings of the January 6th insurrection. After the Democrats gave basically everything the GOP was asking for, he proclaims it ‘not enough’. He not only is trying to kill it by allowing a filibuster, he’s also lying about the nature and makeup of the committee itself.  

Why?

He’s worried it could “could hurt the party’s midterm election message,” which is ‘Biden is horrible, he’s done nothing (because we made sure he could do nothing), he’s too ‘woke’, he destroying America, so vote for us’. He’s worried finding out the truth about an attack on the US Capitol would somehow hurt the GOP’s message. Scared of the truth.

Again, why? They claim it was ‘antifa’ and Black Lives Matter supporters, now is their chance to prove it.

Why is the GOP afraid of what a bi-partisan look at the insurrection would find? Well, they must know it was their supporters out there beating police, using the very Trump flags they were flying as blunt weapons to put cops in the hospital, smash windows, and use the shields stripped from the police to break down the doors of the Capitol. Instead of facing up to this fact, and dealing with the fallout and the lies that brought us all to that day and to this, to try to protect themselves and their colleagues from further attacks…

…they filibustered it. Ignore it, and the insurrectionists will just go away.

I hear Joe Manchin is oh so very shocked and disappointed. The very thing that nearly everyone told him would happen, that the GOP would block everything regardless of benefit no matter what, has happened.

And I hear there’s gambling in the back room at Rick’s.

And then McConnell announced opposition to police reform that does away with ‘qualified immunity’, the bizarre rule that lets police get away with civil and criminal acts (like killing people), upending negotiations his own party member Tim Scott is carrying on with the Senate Democrats.  

So, no money for crumbling infrastructure, childcare, elder care, no police reform, no voting reform and protection, no investigation into the threat against our democracy, all because it “could hurt the party’s midterm election message.”

The Republican message seems to be “Fuck You.”

And nothing has stopped them from getting that message out in the last 40+ years.

Are you finally listening, Senators Manchin and Sinema?

The Toxic Avengers Assemble

Doors open at 5, lyin’ begins at 5:01.

The Toxicity is the Point.

Let me explain.

The GOP is a toxic party that encourages and celebrates toxic people. It simply is. It’s like the GOP looks around for the loudest, most obnoxious person in the room, the person everyone just trying to have a civil conversation veers away from, and they point and scream “That’s the one!”. They then give that person a high-level job in the party infrastructure, make them a TV pundit for ‘balance’ on cable shows, or run them as a candidate for office. And since Republican legislatures have gerrymandered districts within an inch of their lives, they are gifted with safe havens, stone pulpits from where they can spew anything they want with impunity. All they have to worry about is getting ‘primaried’, but they can take care of that by running as far to the right as they possibly can. It’s the ‘No Daylight’ strategy, ‘let there be no daylight on the right’; and you’ll be safe.  

Doesn’t really matter if you help your constituents, if you write, sponsor, or actually pass bills (you know, do your job) as long as you say the right things and ‘own’ enough ‘libs’. In fact, you can be in trouble if you do pass a bill, because it could be easily used against you. Pass the ‘wrong’ bill, and you become part of the system, the ‘Deep State’ (TM and © GOP) or the oppressive ‘Big Government’ (TM and © GOP) and someone will pop up suddenly in your district (probably having recently moved there) and oppose your reelection. Yep, you’ve been primaried. Suddenly you will have to go to extraordinary lengths to prove your ‘rightness’. Maybe hang out at the border (even if it’s not your state) in front of the TV cameras and wrestle a few migrants to the ground to prove how right-crazy you are, or bow over farther to an out-of-work- grifter at Mar-a-Largo. The ushe’.

The GOP built a system that rewards extremism, and pushes, begs, for more while punishing any sort of moderation. It’s the system that ever since the founding of the John Birch Society (oh, you can go down that rabbit hole further to the Dixiecrats in ‘47, the OG ‘America First-ers’ in the 30’s and beyond, but this is an essay, not ‘Game of Thornes’), to their backing of failed presidential candidate Barry Goldwater leading to a far right thought takeover in the late 60’s to an Avengers Assemble moment in the 70s with the Christian Evangelist movement, finally to the presidency in the 1980s. Whew. Been a long, hard and ugly road to the disaster that was four years of Trump, but it was always on the horizon. Extremist movements always burn and consume themselves eventually, but they leave much ash and destruction in the path of their flames.

So here we are.

In congress, we have some of the most aggressive, extreme, performatively ignorant (most of them aren’t that stupid, they’re stupid for pay and power) since the Civil War, when Democrat Preston Brooks of South Carolina beat abolitionist Republican Senator Charles Sumner with a cane, nearly killing him. Of course, from there to today, the parties are reversed. The difference being today the GOP mostly outsources its violence to their supporters, like the mob on January 6th.

These people are all stunt, not actual policy. Unless ‘owning libs’ can be a policy. Well, if not a policy it’s certainly a goal.

The new Preston Brooks’ of the GOP are people like Jim Jordan from Ohio’s 4th district, a district both famous for being far right and safe, and for being so gerrymandered and twisted (redundant?) as to resemble a duck. Jordan has a ‘colorful’ past in which he has been accused (pretty credibly) of ignoring sexual abuse as a wrestling coach at Ohio State. Several team members have come forward, saying they informed Joran directly about the abuse, and at least one referee claims to have confronted Jordan about it. Jordan claims he had no idea.

And he’s still in congress where he’s never written and passed a bill in his ten years there, he just holds them up, insults people and yells. And yells some more, all while refusing to wear his suit jacket, man-of-the-people that he is.

There’s Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, son of former presidential candidate Ron Paul, who has inherited his father’s aggressive style of ignorance. Paul’s biggest claim to fame is acting like a jerk during senate hearings, and trying to score stupidity points off Dr. Anthony Fauci. He’s yet another Republican who has nothing to fear from the electorate, as Kentucky hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since Wendell Ford, in 1992.

There’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right conspiracy nut serving from Georgia's 14th congressional district, yet another safe district. She ran unopposed, as the Democrat running against her received so many threats that he feared for his life, ultimately leaving the state. The vile threats she made against her congressional colleagues were so bad, they stripped her of her committee assignments and her power within congress, but not the GOP where she is a money raiser and ‘rising star’. Recently she compared the torture and deaths of millions of Jews in the Holocaust with her having to wear one of her ‘Trump Won’ masks on the floor of congress. And then doubled down on it. GOP leadership has been very, very silent on this. Her grotesqueness is only rewarded. I’m sure the fund raising off the ‘Cancel Culture’ (TM and © GOP) of people telling her she’s waaaaaaaaaay out of line here has already begun.

Right now, Taylor-Greene is on a ‘Summer of Hate 2021’ Tour (not official name) with another equally horrible person, Florida (of course) congressman Matt Gaetz. Gaetz is part of the ‘frat boy’ style of politics, like if one of the guys from Animal House, only with Red Kryptonite levels of evil, were elected to congress. He, almost more than his fellow Toxic Avengers, thinks stupid congressional pet tricks done in front of TV cameras equals ‘policy work’. He is the ‘policy wonk’ of dumb stunts, like leading a charge into a secure room where a meeting was being held, thus violating security and forcing the Capitol security team to perform a sweep and examination to re-secure the room, wasting hours and money, of wearing a gasmask on the House floor during a vote on covid relief while his constituents were literally dying in Florida. He’s just a petty, vile, smug jerk. There, I said it.

That’s not the worst. Gaetz has been accused of massive illegal drug use, paying girls for sex, statutory rape, human trafficking an underage girl, showing nude photos to his fellow frat boy congressman on the floor of the house, and for being a disgusting clown.

I can say he’s guilty of at least one of those.

I could go on, and that’s the problem, I could go on. I didn’t even get to Ron Johnson, Mo Brooks, Paul Gosar, John Kennedy, Lauren Boebert (who brags about illegally packing a Glock, because she’s an idiot), and the King Of Cynical Performative Toxicity (may not be real title), Senator Ted Cruz, who at least should know better. Probably a part two coming on this…

But that’s the point, you can’t tell the true believers from those just going along with the scam. How many actually believe Trump won the 2020 election? Even in their warped reality, probably very few. In the end, it doesn’t matter who among the GOP leadership actually believes the nonsense they vomit; because they’re all united in the message and in shouting it from whatever mountaintop they can find. They’ve convinced the majority of their voters it’s true, and that’s where the danger comes in. That’s where January 6th came from and it’s where the next January 6th will come from as well.

They restrict voting to gain power, they gerrymander to keep power, they lie to their supporters to maintain power.

They take that hate cannon they’ve constructed and aim it right at democracy. Because it’s in the way. The have toxic leaders because the system they’ve built rewards that very toxicity. Toxicity = Strength, and the more they show, the more money flows to them and that system is reinforced and grows stronger while their base becomes a reduction of intense hate.

Toxicity is the point, and will be until it finally breaks the party.

That can’t be soon enough.

All Because of a Lie

They came in answer to a lie, told by a tiny man with pointed them at out democracy and said ‘sic’ em’. Photo by Jessica Griffin.

2024. The election is a decisive one, the Democratic candidate wins the popular vote by some 8 million, the electoral by 30-40 points. Maybe even enlarging the senate control. Everything will be fine… right?

What happens when local GOP controlled election boards in both red and purple states decide they don’t like the way their own voters have voted, when Republican controlled state legislatures refuse to certify Democratic wins, sending instead their own slate of electors to Washington? What happens when a GOP House refuses to certify the presidential vote, when the GOP refuses to seat Democratic senators?

What happens?

Think this nightmare scenario can’t happen? Remember January 6th. We believed it couldn’t happen then. Well, maybe “believed” is too strong a word, “hoped” is better. We already had all the signs, the right-wing violence and threats against officials, the storming of state capitols and city councils, the lies from top officials, Trump on down. It was building, making the violent insurrection on the DC Capitol inevitable. It was a mad rush and build, an escalation to madness and attempted coupe, and then they all went home, contrite and regretful… right?

No. It’s not over. 1/6 was prologue. It was the person before the play, it was Shakespeare, sending his actor out on the stage to tell you what you will be soon seeing, that while you are witnessing this, there is so much more you don’t see. When you see fights, please, gentles all, imagine wars.

This is the GOP; they start fights but they are planning for wars.

All for a lie, all because the huge ego of a tiny man could not deal with the obvious fact that he lost an election, could not admit he was not the god of his speeches but the grifter and con man the election revealed him to be. So, he decided he didn’t have to admit it, didn’t have to accept it, and that his voters and members of his party would back him up. And they did, to the great disgrace of this nation and the weakening of our democracy.

A lie and a man’s ego has managed to kill people and brought us where we are today. It’s… crushing, the shear stupidity of it all. Here we are, still dealing with the muck and suck of the hate and violence. Because it ain’t over, as Yogi maybe said, ‘til it’s over.

Because the insurrection didn't end with the Capitol Hill police ushering the violent insurrectionists out of the Capitol. Like an out-of-control AI, they have learned, absorbed, pinpointed where they failed and are shoring up the weak spots; ridding themselves of anyone moral enough to say ‘no’ to Trump’s election lies, casting out anyone who might have enough principle to stand against a naked power grab, and readying for all-out war on a democracy that stands in the way of total power.

Citizens don’t want to vote for them? Fine. They’ll just take that little voting problem away, thank you very much.

No, the insurrection continues with the nearly 300 anti-democratic voting bills being introduced and passed around the country, with the 'forensic audit' being conducted by the GOP version of the 3 Stooges in Arizona for no other intention than to undermine a fair election and to bolster lies. This is all leading up to the 2024 presidential election where the GOP will try, once again, to steal an election.

This time, with those objecting purged, who will say no? That's a big thing that saved us; many in the local state GOP didn't go along. These are officials who I’m not so sure were brave, but defending a system that they set up to elect Republicans that failed to do so. Not sure much ‘brave’ as defensive and indignant. But they were there and they stopped it.  

Republicans are in the process of fixing that. Stefanik for Cheney, censure and eventual expulsion of anyone who pointed out the lies (listen, I have no love for Cheney, who supported wars and torture, but in this stand, she’s actually right) anyone who might slow the Trump train to election must be crushed, whether Trump is the engineer this time or not.  

The clear message the GOP is sending to its representatives is: you stand up for the Constitution and democracy, we’ll knock you down, hard. We’ll erase you not only from the face of the GOP but the earth. Scorched earth against their own party. The reps hear, and obey.

That's what this is about; hobble democracy with even more restrictive voting laws to make themselves completely voter-proof, and if somehow that's not enough, just take it. Claim victory anyway and this time with the entire GOP on their side, they're that much closer to succeeding. 2022, 2024, they will try until they succeed.

That's the plan; permanent Republican rule, voter proof. Will it work? doesn't matter, it's what they'll try. They've been setting it up for decades.

How can they be stopped? Through attention paid, taking them seriously and heading them off though public opinion and the courts (Trump and McConnell have made that much harder, but not impossible).

This is why there are and will be constant lawsuits filed against these bills, playing a legal whack-a-mole, that's why more grassroots are forming to re-register the people the GOP are purging from the rolls. It's why the spotlight has to keep shinning and pinning them down like an ant in the sun, paying attention to the state and national GOPs and their efforts to kill democracy and snatch power.

They love to work in the dark, the bright daylight gives them away.

They’re probably working on blocking the sun.

The Insurrection Was Live Streamed

Huh. Where is the tear gas? Why aren’t the cops beating these MAGA idiots with baton, hitting them with rubber bullets? Weird.

Here we are. Gil Scott Heron was wrong, the revolution, the insurrection really, was televised. The nation, the world saw it happening in real time. In real time we saw a group of speakers whip the crowd up over lies and fantasies of a ‘stolen election’ with the President aiming the angry thousands directly at his own Vice President. It is a stupefying fact that a sitting president of the United states tried to overthrow the government and install himself for another term as president is... well, is there a word to describe this? It's such an overwhelming thing, it beggar’s description.

Seriously, I am so angry, furious, and fascinated at the same time. I find myself pulled in every direction. Furious at Trump and his enablers, who have been building up to this since 2015 with his CYA talk of 'rigged elections' (in case he lost, which he expected to). Yes, something like this has been coming for years with the cynical exploitation of the fear and grievance of his base. But I am fascinated by the passion and anger that drives the 'disenfranchised' Whites to think a grifting 'billionaire' gives a damn about them.

I fully expected something like this insurrection to happen, but not so naked and raw, so exposed and open. It was a river of grievance and anger, flowing from across the country and firehosed by Trump and his enablers right at the seat of American government. We must hold these terrorists accountable, every last one of them to the full extent of the law, but they were following the orders of people like Trump and his sycophantic and cynical enablers. They are every bit as much to blame as the Trump insurrectionists themselves. All need to be dragged blinking into the light of justice, but blame should be apportioned to those who believed the lies and followed, and those who didn't but thought it would look good on their resume. Those who called to overthrow a government with their eyes on 2022, or 2024.

These are resume builders, the cynical enablers, the 'why not-ers' including most of the 147 Republicans who 'objected' to Biden's palpable win (the number went down, slightly, to 138 after the insurrection), to the process of democracy they took an oath to defend.  Yet, here they were, objecting to avoid mean tweets, to position themselves for whatever race was next, ignoring the Constitution to gain the favor of a man who also ignored the Constitution. 

And five people died.

Was it worth it?

The 'base' seems to think so, pledging their soul to Trump and his 'next term' that will never materialize, a phantom 'four more years' the promise of which Trump has used to suck 300 million dollars out of them. They are willing to destroy democracy in order to ‘save’ it, by installing the dictator of their choice. 

This is not who we are!

But really, it is

It's crazy, a plot of a movie review on a 'so-bad-it's-good' youtube channel, not at all the sort of thing you associate with America. But that is because I'm a middle-aged White guy. Black and Brown will tell this is the America they live every day. Angry White people shoeing their ability to do the things that any person not White would be killed for.

They see no irony in this. Angry Whites thinking they have the right to cut in line, say anything they want, do anything without fear of being shot and killed (screaming into a policeman's face, actually pulling them to the ground and beating them into unconsciousness with an American flag), yep, everyday reality to many. I look at this and wonder in horror, they look and nod in affirmation. I see sick aberration, they see nothing new. 

Trump and the GOP know this, and play hard to the fear, the hate, and anger of the dying light, the panic of the waning White power, they mine that fear like the desperate prospector chipping away at a played-out mine, knowing this is all they have. This is why they fall into line with Trump and 'Trumpism', because it has taken over the party.

Without that White anger, the GOP would be nothing.

On my other site (www.tompstewart.com) I write about pop culture, history, comic books, my life as an actor and writer, various odd things. I would like to get back to that, really. I would dearly love to write about 1960s Batman comics, but these are not the times for an in-depth discussion of Batman’s ‘New Look’ of 1964. I can’t look away from this shit-show that is the Trump administration, and neither can history. I have to look, whether I want to or not.

We must evaluate and assign blame, hold the guilty accountable, now, and in future elections.

It’s our duty as Americans.

They Wanted a Massacre

Trump’s MAGA mob of traitors, bringing shame to the nation.

This was UGLY. The more we know about what went on, the uglier it is. They came with bombs, guns, Molotov cocktails, flex cuffs, knives, homemade weapons. They were looking for blood, chanting 'hang Mike Pence'. They were invited to DC by Trump himself, promising them it would be 'wild'. Trump and his enablers were calling anyone who actually acknowledged the fair outcome of the election was a 'traitor'. Rudy called for a ‘trail by combat’, Trump told them Mike Pence held the power (he doesn’t) to turn the election, and the White House, over to them, if he would only ‘do the right thing’. Anyone who stood in the way were traitors. ““We’re going to the Capitol,” he said. “We’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”

The president added: “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Then he invited them to ‘walk to the capitol’ and ‘cheer’ the lawmakers on.

Vice President Pence announced that he would not object to the vote, which the president tweeted about, to his followers, the fired-up and angry mob he had just sent to march on the US Capitol. Trump told them, but his own rhetoric that Pence was now a ‘traitor’. He refused to do what Trump wanted him to do, but what he legally could not do. He would now just be part of the cast of traitors that stood between them and their prize

And they went looking for those 'traitors'. They went looking for a massacre.

They beat cops, they beat up reporters, smashing their equipment, the broke down doors, smashed windows, they ransacked the offices of the capitol, smashing and vandalizing as they went. They shit and peed on the floors and walls, looted, probably allowing foreign agents access to the building, including the Speakers laptop which went missing.

They beat a policeman to death.

Five people died during this insurrection, this attempt by Donald Trump to overthrow an election he can't admit he lost fair and square. He nearly got his own Vice President killed. It was ugly, deadly, and disgraced America in the eyes of the world while delighting its enemies.  

And they had wanted it to be worse, they had wanted actual blood for their ‘tree of liberty’.

Now, the very people who incited this travesty, Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Keven McCarthy, Hawley, Cruz, and every Republican who defended this ‘stolen election’ nonsense, the 147 Republicans who objected on Jan. 6th to the certification of Joe Biden’s election, these people with blood on their hands are calling for ‘peace’, ‘healing’, ‘unity’, they are demanding not be held unaccountable for their own actions, their words, for inciting a mob that tried to do exactly what they were asking them to do.  

No.

Just. No.

The House will vote to impeach Trump, making him the only president to be impeached twice. He deserves it, a thousand times over. He’s a literal traitor to his own country. The rest must be held accountable, held to the oath they took when they were elected:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”

“All enemies, foreign and domestic”. That includes the President and those that supported and enabled the actions that led to the debacle, the insurrection aimed at installing Donald Trump as a king over America, because that’s would he would have been, that was Trump’s endgame here and that of his supporters. It failed, as any rational person knew it would, but Trump and his supporters are not rational. Never have been.

The only way to deal with them is the take them out of power and make sure they never get back in.

Never.