Friday, July 22, 2022

Today's News: The elephant in the room

Tonight's Jan 6 Committee hearing made lots of news tonight. But as Brian Stelter reported in his Reliable Sources newsletter tonight, perhaps the most important comment came from Michigan Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger's closing remarks at the Jan 6 Committee hearing: 
The forces Donald Trump ignited that day have not gone away. The militant, intolerant ideologies. The militias. The alienation and the disaffection. The weird fantasies and disinformation. They're all still out there, ready to go. That's the elephant in the room....
Oaths matter. Character matters. Truth matters 

Serious stuff. 

But there was also a little comic relief tonight too, provided by Josh Hawley - he's the doorknob senator who, from afar, raised his fist in solidarity with the mob. but then went running like a rabbit when the mob broke into the Capitol. The whole hearing room laughed: And Twitter posted soundtracks:
Trump looked criminal during this hearing, but also incompetent: The MSNBC panel talked about Trump wandering around the White House, refusing to take off his overcoat because he was trying to get the Secret Service to take him back to the Capital: Seth Abramson tweeted the hearing as it occurred. Here are some of the most interesting moments: \\ And finally Trump spent 3 hours hiding in the Oval Office dining room, until finally his family bullied him outside to tape a Retreat! message - for all his bluster, Trump can usually be bullied. But apparently they didn't let him do this message to the rioters live because they couldn't trust what he would say. So they recorded it first, and even then he babbled on about the election being stolen until he finally got around to telling the rioters to go home.
Though of course that is actually what Pence was doing.
Finally, Cheney noted the element I believe is one of the true tragedies of Jan 6:
Trump is simply furious about everything said at this hearing: This makes a good point, too: The hearings will continue into the fall, and the J6 Committee is still hoping more witnesses come forward - the courage it takes to do this is palpable: All in all, this pretty well summarizes the whole thing: This morning in the New York Times, a group of retired military published We Are Retired Generals and Admirals. Trump’s Actions on Jan. 6 Were a Dereliction of Duty. 
We each took an oath as former leaders of the armed forces to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” 
We fulfilled that oath through service to civilian leadership elected by and accountable to the American people. This essential arrangement, however, is not self-executing; it relies on civilian leaders equally committed to protecting and defending the Constitution — including, most important, the commander in chief. ...
The president’s dereliction of duty on Jan. 6 tested the integrity of this historic principle as never before, endangering American lives and our democracy. 
The lesson of that day is clear. Our democracy is not a given. To preserve it, Americans must demand nothing less from their leaders than an unassailable commitment to country over party — and to their oaths above all. 
Their message is pretty clear -- Trump cannot be trusted as Commander in Chief because he will not fulfil his oath. 
There is talk now that Trump wants to announce his 2024 candidacy soon so Garland will be reluctant to indict him. But I wonder if Trump realizes how many questions he will be getting from reporters about everything that has been revealed in the January 6 hearings? 

Finally, on a lighter note, this:
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2 comments:

sam said...

No one in America cares about this

7:00 pm
Cathie from Canada said...

More than 17 million people watched the hearing last night.

10:39 pm

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