January 6 Hearings Live

[T.G.G. Moogly]

How does that saying go about being persuaded logically and reasonably out of a position that one was not logically and reasonably persuaded into?

 

[ideologyhunter]

Reported on MSNBC tonight (1/18/21):
Did Biden legitimately win the election? All voters: 65% yes, 35% no.
GOP voters only: 21% yes, 74% no.
My Diet Vernors just went flat. (Not that there's much a surprise in the poll.)

 

[Elixir]

Reported on MSNBC tonight (1/18/21):
Did Biden legitimately win the election? All voters: 65% yes, 35% no.
GOP voters only: 21% yes, 74% no.
My Diet Vernors just went flat. (Not that there's much a surprise in the poll.)

You got what you deserved. Diet Vernors is an abomination.

 

[lpetrich]

How she got started.

Despite these delusions, Ms. Gilbert — a self-described mystic who has written four books, with titles like “Swami Soup” — mostly struck me as a New Age eccentric who could use some time away from screens. She disdains the mainstream media, but she agreed to be profiled, and we kept in touch.

Over a series of conversations, I learned that she had a longstanding suspicion of elites dating back to her Harvard days, when she felt out of place among people she considered snobby rich kids. As an adult, she joined the anti-establishment left, advocating animal rights and supporting the Standing Rock oil pipeline protests. She admired the hacktivist group Anonymous, and looked up to whistle-blowers like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. She was a registered Democrat for most of her life, but she voted for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, in the 2016 presidential election after deciding that both major parties were corrupt.

Then she learned about Pizzagate and how Hillary Clinton's e-mails described that scandal in code.

“The world opened up in Technicolor for me,” she said. “It was like the Matrix — everything just started to download.”

Then she learned about QAnon, and her politics went far right.

Seemingly overnight, her Facebook feed switched from Change.org petitions and cute animal photos to Gateway Pundit links and “Killary Clinton” memes.

Her involvement with QAnon is purely virtual, and she has never been to a QAnon rally. Then about "Q" dropping out after the election. Many QAnon believers are worried. "But Ms. Gilbert isn’t worried. For her, QAnon was always less about Q and more about the crowdsourced search for truth."

She is divorced and has lived alone for years, and the pandemic has only sharpened her isolation. She thinks the danger of Covid-19 is overblown, and refuses to wear a mask (except at the grocery store, where she has no choice). As a result, her neighbors steer clear of her, and she feels their wrath every time she steps outside.

“I am called names and abused,” she told me during a recent call. “A 90-year-old woman who lives in my building cursed me out today on the sidewalk.”

Ms. Gilbert insists that she’s a lone wolf by choice, but becoming a pariah has clearly taken a toll. She compares Manhattan to Nazi Germany, and speaks bitterly about the friends she has lost. (I talked to several of those former friends. They miss her, but can’t imagine reconciling with her in her current state.)

 

[lpetrich]

Off the rails: Trump mainlines election conspiracies as Oval Office descends into madness - Axios

Episode 3: The conspiracy goes too far. Trump's outside lawyers plot to seize voting machines and spin theories about communists, spies and computer software.

...
Trump's new gang of advisers shared some common traits. They were sycophants who craved an audience with the president. They were hardcore conspiracy theorists. The other striking commonality within this crew was that all of them had, at one point in their lives, done impressive, professional, mainstream work.

Rudy Giuliani once was "America's Mayor," hailed for his handling of 9/11. Powell was a successful attorney who defended Enron. Michael Flynn was a decorated three-star general whom Obama fired and then Trump brought back as his national security adviser, before firing him and ultimately pardoning him. Lin Wood was a nationally known defamation lawyer. Patrick Byrne made a small fortune launching the internet retailer Overstock.com.

One exception was Jenna Ellis. She had a thin legal resume, and had in the 2016 campaign season used adjectives like "idiot," "boorish," "arrogant," "bully," and "disgusting" to characterize Trump and his behavior. But during Trump's presidency, she pushed her way into his inner circle, powered by levels of televised obsequiousness remarkable even for Trumpworld.

Powell and Wood distinguished themselves with their extremism. Even Giuliani began distancing himself, telling anyone who'd listen that Powell didn't represent the president. But Trump promoted Powell as part of his team, and even though he had privately admitted to aides that he thought she was "crazy," he still wanted to hear what she had to say.

Their support of Trump was a major embarrassment. Some people have talked about disbarring some of them, like Rudy Giuliani. But I found Mellissa Carone very amusing. Her first name is apparently spelled with two l's and not the usual one.

 

[lpetrich]

By this point, Trump was mainlining conspiracies. Many of his longest-serving advisers had all but given up trying to reason with him.

His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, billed once by Newsweek as the most influential presidential relative since Bobby Kennedy, receded from the discussions when it came to countering the crazies. Once Giuliani took over, Kushner subsided from view, trying to cut last minute deals in the Middle East and burnish his foreign policy legacy. This frustrated some of his colleagues. Serious intervention was required on the domestic front.

Whether Trump himself was still in charge, or had ceded decision-making to the bottom feeders, was at least an open question.

Off the rails: Trump's premeditated election lie lit the fire - Axios

Episode 1: Trump’s refusal to believe the election results was premeditated. He had heard about the “red mirage” — the likelihood that early vote counts would tip more Republican than the final tallies — and he decided to exploit it.

As the clock ticked over into the first minutes of Nov. 4, Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani ranted to top campaign aides: "There's no way he lost; this thing must have been stolen. Just say we won Michigan! Just say we won Georgia! Just say we won the election! He needs to go out and claim victory." Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien later told associates: "That was fucking crazy."

For weeks, Trump had been laying the groundwork to declare victory on election night — even if he lost. But the real-time results, punctuated by Fox’s shocking call, upended his plans and began his unraveling.

But when it did not look like he was winning, his plans unraveled.

Over the next two months, Trump took the nation down with him as he descended into denial, despair and a reckless revenge streak that fueled a deadly siege on the U.S. Capitol by his backers seeking to overturn the election. This triggered a constitutional crisis and a bipartisan push to impeach Trump on his way out the door, to try to cast him out of American politics for good.

But in four years, Trump had remade the Republican Party in his own image, inspiring and activating tens of millions of Americans who weren’t abandoning him anytime soon. He’d once bragged he could shoot another person on Fifth Avenue and not lose his voters. In reality, many of them had eagerly lined up to commit violence on his behalf.

But during election night, he still claimed victory.

The speechwriters sent a draft to Trump’s longtime teleprompter operator, stationed at his laptop in a small room adjoining the East Room. The draft did not include the words that became the most infamous line of his speech: “Frankly, we did win this election.”

At 2:20 a.m., maskless aides and supporters in the East Room held up cellphones to record Trump, the first lady, Vice President Mike Pence and his wife walking out to waiting cameras as "Hail to the Chief" played. Dozens of American flags lined the backdrop behind them.

Trump declared victory — and announced that Democrats were perpetrating a giant fraud on the American people.

Both claims were lies.

 

[lpetrich]

Off the rails: Conspiracy theorists commandeer Trump’s legal operation - Axios

Episode 2: Trump stops buying what his professional staff are telling him, and increasingly turns to radical voices telling him what he wants to hear. Read episode 1.

President Trump plunked down in an armchair in the White House residence, still dressed from his golf game — navy fleece, black pants, white MAGA cap. It was Saturday, Nov. 7. The networks had just called the election for Joe Biden.

In the Yellow Oval Room, the same room where FDR learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, stewards brought hors d’oeuvres on trays while Trump gathered his closest political advisers to assess what options he had left.

Top aides including campaign manager Bill Stepien, senior adviser Jason Miller, conservative political activist and external Trump adviser David Bossie, and Justin Clark, the deputy campaign manager, leveled with him. As they saw it, he had one last long shot at victory. It would require them to win enough outstanding votes in Arizona and Georgia to squeak home in those two states, and to win a legal challenge to election practices in Wisconsin.

...
Biden was declared the winner of Arizona on Nov. 12, by more than 11,000 votes, a margin that was uncatchable. At that point, the core campaign team told Trump his pathway was dead. In retaliation, Trump stopped listening to them. Giuliani was gaining influence, speaking directly with the president and demanding to be put in charge.

What a sore loser.

It played like a B movie. Black sweat, apparently from hair dye, rolled down Giuliani's face as he rambled about a supposed Democratic conspiracy to rig the vote in major cities. Powell, once a respected federal prosecutor, alleged an international communist plot by Cuba, China, Venezuela, George Soros, and the Clinton Foundation.

 

[lpetrich]

Off the rails: Inside the disintegration of Trump’s relationship with Bill Barr - Axios

Episode 4: Trump torches what is arguably the most consequential relationship in his Cabinet.

Attorney General Bill Barr stood behind a chair in the private dining room next to the Oval Office, looming over Donald Trump. The president sat at the head of the table. It was Dec. 1, nearly a month after the election, and Barr had some sharp advice to get off his chest. The president's theories about a stolen election, Barr told Trump, were "bullshit."

...
Barr decided to quit before their private skirmishes spilled further into public view. Some speculated he had quit over the president's increasingly questionable pardons. But that had nothing to do with it. Barr had made it clear to Cipollone he did not want to be consulted on these post-election pardons. He did not need to hear about them until he received the official notices. The only pardon he made an effort to preemptively stop was for Edward Snowden.

Off the rails: Inside Trump’s aborted plan to control the CIA - Axios

Episode 5: Trump vs. Gina — The president becomes increasingly rash and devises a plan to tamper with the nation's intelligence command.

In his final weeks in office, after losing the election to Joe Biden, President Donald Trump embarked on a vengeful exit strategy that included a hasty and ill-thought-out plan to jam up CIA Director Gina Haspel by firing her top deputy and replacing him with a protege of Republican Congressman Devin Nunes.

The series cuts off here. But I'll be checking on it to see what updates it gets.

 

[SLD]

Thanks for these Ipetrich. The mass delusion that Trump has dragged the whole country into is insane. I keep thinking of a line in the series of Rome where Cicero says he’s going back to the country until Rome comes to its senses. But it never does. It just spirals down more and more. There is a madness that won’t be easily cured. You cannot reason with these people. Where will it end?

If I blame one thing though it is the Supreme Court. They have handed the keys to power to the uber rich for the last few decades, and cut off ordinary Americans from their government that something like this was bound to happen.

 

[SLD]

So. About 36 hours left in the shit show. Will Trump try to stop this one more time? The my pillow guy, Mark Lindell, met with the President and allegedly suggested that he invoke the insurrection act and try to declare martial law. The military has already said no to that. But I don’t trust trump and I just wonder if he’ll try to pull some shit.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

So. About 36 hours left in the shit show. Will Trump try to stop this one more time? The my pillow guy, Mark Lindell, met with the President and allegedly suggested that he invoke the insurrection act and try to declare martial law. The military has already said no to that. But I don’t trust trump and I just wonder if he’ll try to pull some shit.

View attachment 31442

I mean, it's MyPillow guy. What can he do?

 

[Deepak]

I mean, it's MyPillow guy. What can he do?

He’s probably relaying the message to someone else. And most terrorist cells don’t self fund.

Though he just got a C&D from Dominion, and if the Powell complaint is anything to go by, he’s in for some cash flow issues.

 

[ideologyhunter]

1/19/21
Last full day of this maniac's four years. Jesus Christ. All played out. Look at the wrecking work done to the way we had our government structured. Our humiliation in full view of the world. We had our own sacking of Rome, complete with hooligans in face paint, wearing horns, looking for people to beat, throttle, and hang. Disease out of control, a poleaxed economy, debt as far as the eye can see. A revivitalized and crazed militia movement. itching to terrorize, burn, detonate, and kill. Outrageous lies are now the common coin of political discourse.
Bye, Donald. May 'very horrible' things happen to you and your family.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Revitalized. I knew that looked wrong.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

So. About 36 hours left in the shit show. Will Trump try to stop this one more time? The my pillow guy, Mark Lindell, met with the President and allegedly suggested that he invoke the insurrection act and try to declare martial law. The military has already said no to that. But I don’t trust trump and I just wonder if he’ll try to pull some shit.

What in the heck?! The document appears oldish, as it refers to things that Sidney Powell mentioned already. I find it odd that it is redacted. But odder that this asshole is even at the White House!

 

[Angry Floof]

1/19/21
Last full day of this maniac's four years. Jesus Christ. All played out. Look at the wrecking work done to the way we had our government structured. Our humiliation in full view of the world. We had our own sacking of Rome, complete with hooligans in face paint, wearing horns, looking for people to beat, throttle, and hang. Disease out of control, a poleaxed economy, debt as far as the eye can see. A revivitalized and crazed militia movement. itching to terrorize, burn, detonate, and kill. Outrageous lies are now the common coin of political discourse.
Bye, Donald. May 'very horrible' things happen to you and your family.

This.

 

[lpetrich]

Off the rails: Inside Air Force One ahead of Trump's last stand in Georgia - Axios

Episode 6: Georgia had not backed a Democratic presidential candidate since 1992 and Donald Trump's defeat in this Deep South stronghold, and his reaction to that loss, would help cost Republicans the U.S. Senate as well. Georgia was Trump's last stand.

...
If both David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler — the two embattled Georgia senators he was campaigning for — lost their runoff elections the following day, the GOP would lose control of the U.S. Senate. And Trump did not want the blood of Georgia on his hands.

...
Loeffler and Perdue had been desperate to get Trump to return to Georgia. They'd backed his 11th-hour demands for $2,000 stimulus checks, an about-face for the two multimillionaire conservatives.

...
The situation in Georgia was fraught. Establishment Republicans feared Trump's volatile denunciation of top state election officials would depress turnout.

Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, and others tried to impress on Trump the importance of supporting the Republican candidates.

But the president wasn't hearing it. He would immediately derail these conversations with McConnell by ranting about the stolen election and his conspiracies of fraud.

The two Democrats won by sizable margins, enough to avoid recounts. Voter turnout among Republicans was down, likely to Trump's claiming that the electoral process is fraudulent.

Trump was right that everyone would blame him. After all, he had spent months puncturing confidence in the voting system, turning his fire on Georgia’s own GOP leadership, and obsessing over states that he had lost fair and square.

He had allowed outsiders and conspiracists to supplant the professionals around him. He had fed a national sense of mistrust, rage and despair. Georgia was the last state where Trump would take his stand.

He was about to incinerate his legacy. Within 24 hours, the feral ground troops the president had summoned to execute his fantasy of overturning the election would storm the steps of the U.S. Capitol.

Looking forward to that.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Conspiracy charges filed by Justice Department for planning and coordinating breach of Capitol.

Prosecutors have levied the first significant conspiracy charge against an apparent leader in the extremist Oath Keepers movement, alleging the Virginia man was involved in "planning and coordinating" the breach, according to court documents.

The Justice Department charged Thomas Caldwell, a 65-year-old from Virginia with a leadership role in the paramilitary right-wing group, with four counts, including conspiracy to commit an offense, obstruction of an official proceeding and "Violent entry or disorderly conduct."

 

[ZiprHead]

[YOUTUBE]https://youtu.be/hWqAvVNekLo[/YOUTUBE]

 

[SLD]

Just as I feared Trump just went on TV and said he's won - as long as only the legal votes are counted. Next expect Barr to try to pull some shit to stop the illegal vote counting. Federal officials will take over and complete the counts in the remaining states to ensure that only legal votes are counted. DHS officials will help. Just like they did in Portland.

Or something like that. Don't trust these fucktards one iota. They'll pull this shit clear as day.

Well. It’s over. I was right not to trust this fucker. He tried to stop it every legal and illegal way he could, but in the end he failed, just like for most all of his presidency. Fuck Trump.