The only objection I have to this is the phrasing. “He lead, them” “he got them to follow him,” implies cooperation. He baited them using his own Black body, he lead the racists away by giving them a target they could get at, himself. I cannot conceive of the courage that took. Shove the lead racist to get him all fired up, and thereby got the mob howling for blood to come for him rather than their original target. That is courage and dedication. The kind the blockheads crying over being called terrorists and not being able to fly home will never ever, know.
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This part.
You’ve articulated what I felt watching the video. Goodman’s actions were the result of a deep understanding that racism was a primary motivation for the terrorists. You don’t acquire that kind of knowledge casually, and his ability to act on it reflexively can only have come from years of personal experience.
That point where he’s running up the stairs, speaking into his mic and hoping backup is on the way… fucking hell. I wouldn’t have had the sangfroid to do what he did.
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If you were tempted to use an anatomical term there, I appreciate your restraint. 
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January 11, 2021 (Monday)
This morning began with House Democrats filing one article of impeachment against Trump, charging him with “incitement of insurrection.” It makes its case by noting that Trump’s months of lies about the election and his inflammatory speech to the rally on January 6-- including lines like “if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore”—led directly to “violent, deadly, destructive and seditious acts.”
The article also noted Trump’s attempt to subvert the election through his phone call on January 2, 2021, to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, demanding he “find” enough votes to overturn the results of the presidential election in the state. Including this in the impeachment article will prevent Georgia Governor Brian Kemp from pardoning Trump for it.
The article says that Trump is, and will remain, “a threat to national security, democracy, and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law.” He must be removed from office and disqualified from any future positions in the U.S. government.
This document and the procedures around it tell us far more than their simplicity suggests.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had announced the day before that the House would take up a resolution, advanced by Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), that called on Vice President Mike Pence “to convene and mobilize the Cabinet to activate the 25th Amendment to declare the President incapable of executing the duties of his office, after which the Vice President would immediately exercise powers as acting President.” The resolution did not speak to the physical or mental health of the president, but focused on his inability to fulfill his duty to respect the legitimate results of the Presidential election, accept the peaceful transfer of power, protect the people of the United States, and see that the laws be faithfully executed.
This resolution was a generous offer to Republicans. It limited its condemnation of Trump to his quite obvious refusal to accept the election results, rather than digging deeper into his behavior. Pelosi also called for Unanimous Consent to bring up the Raskin resolution. This was a way to give cover to Republicans who didn’t want to go on the record against Trump, but who want him out of power in favor of Pence.
Although extremist Republicans are trying to argue that removing Trump shows Democratic partisanship, in fact, Pelosi was trying to give Republicans as much cover as possible.
It was a Trump Republican who shot that down. Representative Alex Mooney (R-WV) objected to Unanimous Consent, which means that when the measure comes up again tomorrow, each Republican will have to vote either for it or against it. Mooney has condemned his fellow Republicans who would not go along with Trump’s election claims, and now he is forcing them to go on record. In other words, he is making a play to force Republicans behind Trump.
The House will vote on the Raskin resolution tomorrow and will take up impeachment on Wednesday. There should be enough votes to pass both.
The tide is running strongly now against Trump and those who have supported him in his attack on our democracy. What had been shock on Wednesday is hardening into fury. Yesterday, Representative Peter Meijer (R-MI) tweeted: “I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that the President of the United States was completely MIA while the next three individuals in the lines of succession (VP, Speaker of House, Senate Pres[ident] Pro Tempore) were under assault in the Capitol. Unconscionable.”
As of tonight, the government remains MIA. We have had no briefings from the White House, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, or the Justice Department about what happened on January 6, or what has happened since. And now acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Chad Wolf has resigned, effective at midnight tonight. He will be replaced by FEMA Administrator Peter Gaynor.
The crisis is breaking the Republican Party in two. Newly elected House members have expressed dismay that they have not gotten clear instructions from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) on how they should approach this week’s votes. They say they only have the sense he would like them to support the president: pretty weak sauce to hold a coalition together.
McCarthy has his own troubles. He is closely tied to the president—Trump called him “my Kevin”-- and has been telling people that the Republicans will take the House in 2022 as voters turn against Biden, who is inheriting a colossal mess that it appears Republicans are working to make as bad as possible. But suddenly Trump is toxic. All of a sudden, McCarthy is talking about unity and working across the aisle: “As leaders, we must call on our better angels and refocus our efforts on working directly for the American people.”
McCarthy is facing the same problem Senator Rick Scott (R-FL), the new chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee is: they are supposed to bring in campaign cash, but suddenly corporations are announcing they will no longer make political donations… at least to Republicans. Judd Legum and Tesnim Zekeria at Popular Information yesterday broke the story that Marriott, BlueCross BlueShield, and Commerce Bank would not contribute to the 147 Republicans who objected to the counting of the electoral votes in Congress. That’s more than half the Republicans in Congress. Verizon, AT&T, and Amazon have now joined that boycott. Citigroup, 3M, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and JPMorgan Chase have all halted political giving for several months, and a number of other companies say they are reevaluating their giving. T-Mobile told Popular Information: “The assault on the U.S. Capitol and on democracy was unacceptable.”
It is no wonder that both McCarthy and Scott are madly backpedaling from their former pro-Trump stances and now calling for an end to partisan rancor. According to Jonathan Swan of Axios, in a phone call this morning, Trump tried to tell McCarthy it was “Antifa people” who stormed the Capitol. But McCarthy was having none of it: “It’s not Antifa, it’s MAGA. I know. I was there.” When Trump tried to rant about election fraud, McCarthy interrupted: “Stop it. It’s over. The election is over.”
But the crisis is not. Army and police forces are investigating their officers who either did participate or may have participated in the riot. The FBI warned today that online activists are planning armed protests in Washington, D.C., and at all fifty state capitols between January 16 and 20, although it is not clear that their plans will translate into mass protests. In the wake of the attack, Trump supporters are harassing lawmakers, making them fear for the safety of themselves and their families.
As Yale historian Joanne Freeman noted, threats of political violence are a means of intimidation, a way to dominate a situation when a party does not have the support of the majority. Trump’s approval rating has dropped to 33%, with 60% of voters disapproving of his job performance. Fifty-six percent of voters blame Trump for the storming of the Capitol.
Trump supporters are growing more violent perhaps because the wave against them is building. Today Hillary Clinton called for impeachment and condemned white supremacy, hardly a surprise coming from the former Democratic presidential candidate, but the news that former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a well-regarded retired four-star general and Republican senior statesman, has rejected the Republican Party sits a little harder. Perhaps even worse is that Bill Belichick, general manager of the New England Patriots and previously a Trump supporter, today declined to accept Trump’s offer of a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Insurgents now face institutional pressure, as well. The Department of Justice and the FBI are tracking down more than 150 suspects for prosecution—so far—and hackers today claimed to have captured the personal data of Parler users from Parler servers, including material that users believed they had deleted after the January 6 Capitol riot. Since rioters stole laptops and documents that included items relating to national security, they are not going to be able to drop off the radar screen.
Trump is also under pressure, the pressure of impeachment, of course, and the loss of his social media platforms. He is also under financial pressure, as Deutsche Bank, the only bank that would still lend to him, has announced it will no longer do business with him. But, according to Maggie Haberman at the New York Times, what is upsetting him most is that the PGA has pulled its 2022 golf championship from Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club.
That, not the riots, not the deaths, not impeachment, and certainly not the coronavirus–which has now killed more than 375,000 of us—has “gutted” him.
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WTF? Where do pollsters find these people? I mean, even if you support the Trumpsurrection, how do 44% of people justify the position that he’s not responsible for it?
The Biden DOJ should seize all of his election and PAC funds, as well as every cent that went to the RNC from 45’s “Stop the Steal” fundraising, via civil asset forfeiture. Can’t have a criminal enterprise using I’ll-gotten gains to elude justice, now, can we?
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That is the insane thing.
All the polls are sinking except Rasmussen, since the insurrection attempt.
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Maybe if all the poll numbers sink, he’ll finally collapse. He acts like Tinkerbell from Peter Pan - near death without applause from his fans to revive him.
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Sadly, he has sufficiently addled followers who will keep applauding even as he kills them. Not even kidding.
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unfortunately, most of my family is in this boat. after expressing ( in a text ) how horrified i was at what was happening in the capitol and asking if my dc area family was doing okay – i was told a bunch of stuff about god, god’s plan, and “wait and see” if biden ever becomes president.
they are worried that blm will destroy the country, but that we don’t have to worry about the violence of trump supporters because god has a plan. one of them thinks the rioters were antifa, another that they were patriots… they’ll come out believing antifa hijacked a peaceful coup is my bet.
sigh
they’ve always been republican voters, and over the last 5-10 years they’ve become radicalized into a bubble where everyone in that bubble agrees with them. to break out, they’d literally be shattering that shared reality – and anyway, how can god be wrong?
i imagine they’ll all go to their graves ( hopefully a long time from now ) believing that they were right.
( sorry. /rant )
so when trump praised the attempted coup, he was praising antifa? it all gets so complicated so quickly.
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it helps me at least that’s for sure. 
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By folding in the fuzzy, right-wing fantasy of left-wing infiltrators actually committing/inspiring(???) the violence. The arrows of analysis and facts are not in their quiver.
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My guess is that once the Dem administration gets the promised $2K checks out to people, Trump – even out of office – will attempt to take credit for the disbursement. Doing that, he’s got nothing to lose (as far as what’s encompassed by his own value system), and something to gain poll-wise. Lining up for the big get-back-in-the-game putt further down the line; he’s twisted that way.
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As long as he’s doing it from prison, he can take credit for that as far as I’m concerned.
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I’d say that’s easy enough.
The ones responsible are the godless commie deviant libs who want to desecrate the great nation of the USA and provoked the righteous, downtrodden hardworking patriots. And of course the faithless RINOs in the Capitol who wouldn’t do the Lord’s work and overturn the stolen election. Why, the President begged and pleaded with them to do the right thing but they refused.
Something along those lines anyway.
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January 12, 2021 (Tuesday)
The news continues to move at a breathless pace.
After making no comments on the January 6 coup attempt since the day after, when he continued his assault on the validity of the 2020 election, Trump today refused to acknowledge he has done anything wrong. He told reporters his speech to the “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington, D.C., that prompted the assault on the Capitol, was “totally appropriate.” He insisted that “other people” had said that the “real problem” was “the horrible riots in Portland and Seattle and various other places.”
Instead of addressing his role in the crisis, on his way to Alamo, Texas (not The Alamo, which is in San Antonio, Texas, about four hours away from Alamo), Trump blamed the Democrats for attacking him unfairly. He said that the Democrats who were pushing for impeachment were once again on a “witch hunt” that was “causing tremendous danger to our country.”
No one is buying it.
There are three real stories right now with regard to this crisis. The first is that what happened on January 6 when rioters stormed the Capitol, and what led to that attack, is getting clearer, and none of the details are good. The second, and related, story is that the Republicans are splitting, and their leadership is trying desperately to find a way to remain powerful. The third ties the first two together: lawmakers are preparing to throw Trump out of office.
Today the FBI finally briefed the public on the events of January 6. Contradicting reports that said there was no sign of trouble in advance, an FBI official said that on Tuesday, the bureau warned that extremists were going to muster in Washington, D.C., to launch a “war.” Today, the bureau announced 160 case files on the insurrection and said this was just the beginning. Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Michael Sherwin said people will be shocked about some of the things that happened inside the Capitol. He also said the Department of Justice is considering filing charges of sedition against some of the riot’s participants.
A separate briefing for House Democratic committee chairs seemed to leave them shaken by the scope of the insurgency. “This was not a peaceful protest that got out of hand,” they said in a statement. “This was an attempted coup to derail our Constitutional process and intimidate our duly elected leaders through violence.” “[W]e have grave concerns about ongoing and violent threats to our democracy. It is clear that more must be done to preempt, penetrate, and prevent deadly and seditious assaults by domestic violent extremists in the days ahead.”
Calls for Trump’s impeachment continue to escalate. Today the New York Times editorial board blamed Trump and his supporters in Congress and in the right-wing media for the Capitol attack, “a crime so brazen that it demands the highest form of accountability that the legislature can deliver.” Perhaps of more interest to Trump’s accomplices is that today Walmart joined other corporations in refusing to donate money to the Republican lawmakers who voted against counting the electoral votes for Biden in the states Trump falsely insisted had voted for him.
The pressure of those two things made Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney (R-WY), the third most powerful House Republican, today come out in favor of impeachment. McConnell acknowledged that Trump had committed impeachable offenses and told other Republican leaders he welcomed the House’s actions. In the House, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy opposes impeachment personally, but has decided not to try to lobby fellow Republicans against it, turning them loose to vote as they wish. For her part, Cheney announced she will vote to impeach the president.
Cheney’s statement suggests that part of what is driving the Republican willingness to entertain impeachment is that there will be more coming out about January 6 and Republicans want to dump Trump rather than be associated with him. She wrote: “Much more will become clear in coming days and weeks, but what we know now is enough. The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President. The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.”
It is undoubtedly also of great significance to McConnell that the actions of Trump and his supporters in Congress have led major donors to close their wallets. The less money McConnell has to dole out, the less power he has, and the weaker the Republicans’ chances of retaking the Senate in 2022. McConnell wants that spigot of money to reopen.
He would also like to use this moment to get rid of Trump and his supporters from Republican leadership. Trump has led the party to a major defeat and made it so reviled that it has lost the White House and the Senate, defeats for which McConnell blames the president. Indeed, the Trump administration is so reviled that today European officials took the unprecedented step of refusing to meet with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on a scheduled trip to Europe this week. He was forced to cancel his trip at the last minute. McConnell may have been announcing his support for impeachment to put pressure on Trump to resign, which would enable Republicans to avoid voting on the issue and head off an irreparable split.
For their part, the Trump Republicans are doubling down. Law enforcement has installed metal detectors for congress members to enter the House chamber, and Louis Gohmert (R-TX), for one, simply walked around it. “You can’t stop me; I’m on my way to a vote,” he told the police officers.
Tonight, by a vote of 223-205, the House passed the Raskin resolution urging Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment and begin the process of removing Trump from office. Pence had already told House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that he would not do so. In a letter to Pelosi, Pence said, “I do not believe that such a course of action is in the best interest of our Nation or consistent with our Constitution.” He maintains that the 25th should be used only in cases when the president is incapacitated or disabled, neither of which, he says, is the case now. Pence’s statement gave Republicans in the House cover to vote against the Raskin resolution. Only one, Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) voted in favor.
That leaves Congress to move forward with impeachment, which it will do tomorrow. As of today, five House Republicans have announced they will join the Democrats in support of the measure.
Meanwhile, all eight of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the military, including chair Mark Milley, today reminded service members of their oath to the Constitution and warned against “violence, sedition and insurrection.” They reminded members of the military that “any act to disrupt the Constitutional process is not only against our tradition, values, and oath; it is against the law.”
“On January, 20, 2021," they wrote, "in accordance with the Constitution, confirmed by the states and the courts, and certified by Congress, President-elect Biden will be inaugurated and will become our 46th Commander in Chief.”
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If they can’t enforce the law for everyone entering the building, was any lesson learned last week? We’ve got too many lawmakers who believe they are above the law. This is beyond the pale.
They work in a building where many refuse to follow basic medical guidelines during a pandemic. We cannot afford to have multiple members of Congress continuing to infect their colleagues with COVID-19. I wonder what recourse those infected have, how many have been vaccinated, and whether or not there are basic workplace health and safety protections for officials and staffers who work in DC.
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dad? is that you?
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Nice to see Heather popping up on Newsnight last night and offering some more excellent analysis. I can’t seem to find the full interview though.
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January 13, 2021 (Wednesday)
At 4:22 this afternoon, the House of Representatives passed the number of votes necessary to impeach Trump. In the end, 232 Representatives—222 Democrats and 10 Republicans—agreed that the president had incited an insurrection and must be removed from office. But 197 Republicans disagreed.
And so, Donald Trump makes the history books as the first president of the United States of America to be impeached twice.
This is an indictment of him, of course, but also of the Republican Party that let him off the hook a year ago for undermining the national security of the United States as he tried to steal the 2020 election. Shortly before the Senate vote on conviction almost exactly a year ago, House impeachment manager Adam Schiff (D-CA) charged his Republican colleagues to look to the future, telling them, “you know you can’t trust this President to do what’s right for this country. You can trust he will do what’s right for Donald Trump. He’ll do it now. He’s done it before. He’ll do it for the next several months. He’ll do it in the election if he’s allowed to.”
But every Republican senator other than Mitt Romney (R-UT) voted to acquit the president of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. And now, here we are.
A week ago, our Capitol was overrun by insurgents seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and install Trump in the White House for at least another term. In their fury, they murdered a Capitol Police officer and came within a hair’s breadth of getting their hands on our elected officials.
The insurgents were answering the call of their president, who urged them to fight for him and claim a victory he insisted, without evidence, had been stolen from him. As they stormed the Capitol and aid did not come for the besieged lawmakers, Trump watched events unfold on the television, pleased… and, as people have begun to note, curiously unsurprised.
In the week since the attack, emerging information indicates the insurgency was planned, not spontaneous, and that lawmakers might be involved. Democrats have stood up to this attack on our democracy, but Republicans are in the same bind they’ve been in for years: how can they both keep Trump’s voters and reject Trump himself? Some establishment Republicans who have their own bases of power–Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Romney, for example-- have finally said enough is enough, and have come out against the president.
But Republican lawmakers whose only base is Trump supporters have downplayed the attack that killed five people, including a police officer, and wounded many others; defended Trump; and argued that any attempt to remove him is simply a dangerous Democratic effort to create divisions in society. They warn that holding Trump accountable will anger his supporters even more, an observation that many interpret as a threat.
This Republican split showed up today. Liz Cheney (R-WY), chair of the House Republican Conference, blamed the president for the attack on the Capitol and voted to impeach him. But only nine other Republicans joined her. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) tried to split the baby by blaming the president for the attack on the Capitol but voting against impeachment. Trump loyalists like Jim Jordan (R-OH), who just received the Medal of Freedom from Trump, continued to allege that the election was tainted. They supported Trump wholeheartedly and attacked the Democrats. Refusing to acknowledge that their attacks on the election created the crisis in the first place, they called for unity and blamed the Democrats for dividing America.
One hundred and ninety-seven Republicans voted against impeaching the president. A year ago, Schiff infuriated Republicans by repeating a rumor published by CBS News that White House officials had warned party members: “Vote against the president and your head will be on a pike.” Today, rumors swirled that a number of Republicans did not dare to vote in favor of impeachment because they feared for their safety and that of their loved ones.
While the House debated impeachment, the FBI continued to hunt down the insurgents, companies withdrew support from Republicans who supported the attacks on the election, and New York City canceled $17 million worth of contracts with the Trump Organization.
The article of impeachment now goes to the Senate. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) suggested yesterday that he supported impeachment, but today said he would not change the Senate’s schedule to permit a trial before January 19. McConnell was likely pushing impeachment to pressure Trump to resign but, having failed, will do the bare minimum to guide the Republican Party past this moment. He needs to bend just enough to loosen up the purse strings of the companies who are saying they won’t continue to support Republicans who attacked our elections and launched a coup.
In the next week, Trump Republicans might be able to convince Americans that holding Republican insurrectionists responsible for their actions is Democratic overreaction. In that case, the Republicans can avoid taking a stand either for or against Trump while they turn this moment into a referendum on the Democrats just as they take power in the national government. They are running this play headlong, complaining bitterly, for example, about the new metal detectors installed at the entrance to the House chamber-- even as National Guard personnel patrolled the Capitol to protect them-- and complaining about “censorship” to television cameras after Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube removed QAnon accounts and Trump’s accounts.
It could also be that, as more information comes out, the story will get even worse, and it will be easier for senators to vote to convict, especially once Trump is out of office. Yesterday’s briefings by the FBI and acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Michael Sherwin gave notice that the evolving story of what happened on January 6 will be shocking and could well involve figures in government. More than 30 House Democrats have called attention to an unusual number of Capitol tours held on January 5, at a time when coronavirus restrictions have largely ended tours. Those tours, combined with the fact that the insurrectionists appeared to have a detailed knowledge of the Capitol complex, have led to suspicions that some members of Congress might have offered aid to the rioters.
A sign that there is something big still hanging out there came tonight in the form of a taped video by Trump himself, emphasizing that he disavowed violence and defending the right to free speech protected in the First Amendment to the Constitution. It sounded like a charge and a defense. To release such a video means he must be worried indeed about his legal exposure.
Another sign is that virtually no one in the White House tried to defend Trump from today’s impeachment. There were no talking points, no briefings, no interviews, no calls to lawmakers. Even White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, who defended the president at his first impeachment last year, wanted people to know he was not defending him this time.
Furious and isolated, Trump is lashing out at those he blamed for getting him into this mess. He has told aides that he wants personally to approve any expenses his lawyer Rudy Giuliani ran up as he traveled around the country to challenge election results, and he has told them not to pay Giuliani’s legal fees.
Trump had largely given up governing after the election anyway, but now our government seems to be operating haphazardly. Today, Israeli warplanes hit Iranian and Iranian-backed militia positions in Syria. Israeli forces are often active in this area, but this was the hardest attack in years, hitting missiles recently brought to the area and killing around 40 people. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted Trump to pressure Iran before he left office, and this strike seems intended to demonstrate a U.S.-Israeli partnership against Iran. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Yossi Cohen, the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, made this message obvious by being seen together Monday at Café Milano in Washington, D.C., a restaurant the Washington Post described as “Washington’s ultimate place to see and be seen.”
Also yesterday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced new coronavirus vaccine schedule guidelines, as the U.S. reported 4,327 deaths from Covid-19. In the first 13 days of 2021, we have seen more than 3 million new infections. More than 23 million Americans have been infected so far.
Almost exactly a year ago, on January 23, 2020, Adam Schiff urged Senate Republicans to convict Trump for abusing his power and obstructing Congress, and to remove him from office. “Now,” he said, “you may be asking how much damage can he really do in the next several months until the election?
“A lot,” Schiff said. “A lot of damage.”
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