Incoming Secretary Pete Buttigieg is gonna have to fly to Washington faster than he thought he’d have to. But he’d better be careful. MAGA goons are so drunk and violent on flights to and from DC that American Airlines has stopped serving liquor. The flight attendants union has asked that MAGA goons be barred from all upcoming flights out of DC.
Trump looked scared for another reason. Ask Danton and Robespierre what happens when violent revolutions get out of control. I mean, ask their heads.
Hawley … encourage[d] the crowd that would later breach the Capitol … pumping a fist at them as he went in to take his stand against American democracy. [He was foremost among those who] started yesterday’s whole sick show, and Congress should censure or expel [him] for [his] role.
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Update: Toxic seditionist Hawley receives a negative Rate My Professors evaluation from the law school where he used to teach. This letter, in which his former University of Missouri students beg him to resign from the Senate and look forward to the day when their school’s reputation is not “severely damaged” by association with him, is making the rounds.
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Second Update: “Hawley didn’t just own the libs, he gave permission to dark forces he is too childish, privileged and self-absorbed to understand. Hawley sold his soul to all that is ugly for the sake of his own personal celebrity.”
David Brooks, NYT.
In the race for the very bottom, UD’s calling it for West Virginia over Alabama (see Alabama’s entry below), cuz it jest don’t get no better than Derrick Evans!
A newly elected lawmaker from West Virginia was among the mob of Trump supporters who stormed the United States Capitol on Wednesday, filming as he stood among the crowd outside a door, rushed with them inside and then wandered through the halls along with the scores of others who had breached the building…
“We’re going in,” he says, at one point turning the camera to show himself wearing a helmet.
Suddenly the crowd moves quickly and the crowd rushes in, one woman screaming “We did it!” and Mr. Evans shouting “Derrick Evans is in the Capitol!”
Statesmanship, West Virginia style! You bet yer ass baby!!!
We’ve known celebrated football coach Tommy Tuberville for a long time on this blog; he’s an old friend! Famous for Ponzi schemes, punching his coaches (on camera), beating his players, demanding university-budget-destroying payouts and if he doesn’t get them threatening lawsuits, Tuberville is your standard-issue big-time football coach. And with that financial and ethical history, his next step was obvious: US Senator from Alabama!
Tommy joined the Treason Caucus with incredible enthusiasm, condemning Biden’s fraudulent election to the very end and releasing a statement today that…
Oh. Alabama’s other congresspeople have released statements, but Tommy… Welp, guess Tommy’s not quarterbacking today! Haha! Where the hell’s Tommy?
Tommy?
Now I don’t want you to think UD‘s doin’ that thang where coastal elites make fun of Alabama accents and tell you people from Alabama’s real dumb so let me clarify by quoting some stuff Senator Tuberville, when he was in a more talkative mood, said about the US government he’s trying to bring down from his powerful position as a Senator.
Our government wasn’t set up for one group to have all three branches of government — wasn’t set up that way,” [Senator-Elect Tommy] Tuberville said. “You know, the House, the Senate, and the executive... [A] guy can run for president of the United States and have an opportunity to win when he leans more to a Socialist type of government, you know, one-payer system in health care, raise taxes 20%, when the other half the country is basically voting for freedom, let us control our own lives, stay out of our life. And that’s concerning to me that we’re to the point now where we’ve got almost half the country voting for something that this country wasn’t built on. Very concerning and, you know, as I tell people, my dad fought 76 years ago in Europe to free Europe of Socialism.
Today, you look at this election, we have half this country that made some kind of movement, now they might not believe in it 100 percent, but they made some kind of movement toward socialism. So we’re fighting it right here on our own soil… I remember in 2000 Al Gore was president, United States, president elect, for 30 days – 30 days – and after 30 days, it got to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court says, no, George Bush is going to be the president…
Get to know your Treason Caucus! This the first of a series of introductions this blog will provide to the newest, and already most high-profile, congressional caucus.
The first of many (?) Republican members of congress calls for the Paranoid Schizophrenic in Chief to be removed via the 25th Amendment.
And then there’s this.
… Jared Kushner’s father [in an email] told a friend that Trump’s actions are “beyond our control.” … [The] president has gotten untethered; there is no longer anyone at all to mediate, even in a craven or enabling way, between his impulses and those of his most delusional, violent supporters. And with his social media accounts shut down, we lack even the usual level of awful access to the pattern of his thoughts. The man who is nothing but performance has been cut off from the audience that gives him shape and meaning.
What is the president doing? Is there a president right now, really? The safety line has gone slack in the cave, and we are all waiting to see what kind of thing will come back out.
Great news, especially for our national security.
Here is an exact equivalence; here is what Donald Trump has done to us.
In 2012 ISIS men took over a university in Tunisia. Their first act: Replacing the Tunisian flag with the flag of ISIS.
Unlike here in the US, where whatever initial paltry police presence seems to have done virtually nothing, a very brave woman student at the Tunisian university confronted the ISIS thugs and tried to replace the national flag. They almost killed her.
So there we are. Here we are. Violent insurrectionists successfully replaced the American flag with a Trump flag.
The NYT calls for Trump’s impeachment or criminal prosecution; UD finds herself wondering whether a quicker cleaner way of stashing him in Florida for the duration would be something like the following:
Pence and McConnell, after meeting to work out their strategy, meet with Trump and lay out his options:
Shumer (the new Senate Majority Leader) begins by saying that we can add January 6 to this country’s list of days that will live in infamy.
[This stain on our country is] the final terrible, indelible legacy of the 45th president of the United States — undoubtedly our worst.
(“Final” is far too optimistic. If Trump isn’t removed soon, worse is probably in store.)
Today’s events did not happen spontaneously. The president who promoted conspiracy theories that motivated these thugs… This president bears a great deal of the blame. This mob was in good part President Trump’s doing – incited by his words, his lies. This violence in good part was his responsibility and his everlasting shame… [This was a] final warning to our nation about a demagogic president… who attempts to push America to the brink of ruin.
They stormed the doors, shattering glass. Office buildings near the Capitol were evacuated; the Senate was put on lockdown, as an unduly indulgent Capitol police force were unable to stop those conditioned for a coup from the top from streaming in to the august, hushed halls of legislature. Congress was disputing the results of the Electoral College certification for the third time in 120 years; facetious speeches in favor of nebulous theories of voter fraud were halted, the session adjourned, and senators donned gas masks. The months of waiting had simmered over and the end of the story had arrived. So, there you have it: When a conspiracy is deferred, it explodes.
He appeared to be past caring whether anyone listening heard that as a call to violence.
Several politicians, lying flat on the floor with gas masks on, are calling it an attempted coup.
The city is dealing with a large lawless mob. Curfews mean nothing to them.
All these years, Pence has, single-handedly, played two roles: Hamlet’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. A vacuous, barely noticed, fundamentally out of his depth idiot, a useful tool of kings and princes, he, like his Shakespearean precursors, will probably be killed when his usefulness ends. Trump clearly wants this quisling dead (along with a lot of other people), and he’ll probably get what he wants.
[A] protester in the Senate yelled: ‘Where’s Pence, show yourself!’
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Recall Tom Friedman’s opinion piece the other day. He warned that Trump, Cruz, Jordan, Hawley, were doing extremely dangerous things, playing with extremely dangerous forces.
Well, here we go.