I confess. I did not watch Trump’s State of the Union address. I went to sleep early and got a good night’s sleep.
Trump used the longest SOTU in history to assail Democrats and to lie about his accomplishments.
So glad I didn’t watch.
Archives for category: Lies
Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize winner in economics, wrote regularly for The New York Times. Now he writes a blog at Substack. In this post, he characterizes the deepening dysfunction of our president, Donald Trump.
Things are not going well politically for Donald Trump. The polls show him underwater on every major issue. And while he insists that these are fake, it’s clear that he knows better. He recently lamented that the Republicans will do badly in the midterms and even floated the idea that midterms should be canceled.
And as January 6th 2021 showed, Trump simply can’t stand political rejection. He will do anything, use any tool or any person at his disposal, to obliterate the sources of that rejection.
So as we head into the 2026 midterm season, the best way to understand U.S. policy is that it’s in the pursuit of one crucial objective: Propping up Trump’s fragile ego.
What was the motivation for the abduction of Nicolás Maduro? It wasn’t about drugs, which were always an obvious pretense. By Trump’s own account it wasn’t about democracy. Trump talks a lot about oil, but Venezuela’s heavy, hard-to-process oil and its decrepit oil infrastructure aren’t big prizes. The Financial Timesreports that U.S. oil companies won’t invest in Venezuela unless they receive firm guarantees. One investor told the paper, “No one wants to go in there when a random fucking tweet can change the entire foreign policy of the country.”
The real purpose of the abduction, surely, was to give Trump an opportunity to strut around and act tough. But this ego gratification, like a sugar rush, won’t last long. Voters normally rally around the president at the beginning of a war. The invasion of Iraq was initially very popular. But the action in Venezuela hasn’t had any visible rally-around-the-flag effect. While Republicans, as always, support Trump strongly, independents are opposed:
And now the story of the moment is the atrocity in Minneapolis, where…an ICE agent killed Renee Nicole Good by shooting her in the head.
Trump and his minions responded by flatly lying about what happened. But their accounts have been refuted by video evidence which show an out-of-control ICE agent gunning down a woman who was simply trying to get away from a frightening situation. Yes, MAGA loyalists will fall into line, preferring to believe Trump rather than their own lying eyes. But public revulsion over Good’s murder and Trump’s mendacity are high and growing.
A president who actually cared about the welfare of those he governs would have taken Good’s killing as an indication that his deportation tactics have veered wildly and tragically off course. He would have called for a halt of ICE actions and made sure there would be an objective and timely federal investigation into this national tragedy.
But for Trump, ICE’s violent lawlessness is a feature, not a bug. Sending armed, masked, poorly trained, masked and out-of-control armed thugs into blue cities is, in effect, a war on Americans, just as January 6thwas a war on American institutions. In effect, Trump would rather savage his own people than be held accountable for his actions.
So in Trump’s mind, Renee Nicole Good’s murder is at most collateral damage, in service to his insatiable need to dominate and feel powerful — so insatiable that he is attempting to create an alternate reality, claiming that that Good ran over an agent although there is irrefutable video evidence that she didn’t.
And when one set of lies doesn’t work, he switches tactics – changing the topic, deflecting, and spouting even more lies. Thus, just hours after Good’s death, Trump proclaimed that he was seeking a huge increase in military spending:
It’s a near certainty that Trump’s assertion that he arrived at an immediate 50% increase in the military budget after “long and difficult negotiations” is yet another lie. There’s been no indication whatsoever that a massive increase in defense spending was on anyone’s agenda before he suddenly posted about it on Truth Social.
So what was that about? Given the timing, it’s clear that Trump’s announcement was yet another exercise in self-aggrandizement, as well as an attempt to grab the headlines away from Good’s killing. But what’s also important to realize from Trump’s announcement is that he is now clearly conflating the size of the US military with his ego. Evidently the sugar rush of Maduro’s capture has left him wanting more and more military validation, particularly as his poll numbers tank.
So here’s a warning to the US military: if you continue to indulge the sick fantasies of this man, he will drag this country into more and deeper international morasses to feed his need for glory. Do what Admiral Alvin Holsey, an honorable man, did – stand down and refuse an illegal order. Here’s a warning to the Republicans: if you continue to allow this man to perpetrate war against his own people with impunity through the actions of ICE, you will be remembered as cowards and hypocrites. Here’s a warning to all his other enablers: if you do not do something to stop this madman, you will go down in history as traitors to this country.
And here’s a warning to those directly perpetrating Trump-directed atrocities: He will not be in power forever, and I expect and hope that you will be held accountable, personally, and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Jan Resseger reminds us of the purpose of public education by quoting Derek Black’s new book Dangerous Learning, in which he writes that “public schools are the place where children—regardless of status—share a common experience, come to appreciate the public good, and prepare for equal citizenship. The purpose of public education has always been to sustain a republican form of government.” The Trump administration does not want to “sustain a Republican form of government.” It blabbers on about parents’ rights, not the common good. It is determined to destroy the U.S. Department of Education because it protects the rights of students, especially the most vulnerable. Ironically, the claims for “parents’ rights,” has been turned into a battering ram against students’ rights.
Jan writes:
In his newest book, Dangerous Learning, constitutional law scholar Derek Black explores one of the most basic reasons our public schools, our society’s most extensive and inclusive civic institution, are essential: they are an enormous system whose promise is to serve the needs and protect the rights of nearly 50 million children and adolescents. Justice cannot be achieved solely through the protection of parents’ rights, by which parents vie to advance their own children’s needs.
Black writes: “As rhetoric, educational freedom sounds good. As a practical matter, it falls well short of freedom for all. It does not even attempt to ensure that private education works for children. At best, it is agnostic toward the school environments students enter. At worst, it uses public funds to facilitate patterns and values that America has spent the past half century trying to tame… Public schools to be sure, are far from perfect. They have never fully met the needs of all students and all communities. But those shortcomings are clearly understood as problems to fix. They are seen as bugs, not features, of public education, which has operated for two centuries on the premise that public schools are the place where children—regardless of status—share a common experience, come to appreciate the public good, and prepare for equal citizenship. The purpose of public education has always been to sustain a republican form of government. And public schools are the only place in society premised on bridging the gaps that normally divide us—race, wealth, religion, disability, sex, culture, and more. The founders of the American public education system believed that rather than inhibiting liberty, a common public education is essential to it.” (Dangerous Learning, pp. 182-183)
Widespread educational justice across the nation cannot be achieved solely through the laws of the states. At the federal level, Brown v. Board of Education, and federal laws like the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act have for three quarters of a century been tools by which the federal government could challenge and rectify injustice in public schools. In 1979, the U.S. Department of Education was founded to pull together many of the programs designed to increase opportunity for children in states whose public schools had failed to protect their educational rights due to their race, ethnicity, or disability—the work of the Office for Civil Rights, and programs supporting English language learners and special education for disabled students, for example. The Education Department also increased investment in school districts which states had inadequately funded—Title I for school districts serving concentrations of poor children, for example, and grants for Full-Service Community Schools and 21st Century After-School Programs.
The Trump administration has, however, avoided acknowledging the history of educational injustice as the President has consistently promoted the goal of shutting down the U.S. Department of Education and “returning education to the states.” When she was confirmed as Education Secretary last March, Linda McMahon declared: “President Trump pledged to make American education the best in the world, return education to the states where it belongs, and free American students from the education bureaucracy through school choice. I intend to make good on that promise.” McMahon has laid off staff whose positions were created by Congress, threatened to send specific programs to other federal departments, and cancelled a raft of specific, congressionally allocated grant funding —all contrary to federal law. Many of these threats have been temporarily stayed by the courts; others are quietly moving forward.
Last week, McMahon took a new step to weaken the Department’s reach—by agreeing to waive federal rules that prescribe how federal funding can be spent and allowing states to combine at their discretion funding from specific federal grant lines. For the Associated Press, Colin Binkley explained: “The Trump administration is giving Iowa more power to decide how it spends its federal education money, signing off on a proposal that is expected to be the first of many as conservative states seek new latitude from a White House promising to ‘return education to the states.’ Iowa was the first state to apply for an exemption from certain spending rules.” Binkley describes Education Secretary McMahon’s justification for giving Iowa control of spending federal dollars from four different grant programs: “McMahon told The Associated Press that the new flexibility will free up time and money now devoted to ensuring compliance with federal rules. With fewer strings attached, states can pool their federal dollars toward priorities of their choosing, including literacy or teacher training….”
For K-12 Dive, Kara Arundel lists four separate programs established by the federal Every Student Succeeds Act whose funding streams Iowa has been permitted to combine: Title II, Part A—Supporting Effective Instruction; Title III, Part A—English Language Acquisition; Title IV, Part A—Student Support and Academic Enrichment; and Title IV, Part B—21st Century Community Learning Centers (after-school programs). Arundel describes Iowa’s Republican Governor Kim Reynolds expressing gratitude for giving her state more freedom: “Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, speaking at the press conference, said the state is ‘confident that we can do even more by reallocating compliance resources. Iowa will begin shifting nearly $8 million and thousands of hours of staff time from bureaucracy to actually putting that expertise and those resources in the classroom.’ “
Several writers, looking at the modesty of last week’s Iowa waiver to consolidate grants are not yet anticipating that the Iowa situation bodes massive deregulation of federal funding. Education Week’s Mark Lieberman explains: “The waiver approval appears to mark the first time since the 2015 passage of the Every Student Success Act that the federal government has used its authority under that law to allow a state to consolidate funding. But, in contrast with proposals the state put forward roughly a year ago, the new federal approval touches only 5% of Iowa’s overall allocation of federal education funds, the part that’s set aside for the state education agency. The bulk of federal dollars that flow to school districts each year—$900 million worth—will retain their current structure and spending and reporting requirements.”
Binkley reassures the public: “Iowa’s new plan leaves Title I funding untouched.”
Lieberman quotes Anne Hyslop, who now leads All4Ed, and who worked in the Department during the Obama administration: “This announcement could signal an acknowledgment from the department that its legal authority to flatten discrete funding programs and implement unrestricted block grants without congressional approval is limited, said Anne Hyslop… It also foreshadows an uphill battle for other states aiming to convert federal education funding to block grants, including Indiana, which submitted a request for that flexibility, along with relief from certain school accountability requirements in October.”
Chalkbeat’s Erica Meltzer adds States already control most aspects of education. Federal funding makes up about 10% of overall education spending, and those dollars do come with restrictions and reporting requirements that aim to ensure money is spent appropriately… Iowa’s waiver doesn’t allow districts to consolidate most of their federal funding, which would have represented a much larger pot of money.
However, the reporters acknowledge that, in the context of the Trump administration’s goal to return education to the states, the Department may increasingly grant waivers that limit federal oversight. Will Iowa’s waiver be the first step as the Department of Education reduces guardrails that protect students’ civil rights?
Meltzer reports that the new waiver, “does allow Iowa school districts to take advantage of a 1999 federal provision called Ed-Flex to roll over more money year over year to make it easier to invest in big-ticket items and longer-term strategies….” Lieberman adds: “Separate from the waiver approval, McMahon also simultaneously announced she’s approved Iowa to join 10 other states currently participating in the department’s Ed-Flex program, which gives state education agencies the authority to waive certain spending regulations for individual districts… The 10 states currently participating are Delaware, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Vermont and Wisconsin. Iowa is the first state to gain the distinction since McMahon became secretary.”
Meltzer concludes by cautioning readers: “(T)he Education Department still needs to ensure money is being appropriately spent, which is more challenging after massive layoffs.” She quotes Hyslop worrying: “(T)he U.S. Department of Education right now lacks the capacity to do meaningful oversight of how this program is being implemented or the waiver process in general.”
Specifically, Meltzer warns that one of the federal grants Iowa was allowed to merge supported English language instruction, a step that could well reflect the Trump administration’s attack on immigrants or its anti-DEI initiatives: “Advocates are particularly concerned that Iowa’s new block grant consolidates Title III funds that are required to go to English learners…. The Trump administration laid off most of the staff at the Education Department who support those students, and rescinded a guidance document considered to be the ‘bible’ in that field.” She quotes the Education Trust’s Nicholas Munyan-Penney: “I think of red tape equaling protections for students… We want to make sure that students have access to the protections and resources they need to be successful.”
Will 2026 be the year that the Department of Education expands the use of waivers to undercut the federal oversight of funds that protect equality of educational opportunity across our nation? We will need to watch carefully as the chaotic education policy in McMahon’s Department of Education continues into its second year.
Yesterday, 37-year-old Nicole Good was murdered while driving away from ICE agents.
As her car slammed into another car, a man approached ICE and identified himself as a medical doctor. He wanted to check her pulse. The ICE agent said “I don’t care,” and they prevented him from aiding the dying woman.
ICE called for an ambulance but it could not get close to the crash scene because of barricades. The ambulance crew arrived at Nicole’s car without a stretcher, and they carried her away by her limbs.
The first reaction from Trump and Noem was to insult the victim as a “domestic terrorist” who was trying to kill ICE agents. The films showed that this was not true. They said she was trying to run over the ICE agent who fired three shots at her. This was not true. Nicole turned sharply to the right to avoid hitting him after he stood in front of her car. He fired a shot directly at her, which pierced her windshield. As she turned away, he fired two more shots at her. She did not endanger him. He killed her. He could have shot out her tires but he chose to kill her by shooting her in the head.
Parker Molloy wrote about the barrage of lies:
Immediately, DHS had a story ready. Spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin released a statement saying Good had “weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them.” Secretary Kristi Noem added that agents had been trying to push their vehicles out of the snow when Good “attacked them.” President Trump posted on Truth Social that Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer.”
There’s video. Multiple angles. You can watch it. The video shows agents approaching Good’s car. It shows one grabbing her door handle, yelling at her to get out. It shows her car reverse, then pull forward. It shows an agent fire through the windshield. It shows her car drift forward and crash.
The video does not show anyone getting run over. It does not show anyone stuck in snow. The street is clear.
Lies. Lies. Lies.
There was supposed to be a federal-state investigation but the FBI and ICE have said they will not collaborate with state investigators. They will not share their records or films. By now, based on what federal authorities have said over the past 24 hours, we know that we can’t trust federal agents to tell the truth.
Everyone has had multiple opportunities to view videos taken from different angles. None of those videos show Nicole “weaponizing” her car, trying to hit or kill the ICE agent. None of them show her being violent, willful, or vicious. Nothing in her background portrays her as a “professional activist.”
Once again the Trump administration will lie and blame the victim. Unless there is a statement by state and federal authorities, the investigation will have no credibility.
Yesterday Trump gave an unusual two-hour interview to reporters from The New York Times.
One reporter asked Trump whether he felt constrained by international law or by Congress, and he answered that he did not.
President Trump declared on Wednesday evening that his power as commander in chief is constrained only by his “own morality,” brushing aside international law and other checks on his ability to use military might to strike, invade or coerce nations around the world.
Asked in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times if there were any limits on his global powers, Mr. Trump said: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
“I don’t need international law,” he added. “I’m not looking to hurt people.”
I immediately thought of Marlon Brando in The Godfather.
Nobody constrains the godfather. Only his own morality. And you know what that means.
In few words, Trump boldly expressed The Trump Doctrine. He will take action without deference to Congress, the Constitution, or the United Nations. Nothing will hold him back except his “own morality,” says a man who is famous for lying, cheating, and ignoring the law. A man who dodged the draft, cheated on all three of his wives, refused to release his tax returns, went bankrupt multiple times (while playing the role of a business genius), a man whose multiple businesses have folded (Trump steaks, Trump wines, Trump airlines, Trump University, Trump vodka, among other failed ventures).
President Trump and Secretary Kristi Noem described her as a domestic terrorist. She was painted by them as a zealous provocateur, part of an organized conspiracy or group. They said she “ran over” an ICE agent.
At the time, no one knew much about her.
The New York Times reported:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The woman shot and killed by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis on Wednesday was Renee Nicole Macklin Good, a 37-year-old mother of three who had recently moved to Minnesota.
She was a U.S. citizen born in Colorado and appears to never have been charged with anything involving law enforcement beyond a traffic ticket.
In social media accounts, Macklin Good described herself as a “poet and writer and wife and mom.” She said she was currently “experiencing Minneapolis,” displaying a pride flag emoji on her Instagram account. A profile picture posted to Pinterest shows her smiling and holding a young child against her cheek, along with posts about tattoos, hairstyles and home decorating.
Her ex-husband, who asked not to be named out of concern for the safety of their children, said Macklin Good had just dropped off her 6-year-old son at school Wednesday and was driving home with her current partner when they encountered a group of ICE agents on a snowy street in Minneapolis, where they had moved last year from Kansas City, Missouri.
Video taken by bystanders posted to social media shows an officer approaching her car, demanding she open the door and grabbing the handle. When she begins to pull forward, a different ICE officer standing in front of the vehicle pulls his weapon and immediately fires at least two shots into the vehicle at close range.
In another video taken after the shooting, a distraught woman is seen sitting near the vehicle, wailing, “That’s my wife, I don’t know what to do!”
Calls and messages to Macklin Good’s current partner received no response.
Trump administration officials painted Macklin Good as a domestic terrorist who had attempted to ram federal agents with her car. Her ex-husband said she was no activist and that he had never known her to participate in a protest of any kind.
He described her as a devoted Christian who took part in youth mission trips to Northern Ireland when she was younger. She loved to sing, participating in a chorus in high school and studying vocal performance in college.
She studied creative writing at Old Dominion University in Virginia and won a prize in 2020 for one of her works, according to a post on the school’s English department Facebook page. She also hosted a podcast with her second husband, who died in 2023.
Macklin Good had a daughter and her son from her first marriage, who are now ages 15 and 12. Her 6-year-old son was from her second marriage.
Her ex-husband said she had primarily been a stay-at-home mom in recent years but had previously worked as a dental assistant and at a credit union.
Donna Ganger, her mother, told the Minnesota Star Tribune the family was notified of the death late Wednesday morning.
“Renee was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known,” Ganger told the newspaper. “She was extremely compassionate. She’s taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving and affectionate.”
The New York Times reviewed videos of the incident from three diffferent angles and concluded that she was turning to avoid hitting the ICE agent when he began firing at her.
Like many of you, I sat glued to the television on January 6, 2021, and watched the terrible events unfold. I had seen Trump’s tweet a few weeks earlier, urging his followers to show up on January 6 and promising that it would be “wild.”
They did show up. Thousands of them. Some dressed in military gear, some in bizarre costumes, some armed. All eager to “stop the steal.” As Trump promised, it was indeed wild.
Trump had gone through 60 court cases, appealing the vote in different states. Every court ruled against him. Trump-appointed judges ruled against him. There was no evidence of fraud. The US Supreme Court ruled against his claims–twice. His closest advisors told him he lost. But he listened only to those who told him the election was rigged, like Rudy Giuliani, the My Pillow Guy, Sidney Powell, etc.
When his supporters showed up on January 6, he gave a passionate speech, telling them that the election had been stolen. He urged them to march to the Capitol, where the ceremonial counting of the electoral vote was taking place, and said he would march with them.
He didn’t march with them, though he wanted to. He returned to the White Hiuse, where he sat back and watched his loyal fans attack the U.S. Capitol, smash its windows, break through its doors, assault Capitol police, and ransack the seat of our government.
It was the worst day in our history because never before had an American president rallied his passionate fans and called on them to attack the seat of our government. Never before had a mob of American citizens tried to overturn a free and fair election by violence.
Trump demonstrated that he is a sore loser. He was beaten by Joe Biden fair and square. He refused to accept that he lost. He continues to claim that he won.
He is either delusional or the world’s biggest crybaby and liar.
I will never forget that day of infamy. Yes, it was wise than Pearl Harbor. It was worse than 9/11. On those days, we were attacked by foreign powers and terrorists. On January 6, our democracy was attacked by Americans.
I recommend that you read Jeffrey Goldberg’s excellent article in The Atlantic. The link is a gift article.
This is what Glenn Kessler wrote:
Trump rallying a crowd before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol: “You will have an illegitimate president. That is what you will have, and we can’t let that happen.”
A version of this article was posted in October behind a paywall as part of the “On Trump’s Bullshit” series. I am making it available to all subscribers on the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
In October, Donald Trump posted on social media what appeared to be a message to Attorney General Pam Bondi: “The Biden FBI placed 274 agents into the crowd on January 6…What a SCAM – DO SOMETHING!”
When Bondi launches her investigation, she’ll soon discover an uncomfortable fact: Joe Biden wasn’t president on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump was — and he sought to block Biden from taking office. (And it was his government that deployed agents after the riot began.)
The post is emblematic of Trump’s most astonishing piece of bullshit — his effort to rewrite the history of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol that he orchestrated and encouraged.
Trump knew he faced criminal liability for his role in obstructing the peaceful passage of power after his 2020 defeat, so it’s quite possible he ran for president mainly to derail the investigation. As a tactic, it was successful. Through repeated legal challenges, he managed to delay the trial until after the November election. When he won, the Justice Department was required to drop the case because of an existing policy that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted.
Then, as soon as he became president, Trump pardoned more than 1,500 people convicted or charged in connection with the riot, while commuting the sentences of fourteen members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, two far-right groups.
Trump now routinely refers to the “January 6 hoax,” attempting to erase the event altogether.
Even more amazing, Trump has managed to convince many of his supporters that a riot that resulted in $2.7 billion in property damage, security expenses, and other related costs, according to the Government Accountability Office, was a “beautiful day” and “a day of love.” The rioters assaulted 140 law enforcement officers, while 123 people were charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to law enforcement.
The reality is that Trump incited the brutal assault on the Capitol, starting with his lie that he won the 2020 election. His refusal to accept the election results, despite his convincing losses in key battleground states, set the stage for a day of outrage by his supporters.
The final report of Special Counsel Jack Smith documented how Trump tried to browbeat Republican state officials in battleground states to alter the results or nullify them. Thankfully, people such as Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger —who Trump demanded to “find 11,780 votes” — or Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey — who bluntly told Trump he lost because he had underperformed with educated females — refused to yield to his pressure.
So did Vice President Mike Pence. Trump wanted Pence, who had the ceremonial role of presiding over the Electoral College count, to overturn the election by rejecting votes for Biden from six battleground states. Pence knew he didn’t have the authority to do so, despite the theories offered by what he called Trump’s “gaggle of crackpot lawyers.”
But the most damning evidence of Trump’s misconduct are his own actions on January 6, after the crowd he urged to march on the Capitol turned into a mob.
As the scale of the attack became clear, Trump was reluctant to try to calm the situation, even as his staff pleaded with him to tell the rioters to leave the Capitol. Trump’s tweets were so inadequate, in the view of staff members, that many resolved to resign. Even his children Ivanka and Donald Jr. found the tweets to be inappropriate. Nearly three hours passed before Trump finally told the rioters to “go home.”
The House select committee report on the Jan. 6 attack shows that Trump learned only 15 minutes after he concluded his remarks on the National Mall at 1:10 p.m. that the Capitol was under attack. Less than half an hour later, the Metropolitan Police Department officially declared a riot. Minutes later, rioters broke into the Capitol and swarmed the building.
Yet it was not until 2:24 that Trump issued his first written tweet — and it made things worse.
Trump wrote: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”
According to the House committee’s report: “Evidence shows that the 2:24 p.m. tweet immediately precipitated further violence at the Capitol. Immediately after this tweet, the crowds both inside and outside of the Capitol building violently surged forward. Outside the building, within 10 minutes thousands of rioters overran the line on the west side of the Capitol that was being held by the Metropolitan Police Force’s Civil Disturbance Unit, the first time in the history of the DC Metro Police that such a security line had ever been broken.”
One minute after the tweet, the Secret Service evacuated Pence to a secure location at the Capitol. According to Smith’s report, when an advisor at the White House rushed to the dining room to inform Trump, the president replied, “So what?”
Contemporaneous White House reactions were damning.
Deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger told the House committee that the 2:24 p.m. tweet convinced him to resign that day. “I read it and was quite disturbed by it,” he told the committee. “I was disturbed and worried to see that the President was attacking Vice President Pence for doing his constitutional duty. So the tweet looked to me like the opposite of what we really needed at that moment, which was a de-escalation. … It looked like fuel being poured on the fire.”
White House counsel Pat Cipollone, in his deposition with the committee, said: “My reaction to it is that’s a terrible tweet, and I disagreed with the sentiment. And I thought it was wrong.”
The committee report says that Trump’s daughter Ivanka rushed to the Oval Office dining room, where Trump was watching coverage of the riot on Fox News. “Although no one could convince President Trump to call for the violent rioters to leave the Capitol, Ivanka persuaded President Trump that a tweet could be issued to discourage violence against the police,” the report said.
At 2:39, Trump issued this tweet: “Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!”
The tweet did not condemn the violence or tell rioters to leave the Capitol. As Trump well knew, the crowd was not peaceful at the time.
Even so, the committee’s report said that Trump had resisted using the word “peaceful.” It quotes Sarah Matthews, who was the deputy White House press secretary, about a conversation she had with Ivanka after Matthews expressed concern the tweet did not go far enough. “In a hushed tone [she] shared with me that the President did not want to include any sort of mention of peace in that tweet and that it took some convincing on their part, those who were in the room,” Matthews told the committee.
Trump rejected staff requests to urge people who entered the Capitol illegally to leave immediately. Instead, at 3:13 p.m., when he issued a third tweet, he still did not tell people to go home. “I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful,” he said. “No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order — respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!”
The violence continued.
Finally, at 4:17 p.m., almost three hours after the attack began, Trump posted a video that encouraged people to leave the Capitol — while repeating many of his lies about a stolen election. By then it was clear Trump had failed to derail Biden’s election.
“Down at the Capitol, the video began streaming onto rioters’ phones, and by all accounts including video footage taken by other rioters, they listened to President Trump’s command,” the report said. “ ‘Donald Trump has asked everybody to go home,’ one rioter shouted as he ‘deliver[ed] the President’s message.’ ‘That’s our order,’ another rioter responded. Others watching the video responded: ‘He says, go home.’ ”
Just after 6 pm, Trump offered one more tweet that appeared to justify the violence on one of the darkest days in American history: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”
It was a sickening, celebratory tweet on a horrific day — convincing even more White House officials to quit — and no amount of Trump bullshit can erase his conduct from the annals of history.
·
Thank you, Parker Molloy! She reviews Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s testimony behind closed doors. The House Republicans were determined to pin Smith as a political partisan, but Smith made crystal clear that he would prosecute anyone without regard to party labels.
Molloy writes on her Substack blog, “The Present Age”:
House Republicans released the 255-page transcript of Jack Smith’s closed-door deposition on New Year’s Eve. You know, the day when absolutely nobody is paying attention to the news. The day when political operatives dump things they don’t want people to see.
Funny how that works.
Smith testified before the House Judiciary Committee on December 17th, spending an entire day answering questions about his investigations into Donald Trump. Republicans had been demanding this testimony for months, framing it as part of their “weaponization” investigation.
They got what they asked for. And then they released it when America was busy watching the ball drop.
I spent the holiday reading through the whole thing. Here’s what they didn’t want you to see.
Smith says Trump is guilty
In Smith’s opening statement, he declared that his office had developed “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that Trump committed crimes in both the January 6th case and the classified documents case.
“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power. Our investigation also developed powerful evidence that showed that President Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January of 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a ballroom and a bathroom. He then repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents.” (p. 17)
When asked if he would prosecute a former president on the same facts today, Smith said he absolutely would:
“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power. Our investigation also developed powerful evidence that showed that President Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January of 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a ballroom and a bathroom. He then repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents.” (p. 17)
When asked if he would prosecute a former president on the same facts today, Smith said he absolutely would:
“If asked whether to prosecute a former President based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that President was a Republican or a Democrat.” (p. 18)
And when asked point-blank if he’d ever prosecuted someone he didn’t believe was guilty, Smith’s answer was simple:
“Never.” (p. 83)
Trump’s tweet “endangered the life of his own vice president”
Smith described what happened on January 6th in stark terms. When asked whether Trump was responsible for the violence at the Capitol, Smith testified:
Last Friday, Mary and I took our oldest grandson, who is now 32, to The Morgan Library and Museum in Manhattan. The Morgan is a small but breath-taking collection of books and manuscripts that belonged to the personal collection of J.P. Morgan. The building is breathtaking, as are the books, which include an original Gutenberg Bible.
We began by seeing an exhibition of illustrated Bibles and other religious books that were over 1,000 years old. I kept thinking of the Hebrew scribes and Christian monks who spent years writing and illustrating these gorgeous volumes. Every letter, every line was perfect. How did they do it?
Then we visited the main library, a magnificent room with three layers of leather-bound books.
The room included a jewel-encrusted Bible, made in France and Austria in the 9th century
All of this splendor reminded me of the poverty in the streets outside his library and home, but I doubt that he thought much about the people outside.
In an exhibition case, there were several unusual printed documents. One was about a woman named Mary Toth or Toths, an English woman who pulled off an elaborate hoax in 1726, when she was 23 years old. She told doctors that she had given birth to bunnies. The illustration showed her, a few doctors, and many bunnies. The story spread rapidly, and many people believed that she had in fact given birth to bunnies. She was eventually discredited, briefly jailed, and eventually the charges against her were dismissed.
I said to my grandson, if that happened today, it would spread like wildfire on the internet and many people would swear it was true. My grandson said, “Some people will believe anything because they are ignorant.”
The stranger standing next to us interjected, “Some things never change.”
On the same day that we visited The Morgan Library, our frequent commenter Bob Shepherd left the following observation about why people are so gullible:
Three of the most powerful and important experiments ever performed were Stanley Milgram’s electric shock experiment, Solomon Asche’s line length determination experiment, and Philip Zimbardo’s prison experiment. I won’t go into the details of these here. You can look them up in a quick Google search if you are fuzzy on their details. What these experiments, which have been repeatedly replicated, show conclusively is that about two thirds of people are so driven by desire to be accepted by the group that they will conform to and actively participate in the most egregious behavior toward others in order to be themselves accepted by a perceived “authority.” Next time you are in a public place–at a game, in a restaurant, in a club–look around you. Two thirds of the people you see are potential collaborators–people capable of extreme evil, which, as Hannah Arendt pointed out, is TYPICALLY characterized by mediocrity.
Years ago, when I was a baby editor, I went to work for McDougal, Littell. Ms. Littell–the co-founder’s wife–was the editor of their literature program at the time, and she had chosen for the 12th-grade book an essay by the English historian Hugh Trevor-Roper about what an “evil genius” Hitler was. Well, I risked my job by objecting to this piece because Hitler was not a genius. He was a common thug and a psychopath, and people are sheep, easily led, easily bullied into submission and acquiescence. Or consider John Gotti–the psychopathic criminal Mafia thug. The press created an image of the brilliant “Dapper Don,” who could constantly evade punishment. But after he was finally imprisoned, tapes of wire taps on Gotti were released, and these showed that he was the lowest sort of ignorant thug, incapable of clear reasoning or speech, driven by the basest motivations, and unable to say anything without accompanying it with a string of curses that stood in for the words lacking in his fourth-grade vocabulary.
People want to belong. They want to get along. They want Daddy to tell everyone what to do. And they will idolize absolute monsters if they get that from them.
Bob is a polymath—an author, editor, guitarist, teacher, and humorist–who seems to have read deeply in every field.
Oh, we stopped in the gift shop, and I bought a couple of delightful books. One was titled Rejected Books: The Most Unpublishable Books of All Time.
Some of those unpublishable books:
And I loved this cover and title.
People who write books should be fearless.
This is a link to a gift article.
Several reporters at The New York Times worked together for months unraveling the secrets of Jeffrey Epstein’s financial success. How did he go from being a high school math teacher to a multimillionaire? His greatest trick, it appears, was cultivating and leveraging friendships among people who were wealthy and powerful. Name-dropping was a tactic. So were lying and boasting, as he rose in elite circles, cultivating contacts, references, women, and friends.
Diane Ravitch's blog 