TPM Reader AM on the WSJ op-ed:
Longtime subscriber, religious listener to your podcast. I’m writing because I just can’t get over that WSJ op-ed. You acknowledged that it was influential and has a pernicious role in the society, but I can’t get over the latter adjective describing it. I don’t think enough time was spent on it.
If Donald Trump had posted his latest video yesterday it would have bought him a lot of credit, unfortunately. The fact that he released it this evening is a measure of just how tenuous his position has become. Two events from just the last couple hours demonstrate why. We now learn that a Capitol Police officer was beaten to death by his insurrectionist supporters. And now The Wall Street Journal editorial page, even in advance of that news, has called for him to resign or be impeached.
We’re seeing a growing number of reports which suggest that top members of the President’s administration are simply avoiding the President or ignoring him. It’s possible the President is in such a mental state that he’s not giving anyone any orders or that he’s already given ones that have been refused. (Again, trying to piece together the pieces of evidence about mobilizing the National Guard yesterday.) The President only has to watch television right now to know that there’s a growing likelihood he’ll face criminal charges for the events of the last 48 hours, let alone things which may have happened over the last four years. That certainly terrifies this President. Yet he has 13 more days with the vast powers of the President to act out on what he is likely experiencing as an existential threat and a consuming rage against those who believes have betrayed him. This is to put it mildly a highly dangerous and unstable situation.
TPM Reader JB, a former Hill staffer, is 100% right. A serious threat to the Capitol would never have been left to the Capitol Police. The failure is almost certainly rooted in the fact that federal law enforcement and the military were reluctant to plan for a threat from the President’s own supporters.
JoinTo your correspondent BK’s comments today I have to add the point that a serious threat to the Capitol — which yesterday’s riot certainly was — would never have been left to the Capitol Police alone had it been foreseen.
We often forget that we don’t only arrest and prosecute people to exact individual punishment or to protect public safety. Arrest and prosecution is also how society communicates to itself the parameters of acceptable behavior. Yesterday was many things. But a critical part of it was the result of years and decades of treating violent right-wing extremism as a sort of wingnut performance art, crazy but essentially harmless and to be indulged. Think of the original Bundy clan standoff and the later Malheur standoff. An insurrectionist told a Capitol Police officer yesterday “You didn’t take it back, we gave it back,” as he walked out of the Capitol.
You saw them. They were strutting and proud. They gave their names to reporters. They posed for pictures.
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Yielding the floor to TPM Reader BK:
I am a longtime reader and Prime Member and I consider your work to be invaluable. To put it in fast food industry terms I am a heavy user, checking your site literally dozens of times a day and night.
Like many Americans, I watched the events in Washington DC unfolding just a couple of miles from my home where we were under curfew.
However, unlike the breathless TV pundits, my reaction wasn’t one of “shock,” or “disbelief.” No, my reaction: I was enraged at what I watched. But none of this was shocking or unreal: it was entirely and utterly predictable.
I’ll write more on that at another time, but this morning I want to address one particular aspect of this story that very few want to talk about: race and white privilege.
And frankly, as much as I adore TPM, in my opinion, this is one area where you have a blind spot, or a lack on interest. I am not sure why, but it is one area where TPM is just like every other new organization/talking head on TV. There is simply no way to cover Trump, his mob, and what happened yesterday without talking about the racism flowing through our society and the racism that has been mainstreamed into our media.
We’ll be picking apart the events of yesterday for the rest of our lives for meaning and understanding, but it’s imperative that we find out here and now what happened exactly and why. I know it seems simple: a mob breached the Capitol for a few hours. But the ticktock on the whole event is critical to understanding it, piecing together the colossal security failures, and sharpening the way we talk about these dreadful events.
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One more point about the President and the decision to call in the National Guard. I’ve mentioned several times below that the chain of command simply went around the President. Mike Pence gave the order even though there’s really no legal basis for him doing so. Most of these reports suggest the President was just checked out, maybe not interested in talking to them.
JoinCBS and only CBS is reporting that cabinet members are discussing invoking the 25th amendment to remove President Trump from office. I will believe it when I see it. But there have been a few hints over the last hours that the national security structure and some critical functions of government are operating separate from President Trump. The Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs conferred with Mike Pence and the Democratic and Republican congressional leaders about bringing in the National Guard. Apparently there were no discussions with the President and Mike Pence eventually gave the order, even though there’s no basis I can think of on which Pence could give such an order.
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Longtime TPM Reader DC:
JoinA few thoughts on what we witnessed today from an institutional perspective.
For almost 20 years, I’ve taught a course called Res Publica: A History of Representative Government. It tries to pin down, historically and philosophically, the kinds of questions we should think about when we call our system of government a “republic” or a ‘democracy” or, most properly, a democratic republic.