I confess to some feelings of pessimism (something I’m usually characterologically and ideologically opposed to) and drift about the current political moment. But despite the frequent and understandable claims that none of it matters, there’s more going on than people maybe realize with ex-President Trump and the January 6th investigators. Here I don’t mean specifically what the investigators are coming up with — though I think there’s a lot going on there too. I’m talking about Trump’s efforts to manage the Republican response to those findings and its on-going work.