We start with TPM Reader EB. These are in response to this post from yesterday.

On one level, my experience of the end of the Trump presidency looks much like yours. Twitter banning him brought about a rather unexpected peace and quiet. I was expecting him to find some other platform to whine on (like Fox & Friends), and I expected the media to cover that as they have done in the past, and I fully expected him to continue after the election either whining more about how he didn’t lose or hyping up a 2024 run. That I don’t have to hear any of this is a welcome surprise.

In the waning weeks and days of Trump’s presidency, we knew from his public statements and retweets of widely debunked conspiracy theories that he had little left to work with in his push to overturn the election.

There is an understandable and wise desire not to breathe too big a sigh of relief. Most of us realize that the reality and threat of Trumpism is far from over. Indeed, there could even be another Trump presidency in four years, though I think that’s quite unlikely. I want to ask you something different: How have you experienced the end of Trump’s presidency? I mean at a basic experiential level.

As much as I have written about the centrality, power and chaotic force of Trump’s Twitter feed I was not prepared for the impact of his account being suspended in early January, a couple weeks ahead of Biden’s inauguration. It was like he just ceased to exist and I voice I’d heard – literally or figuratively – barking in my head for more than five years just went silent. From what I can tell it hit him just as powerfully. Losing his twitter megaphone seems to have undone him.

Austerity be damned in the age of COVID-19.

That’s the messaging from at least one Republican governor who just this morning said that being fiscally responsible at this point no longer matters as the nation reels from more than 400,000 COVID-19 deaths and an economy on life-support.

One of the uncanny features of the COVID Pandemic – certainly one of the great events of all of our lifetimes – is the mix of horror and fascination one experiences learning new dimensions of the scourge. One of these for me has been watching scientists unravel the details of the new COVID variants now galloping around the globe, a sprint of investigative work only possible with the powerful genomic analysis tools that didn’t even exist a few decades ago. (In 1918, science didn’t even know there was such a thing as viruses. Or rather viruses weren’t recognized as distinct from bacterial infection.)

For me the big fascination and warning sign has been the new discussion of ‘convergent evolution’.

I think something is getting lost in the discussion of Trump’s Impeachment 2.0 lawyers quitting. They reportedly bailed because they were unwilling to argue Trump’s lies about the election being stolen. But arguing the election was stolen amounts to an affirmative defense of the events of January 6th. In other words, Trump isn’t guilty not because he didn’t incite the insurrection but because the incitement and the insurrection were justified.