Anyone with an interest in politics, or in the future of the United States, owes it to themselves and the country to listen to the October 10 editions of This Week and Meet The Press.
Mandatory listening or viewing.
Truly.
For one thing, they had the news a bipartisan committee that has been investigating the Justice Department and the insurrection just released some findings showing that Donald Trump sought to appoint a new Attorney General insider specifically as he was expected to be loyal in overturning the election, but did not when a mass resignation from the department was to occur. The information makes Trump's involvement in an effort to overturn the election at all costs manifest. The House committee is now pondering criminal referrals. It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out by the next election.
And additionally there are now two new books looking at the events of the immediate post election events in the White House.
What's become clear is that at first Trump was sullen, but rapidly turned towards trying to overturn the results. These efforts were open and manifest and ultimately were focused on Georgia. Trump sought the aid of the Justice Department but the career Attorney Generals, including the then sitting AG, were not willing to go along in what they knew to be a fraud. Trump was then going to replace the AG with a loyalist who would likely have been willing to participate, but the AGs threatened a mass resignation.
Trump has been essentially conducting early 2024 campaign rallies recently and circulating the lie that he won the election. The question is whether he believes this. The more news that's coming out, and it's starting to be a flood, it is clear that he was taking what essentially was a version of the apparently apocryphal William Randolph Hearst line about the lack of fighting in Cuba, when informed that by Frederic Remington, that being "you give us the pictures, we'll give you the war." Trump told people, basically, that all they had to do was to point the finger, and he'd make it happen.
Anyway you look at it, it's now irrefutable that Trump was deeply involved in an effort to topple the 2020 election. Those who remain in Trump's camp, and there are quite a few in the rank and file GOP who do, have to face this or simply live in denial of it. Living in denial is likely what most are going to opt to do. Otherwise, you have to maintain: 1) that Trump knew that election misconduct had occurred and that's why he was acting this way but was frustrated by his staff, or 2) he was delusional, or 3) he was attempting to steal the election.
Given what everything has clearly demonstrated, there's no doubt that the election was fully free and fair, although I have heard friends I deeply respect who are well-educated still maintain that it was questionable. This gets us to the GOP today. The GOP has yet to deal with this with many current candidates still embracing Trump and others trying to take the "quick, turn away and don't look" approach. Those in the latter, which include the main GOP challenger to Cheney in Wyoming, Harriet Hageman, haven't been able to successful make their argument of "we need to look forward" while still grasping part of the past. I.e., you can't really accuse Cheney of betraying the state, as she is, when her supposed betrayal is pointing out that an attempt to overthrow the election was going on.
This is all the more the case now as its more and more clear that Trump has the hubris to believe that at his extremely advanced age he is still going to be fit for office in 2024. He's running for the Oval Office right now. If he's alive in 2024, which frankly given the ravishes of old age and his ever advancing years, is probably a 50/50 proposition, i.e., old age catches up with us all and claims us whether we're ready to go or not, he'll run. He's running right now.
This means that at this point we really have to start taking Trump's statements seriously. When he was elected the first time he made sounds about being a three term President. Nobody took that seriously Prior to the 2020 election, The Atlantic ran an article outlining how Trump would attempt to steal the election if he lost it, and got it more or less 100% correct, a fact which shows this effort was charged with scienter. There's every reason to believe that if he makes it to 2024, he'll try to make it to 2028. There's something in his makeup which doesn't allow for not being at the pinnacle of whatever, even if he's really not
Democracy turns out to be much more fragile in this day and age than ever we'd imagined. Ironically, if Trump had won, he would have gone on to have a wild ride, no doubt, in his second term, but he'd passed out of office with no third term and have gone into history as, probably, an aberration at least as to his character. Having lost, however he's become a real threat to the democratic process itself and various state legislature have acted to make interfering with elections easier. Even in our state there's been sounds about doing that, although so far nothing has come into fruition.
We live in perilous times. In perilous times, you need to look the danger afresh. In the coming months, we're going to get a chance to do so.
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