January 6: How the House select committee finally exposed Trump's empire of lies - CNNPolitics
By: Stephen Collinson, CNN
The essential work being performed by the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack continues to reveal the criminal malfeasance of Trump and his enablers. History will long remember the stain on America otherwise known as the Trump presidency.
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S E E D E D C O N T E N T
If politics still turned on truth and facts, this would be the week when the lie-filled foundations of Donald Trump's movement imploded, destroying his apparent dream of a return to power after the 2024 election.
But it is the ex-President's greatest, most subversive victory that his empire of falsehoods will surely survive new disclosures that lay bare his own abuses of power and the voter-mocking deceit of his political and media enablers.
While there has already been a steady accumulation of shocking evidence of Trump's coup attempt on January 6 and the emptiness of his election fraud claims, recent days put the saga into a horrifying new light. They brought the clearest indicators yet that the entire Make America Great Again infrastructure and Trump's potential next White House campaign rest on hogwash and the whitewashing of history.
The House select committee probing the January 6 insurrection has released fresh details of the elaborate behind-the-scenes plot to subvert the certification of President Joe Biden's election. There's embarrassing new evidence of how conservative media stars were privately alarmed by the attack by Trump's mob but quickly reverted to amplifying his lies to millions of Americans they willfully deceived. And a major new Associated Press survey of 2020 swing states contested by Trump found cases of voter fraud were sparse and far from the nationwide conspiracy he claims. There are separate reports that three Florida residents were recently arrested and charged with election fraud -- two of whom were registered Republicans.
This week will be remembered for Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the vice chair of the House committee, bringing receipts that exposed the hypocrisy of Trump's extended orbit.
Texts from Republican lawmakers, Trump's son Donald Trump Jr. and Fox News prime-time anchors to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows show that they knew the attack on the Capitol was a disaster and wanted it to stop.
Yet those same conservative heroes are part of a political media operation that spent the last 11 months obscuring what really happened, in many cases denying the truth of Biden's election win and fueling lies about voter fraud that are feeding anti-democratic extremism. All to preserve a meal ticket named Trump.
In another development fraught with chilling implications, the committee revealed that Meadows wrote in an email that the National Guard would be present to "protect pro Trump people" on January 6. It was the latest example of a habit of weaponizing sacred American institutions for Trump's political gain.
The former President, meanwhile, encapsulated perverted political values that now rule much of the Republican Party and will likely produce its next presidential nominee. He recently declared that former Vice President Mike Pence had been "mortally wounded" because he had refused to steal the election during his ceremonial role in certifying Biden's victory. The ex-President was giving voice to a GOP incentive system that now rewards coup attempts and despotic behavior over honoring the Constitution.
The scale of the evidence coming to light this week is remarkable. But daily bombshells about what happened on January 6 often have the effect of diminishing the shock value of Trump-related outrages. And voters have pressing concerns like the rising cost of living and a pandemic that will shortly drag into a third year. Yet this week's developments are important not just because they chart the staggering breadth of Trump's election conspiracy. They are also exposing the lies on which his future political prospects are built -- and on which multiple Republican-run states have passed laws that make it harder to vote and easier to steal future elections.
Trump's biggest confidence trick
There has always been an aura of a con man about Trump, from his days as a bankruptcy-plagued real estate chancer who adopted a persona as the master of the art of the deal. His presidency opened with false claims about the size of his inauguration crowd that in retrospect augured an administration constructed on untruths -- or what his former senior aide Kellyanne Conway once dubbed "alternative facts."
It is now clear that his big lie that "frankly, we did win this election" is the most audacious and damaging confidence trick of his career.
A few Trump supporters are seeing the light, including Dustin Stockton, one of the organizers of the January 6 rally that preceded the insurrection, who found himself subpoenaed by the House committee -- and lacks the means to wage a legal battle like Trump's wealthy political guru Steve Bannon.
"Essentially, he abandons people when the going gets tough for people. And, you know, in some ways, it's embarrassing to think that in a lot of ways, we bought into what essentially turned out to be a bluff or a con," Stockton told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Tuesday.
Yet Stockton is an outlier. Trump's popularity among Republican voters makes him the preemptive favorite for the GOP's 2024 nomination. He has the power to shape the political careers of those willing to accept his extremism -- as his raft of endorsements of midterm election candidates, nationally and in the states, shows. The Trump story, meanwhile, makes millions for conservative media outlets and stars -- giving them an incentive to promote a false alternative reality that has won over legions of viewers.
The mendacity of the conservative media propaganda machine was exposed by Cheney's reading aloud of texts sent to Meadows by several Fox News powerhouses, including Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity, pleading with Meadows to get Trump to intervene on January 6.
"Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home," Ingraham texted. "This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy." Hannity asked the-then chief of staff whether Trump could make a statement that would tell the people at the Capitol to leave. Both anchors later condemned the violence on January 6.
But they have been among Fox News personalities who attack the investigation as a political vendetta against Trump rather than a probe into one of the worst assaults on democracy in American political history. And television disinformation is only a small part of the problem; social media networks teem with falsehoods about the election and boost Trump's lies in what is almost a fact-free zone.
Trump's Orwellian method
Trump's enablers have reacted to the disclosures of recent days by adopting the signature move of their leader -- spinning a false reality to excuse his behavior and mislead his supporters about what really happened.
Meadows, for instance, appeared on Hannity's show on Monday and concocted a story that contradicts reports that the former President had cooled his heels and watched on TV as his rioting supporters marauded through the Capitol.
"At the end of the day, they're going to find that not only did the President act, but he acted quickly," Meadows said. The former chief of staff has since been cited for criminal contempt by the House for refusing a subpoena to testify to the committee. His tactic was familiar from previous Trump scandals, as he pivoted away from the truth to create a more palatable tale for Trump supporters that absolved the ex-President of culpability.
The approach recalled Trump's own when his pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky to open an investigation into then-candidate Biden and his son Hunter came out. The ex-President simply insisted that their call was "perfect," even though a White House transcript showed repeated abuses of power as he used military aid as a carrot -- a transgression that led to his first impeachment.
This Trump gambit -- also used by conservative news outlets every day -- recalls the party's reality-defying "War is Peace" slogan in George Orwell's novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four." Trump explained his method in a less literal way in 2018 when instructing followers to distrust their own eyes and non-partisan media and to believe only him. "What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening," he said.
This week's revelations have been damning for Trump, his former aides and the conservative media propagandists who sustain him.
But if history is any guide, the truth will not bring him down.
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The continuing revelations coming from the House Select Committee on the January 6 attack reveal the utter degradation and perversion of American democracy by the disgraced former President.
And apparently by a number of current republican Congressmen.
Very true.
Which I've been saying along - look especially at Gosar, Taylor-Greene, Boebert, Gaetz, - all the gop whackjob loons who've been desperate to deflect/distract us from their traitorous acts for quite a while now - also look at Meadows and McCarthy.
I would like anyone to explain to me, how republican reps, who were on their phones on 1/6, calling and begging for help, hiding from the "tourists", during the siege, suddenly feel that nothing was wrong.
Easy explanation, they are liars and have had way too much Koolaid.
I would like someone to explain to me how they know this actually was the case and happened as written.
Transcripts from various calls to Meadows?
Pictures of them hiding during the insurrection??
No president in history lied more than trump did, and his supporters bought every...single...one.
It's the cult mentality.
And if you point out and demonstrate any specific lie, their response is always, "so what, politicians lie".
It amazes me to see how far their cheese has slipped off their cracker.
Some of them will never escape their sausage casing.
... or get off their leash...
after the first of the year, the shit will hit the fan against trump on multiple fronts. which explains the ramped up "everything is a biden scandal" efforts by his criminal accomplices in the alt-media.
There are a few Trump cultists that post that garbage on NT, also.
He should feel embarrassed, and he deserves no sympathy. Everybody else, including many in Trump's inner circle, figured this out years ago. Omarosa, anybody?
He should and so should the entire FOX propaganda team.
Donald likes one thing. Money.
If he wants sympathy, he should look it up in a dictionary. SYMPATHY is right between SHIT and SYPHILIS.
Seems that the self-proclaimed patriots are nothing more than a group of liars and traitors.
That's the truth.
I don't anticipate missing any meals when the shooting starts.
What's the old saying about the devil coming over the hill carrying a bible, or something like that?
Tell us something we didn't already know.
I wonder which trmpster actually sat down, read 1984, and had the presence of mind to take notes
Since Trump can't read, he came to it intuitively. Being a lying authoritarian is in his DNA.
I should have said "instinctively".
Trump is quoted saying that only mobsters take the 5th. Yet he will use it anyway. Using his own words against him, he will officially be known as a mobster.
Our favorite nut case is off and babbling again. I think that pillow covered his face for way too long based on the stupidity that he exhibits on a regular basis.
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell says he spent $25 million to push false pro-Trump election claims: 'I will spend whatever it takes'
I saw a new commercial of his. He actually said to not let the woke people take them down...
what a unique marketing concept... "buy my shit at a discount to show up those mean old libs because I'm a fucking mental case careening down the off ramp of life without any brakes."
He won't have to spend it. Dominion will take every last cent and they will spend it.
They should give it to their employees as a bonus
They should buy all the products, put them in a big pile, and torch them.
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