You’re right about something: Republicans probably won’t change their tune.
And nothing will change until one of two things happen: enough of them are brave enough to confront their voters, or until things get so incredibly bad that the voters themselves begin having doubts about their worldview.
It’s actually possible for Republicans and other conservative leaders to reverse this trend, but they have to stand up and actually say “This is wrong. We know our voters may disagree, but we have to stop this madness.” I seriously doubt that happens, but it could change the dynamic if enough of them did. They could actually influence their own culture by staking a claim to its leadership. But that probably won’t happen, which is really how we got here in the first place.
The alternative, then, is that this continues. A would-be heir apparent to MAGA studies the weakness among Republicans and learns how to exploit it. The Republican party learns how to exploit weaknesses in the political system. They work at the state level to restrict voting. They figure out how to work around social media’s wokeness. They figure out how to obstruct and undermine Biden’s agenda. They wink and nod while encouraging more rioting and violence. It continues until enough people realize that the country could fall apart and that this might not actually be in their interests or the interests of their children and grandchildren. But who knows how long it takes to get to that realization.
I can only imagine that Trumps legal team that quit last week are patting themselves on the back for getting out of this shit show. I can’t imagine how you would defend against the strong case the Dems are building.
I believe that he was objecting to the bit about the miss dial on his phone. The call was for the senator for Alabama, not him. I was a bit confused by that part as well. I thought the call was from Giuliani and not the president.
He wanted it stricken from the record. This got a bit convoluted with leahey mumbling.
He felt that he was misquoted by the article that the managers used in presentation.
Not all at once like the one yesterday. Today it was more time lined by the managers. They would set up a clip, then show a clip, set up, show clip, etc.
No. What is really incomprehensible to me is that 74 million Americans voted to get 4 more years of it. I have absolutely nothing in common with those people, including humanity.
The biggest thing that came out of today’s testimony, to me, was that the rally didn’t have a right to march until the White House intervened to add a march to their rally permit.
Isn’t this precisely why the modern Republican Party have fallen into more corrupt and questionable tactics. Their supporters have this view about politicians but by and large Democrat supporters don’t. So Republican politicians can get away with acting more corruptly because their constituents are more likely to accept it. It’s like a self fulfilling prophecy.
I thought the transcripts of the early phone calls with police, the ones where the cops officially declared a riot ( at around 1:40, IIRC) were very enlightening, especially in light of how their requests were ignored.
They were using abbreviations in the phone calls that weren’t explained, but we looked them up as they ran the transcripts. Not only were they requesting backup, they made a specific request for Detention Security Officers (DSO’s). They also requested LRAD’s ie Long Range Acoustic Device aka sound cannons.
They made those requests pretty early and they were clearly ignored.
Watching the trial and all the “Kill Pence” stuff had me remembering this great article about Trump turning on Pence. The Lincoln Project helped.
The idea for the ad had popped into Steven Schmidt’s head when he woke up in the morning of Dec 2nd…snip background on Schmidt… “There’s zero fucking chance that Trump knows what happens on January 6th” Schmidt told ex-GOP strategist Rick Wilson and other Lincoln Project members on a team conference call at 11AM the next morning. “Oh my God,” Wilson responded, bursting into laughter. “There’s no way that he does.”
The story then describes how they produced the ad and booked it on Fox News in the DC area only, as well as other highlights of Trump turning on Pence.
And it made it abundantly clear that this was because Trump wanted the mob to go to the Capitol building to disrupt Congress when they counted the Electoral Votes. He told them to march there.
Trump got exactly what he wanted, and planned for. Well, not quite. I’m sure Trump wanted Pence and Pelosi to be murdered, and Stephen Miller was helping him along in this quest.
One consequence of Senate Republicans’ failure to condemn Trump’s behavior may be this:
Looks like the Republican party is going to split one way or another. Trump will take the Trumpy ones, principled Republicans will take the principled ones – and Mitch McConnell is going to have to decide which party he’s going to belong to.