The January 6th Summer Blockbuster – Now What?
Hello Hackaroos,
Well, that’s a wrap (for now) for the January 6th hearings. But if you liked Season 1, the new season starts in September with more hearings. How bad do things look for the Orange Menace as well as new internet meme star Sen. Josh “The Flash” Hawley? That’s where we begin before turning to the very much related story unfolding in Georgia’s investigation into Trump’s efforts to undo the 2020 results there. Then one last Tory take from Murphy and some tidbits.
Before we dive into last night, the President was diagnosed with COVID Thursday. The White House reports that a double-boosted President has mild symptoms. We hope he feels better and recovers quickly. It’s a testament to how far we’ve come in the pandemic that the biggest story today isn’t the oldest President having COVID.
And that’s because…
The Hearings That Lived Up To Their Hype
MURPHY: We were promised a Big Finish and we got one. The hearings – a well-produced spectacular – gave us more credible information and detail on Trump vs. the USSS after his speech urging the mob to march to the Capitol, we heard first-hand how Trump ignored his pleading staff to speak out to stop the violence for that now famous 187 minutes. We heard chilling testimony about VP Pence’s USSS detail, including radio calls, worried that the mob would find Pence and lead to a lethal force situation, including some agents calling their families to say goodbye. We saw source videotape of Trump unhappily grunting his way through a go home video, having thrown away the staff’s far stronger script to repeat his grievances. The bottom line: Trump was just fine with the attack on the Capitol. He was rooting for it. He didn’t want it to stop, he wanted it to succeed. Criminal, seditious, a traitor. Gibbs?
GIBBS: Murphy, the more hearings we have, the worse this story gets for Trump. Like many, I thought we knew most of what had happened that day and was worried the hype of these hearings wouldn’t match what we heard. Boy oh boy was I wrong about that one! The testimony last night was riveting. As you said, the notion that the Vice President’s Secret Service detail feared for Pence’s safety and enough of their own that they were calling family was deeply chilling. The outtakes of a disgraced leader the day after still not able to fully condemn his supporters actions (mostly because he fueled them) and unable, even after the Electoral College vote was certified, to say the election was over were stunning, even for Trump. And let’s not forget, as we teased above, these hearings aren’t done and that’s because each one of these hearings brings new people and new accounts to the Committee. Trump wants to know when these hearings will finally end and we know why: the revelations, the video, the testimony from his own staff are having an impact on his political future as well as increasing his potential to be indicted. This is far from over.
Did the Devil Really Go Down to Georgia?
GIBBS: You’ve heard us tell you to watch Georgia all year long and now there’s another reason. The Fulton County special grand jury that’s examining whether there was a crime committed during the 2020 election in Georgia was bursting with new developments. This week, court filings indicated all of Georgia’s 16 alternate shame Republican electors were informed they could face criminal charges, along with others who helped organize the effort. A judge ruled that those alternates couldn’t simply skip testifying if they didn’t want to appear (though they can still plead the 5th Amendment to avoid incriminating themselves). Rudy Giuliani was ordered to testify and Lindsey Graham will do so also. Some of these developments have also caught the eye of Federal prosecutors who want to interview those involved. Needless to say, in an already supercharged state for 2022, many in the Georgia Republican leadership now find themselves spending time in court trying to explain away their actions from 2020. Something tells me this is only the beginning.
Murphy’s Tory Take: Hasta, La Vista Baby!
MURPHY: The Tory MPs voted and – as more or less expected – the top two finishers who will now compete for the votes of the party’s grassroots membership are former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak and Foreign Minister Liz Truss. Early polling shows Truss with a large lead among the party’s 200,000 members, while Sunak finished first in the final MPs caucus election. Sunak is seen as representing the party’s center wing; he’s a sunny technocrat with a wonky vibe. Truss, a wily veteran Tory pol, has been successfully consolidating the Tory right wing, although she is under attack for being a bit of a convert to the purist cause (she was originally a member of the centrist Liberal Democrat party and was active in the Tory faction that strongly opposed Brexit. Now she’s all for it.) In the trenches, Sunak’s biggest problem might be his reputation as a leader of the dump Boris Johnson cabal within the Tories. Boris is far more popular out in the grassroots hustings than he was within the Parliamentary party. He might well try a little score settling with Sunak. So, London CW would say the race is now Liz Truss’s to lose. That’s where the UK’s famous bookmakers are. But six weeks is a long time and with daily obsessive press coverage, let’s wait and see. Next up are a ton of local meetings, forums and a big TV debate. Oh, and one more thing; Sunak and Truss pretty much hate each other! So let the slagging oppo fly!
TIDBITS
MURPHY: Maryland was a sad story. A nut – Dan Cox – beats a respectable and highly electable Republican – Kelly Schultz – in the GOP primary. So now there is no Republican hope in the general election and like in PA and IL, general election voters lose any serious contest or real choice. (And in MD the Democrats, of course, cynically spent big TV money to give Cox a big assist in the primary. It must be hard to schedule a statewide Democratic candidate these days; you have to juggle pious speeches about saving Democracy with raising money to elevate dangerous nuts to improve the odds for your own election…). Matt Lewis also asks the scary question here: What if One or Two of Them Win?
AZ and MI are the next big primaries. Both are grim. In Arizona, a Trump-supported nut is running in first place (again with Democratic money giving an assist), but the GOP regulars (and Mike Pence) are supporting another non-crazy candidate who is creeping up in the polls. We’ll see. In Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has been in trouble, but is mounting a comeback based on a very weak GOP field. Several R candidates bungled their nominating petitions with a Keystone Kops worthy series of screw ups, leaving only a few C-list ham n’ eggers to compete for the GOP nomination. Pundit Tudor Jones is the most electable – think Gov. Kristi Noem with more of a Michigan twang – but she’s under attack from car dealer Kevin Rinke for having the support of “MAGA-turncoat,” wait for it… Betsy DeVos. Check out his ad:
GIBBS: Also on tap is the primary in Missouri where scandal-plagued former Governor Eric Greitens looks to become the nominee for the U.S. Senate. Could this put another likely GOP seat into the competitive column? And, Murphy, if we are talking about Arizona, don’t forget about the Senate primary there featuring a Trump-backed candidate hoping to take on incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly and an election denier running for Secretary of State. What could go wrong?!
Also, worth watching over the next days and weeks… first, something is quite fishy about missing text messages from the U.S. Secret Service from January 5th and 6th and it’s now resulted in a criminal investigation, as it should. Second, will Speaker Nancy Pelosi visit Taiwan next month during the Congressional recess? Her trip leaked to the press, the Chinese promised a strong response if she came and then, quite unusually, President Biden remarked that the U.S. military didn’t think going was a good idea right now. So, what now? Go and risk the response? Don’t go and look cowed by the Chinese?
Have a great weekend!
Murphy and Gibbs