This is the second excerpt from “I Alone Can Fix It”: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year, by Phillip Rucker and Carol D. Leonnig, published in the Washington Post this week. This excerpt is the account of events leading up to and including the insurrection on January 6, and it is chilling to the bone just how close we came to Trump and his goons taking down the government. This is a must read.
Trust me.
Trump, even as late as this weekend, repeated the lie on his blog that the election was stolen from him by non-existent voter fraud. He bragged that 80% of Republicans believed that lie as he desperately tries to keep his iron grip on the party that he wants destroyed. Trump is nothing, if not obsesively vindictive. What’s telling, though, have been his actions. How do we know? Trump tried to wreck as much of the US government as he could on the way out the door. I don’t think he would have done that had he truly believed he won.
On November 9th, John McEtee, aide to Trump, told Douglas Macgregor, new acting defense secretary Chris Miller’s senior advisor, that Trump wanted full military withdrawal, by Inauguration Day, from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, all of Africa, and…wait for it…Germany. Recall that Miller had just taken on the defense job after Trump fired Mark Esper by tweet just a few days earlier. This, as you would imagine, was an impossible task, and worse, it was from out in left field. A written order followed two days later that commanded the Pentagon to withdraw troops from Somalia by December 15th, and Afghanistan bay January 15th. It was personally signed by Trump in his idiotic scribble. The order sent shockwaves through the Pentagon as leaders realized that this was an “off the books” operation with none of the usual planning, table top simulations, or alternatives. This was just Trump being Trump, and luckily the Pentagon held the line, slow walking the order to run out the clock.
At the same time, Trump tried to wreck the CIA and dig dirt on his enemies by installing loyalists at the top of the agency trying to get the director, Gina Haspel, to resign. Mercifully, that effort also failed as Pence and WH counsel Pat Cipollone came to Haspel’s defense. Switching tactics, Trump then installed a Nunes staffer and Trump loyalist, Michael Ellis, to the general counsel position at the NSA, a position difficult to terminate by the new administration. In an appropriate end to his short career, Ellis resigned in April after he had been sidelined by an IG investigation into his role in the handling of classified information and placed on indefinite leave.
It’s now just coming out that Trump’s DOJ tried to get the courts to unmask a Twitter user who had gotten under Devin Nunes skin with a parody account @NunesAlt. Barr’s attorneys sought a grand jury subpoena of Twitter to reveal the user’s actual name, and Twitter had fought the subpoena until the demand was dropped after Biden took office.
These are just a few examples of the lengths to which Trump went in the waning days of his infestation to wreck as much of the government that he could, install loyalists as his spies, and punish his supporters’ enemies. Luckily the actual public servants in these agencies kept their oaths to the Constitution, and repelled Trump’s attacks. Next time (if there is a next time) we might not be so lucky.
Since November 3rd, Trump has been childishly ranting about the election, obstinately refusing to accept the inevitable. For the most part, his enablers have played along with his claims of massive fraud and even amplified his claims. There are now plans being circulated by Trump loyalists in Congress to actually steal the election from the voters on January 6th when both houses meet to tally the electoral votes and finally certify the election. That effort will fail, of course, but the damage Trumpists will do to our democracy is incalculable.
Let’s consider how we got here. One of these conclusions are true:
From Merriam Webster:
: a scientific and philosophical rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities.
In short, Occam’s Razor is used to “cut away” unrelated, irrelevant, extraneous, and confusing assertions to get to the true answer. For example, a fence post in a pasture is broken. a) That post was run over by a Unicorn chasing Bigfoot, or b) a nail in the old fence post rusted through. Answer b is the obvious, and simplest answer. The case of our two alternatives for the election is obviously answer 2.
So why is Trump in such severe denial? There are dozens of reasons including fear of criminal prosecution, running out of money, and narcissistic greed. The simplest answer? Being labeled A LOSER. He calls everyone he doesn’t like “losers” including dead soldiers and people who dare criticize him. To Trump, being a loser is a fate worse than any other. The ironic thing is that his behavior is keeping him in front of the American people as the sorest of sore losers. And, history will remember Trump as impeached, a one termer, and…
A LOSER
Brad Parscale, Trump’s digital marketing guru, boasted earlier this week that one million people had applied for tickets to Coronafest in Tulsa. Usually brilliant, Parscale fell for a prank by Tik-Tok users whose viral posts prompted all those ticketed no-shows. Only 6,200 showed, the outdoor events were abruptly canceled, and you know that Trump raged all the way home. But the best thing? This photo:
Nothing embodies Trump’s fizzling re-election prospects more than this image.
Yesterday, Bill Barr ordered Lafayetter Square and the grounds of St. John’s Episcopal Church cleared of peaceful Americans by force using teargas and flash bang grenades so Trump could pose in front of the church with his unread Bible. The shots are being used in Trump campaign commercials. Well, he did it again today, this time taking over the St. John Paul II shrine in Washington for another photo op with the nude model from Slovenia First Lady. Apparently, he left the unread Bible at the house, probably already back in its storage box, but he did have someone place a wreath at the statue of John Paul with a card that said “Mr. President”.
They then went into the chapel there, kneeling and pretending to pray at the altar.
Apparently, Trump’s advanced team left out one detail for this photo op, asking the diocese for permission. The archbishop had some choice words for Trump, to wit:
“I find it baffling and reprehensible that any Catholic facility would allow itself to be so egregiously misused and manipulated in a fashion that violates our religious principles, which call us to defend the rights of all people, even those with whom we might disagree. Saint Pope John Paul II was an ardent defender of the rights and dignity of human beings. His legacy bears vivid witness to that truth. He certainly would not condone the use of tear gas and other deterrents to silence, scatter or intimidate them for a photo opportunity in front of a place of worship and peace.”
Oh, and here was Trump’s security on these jaunts for photo ops:
Now, that’s not something you see every day on the streets of DC.
As we talked about earlier, Trump posed with an unread Bible in front of St. John’s Chapel this evening. He did that after directing DC police and military to gas peaceful protestors so he could pose for the cameras.
Fuck you, Don.