I want to return to this revelatory interview with co-conspirator John Eastman, the last portion of which was published Thursday by Tom Klingenstein, the Chairman of the Trumpite Claremont Institute and then highlighted by our Josh Kovensky. There’s a lot of atmospherics in this interview, a lot of bookshelf-lined tweedy gentility mixed with complaints about OSHA regulations and Drag Queen story hours. But the central bit comes just over half way through the interview when Eastman gets into the core justification and purpose for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election and overthrow the constitutional order itself. He invokes the Declaration of Independence and says quite clearly that yes, we were trying to overthrow the government and argues that they were justified because of the sheer existential threat America was under because of the election of Joe Biden.
January 6th conspirators have spent more than two years claiming either that nothing really happened at all in the weeks leading up to January 6th or that it was just a peaceful protest that got a bit out of hand or that they were just making a good faith effort to follow the legal process. Eastman cuts through all of this and makes clear they were trying to overthrow (“abolish”) the government; they were justified in doing so; and the warrant for their actions is none other than the Declaration of Independence itself.
There’s a big flutter in GOP primary election news today that Dead Bounce Ron (formerly known as Ron DeSantis) is edging his way up to denouncing the Big Lie. In Iowa today he declared that “all those theories that were put out did not prove to be true” and, even worse, that they were “unsubstantiated.” TPM Reader AB told me it could be a tipping point: “If the other candidates finally call Trump out as a loser, and he has to run on the lame ass claim he actually won within his own party, it could pierce his armor.” While noting that it could just be wishful thinking, he insisted that “once Trump gets branded a loser by members of his own party he could go down fast.”
As you’ll see from the first quote, DBR leveled the accusation in the passive voice, both substantively and grammatically. He didn’t even use the guy’s name! Indeed, as per usual, the purported swipes at Trump tell us not so much about any true slackening of Trump’s domination but rather the vast extent of it.
There’s this strong tendency with some people, that whenever you point to any comment from former Vice President Mike Pence that’s non-terrible, to immediately chime in, “It’s too late!” “He had his chance!” “Pathetic!”
But really all those things are a given and yet it’s still worth noting even his most trivial shifts in the direction of salvaging some frail shadow of dignity. I say this all to preface the observation that Trump’s coup indictment and his own conspicuous role in the indictment narrative and chain of evidence seem finally to have convinced Pence that this is a divide he simply cannot straddle. You’re either on Team Coup or you’re not.
Some quotes from the 48 hours after the indictment was handed down.
I deliberately avoided getting pulled into today’s play-by-play and drama. I kept up on it by dropping in on our team’s live blog. But with the day over, every account and image I’ve seen of today’s events reads like a man, yes, overcome by rage but even more overcome by fear. His Truth Social platform has a bit of an air of The Wizard of Oz, bellowing and menace. But out from behind the curtain he’s a much smaller figure.
The simple fact is that if Donald Trump isn’t elected in November 2024, there’s a good chance he’ll spend a good part or most of the rest of his life in prison. That would terrify anyone. Especially someone who experiences powerlessness, being dominated as a kind of death.
An Arizona county run by Republicans recently voted against moving forward with plans to try to get rid of electronic ballot-counting machines and to conduct the tabulation of the 2024 election by hand. While initially propelled in part by conspiracy theories about voting machines, the all-Republican county board of supervisors determined that ultimately moving to a hand count would be too expensive and the methodology too unreliable.
A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate look at the sheer number of criminal and civil cases that will dominate Donald Trump’s 2024 calendar, while he’s also running for President on the side.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
Josh and TPM’s Josh Kovensky go through the big questions surrounding Jack Smith’s 4 count indictment of Donald Trump over the post-2020 election coup plot.
A desperate DeSantis showed up in New Hampshire for a three day trip. On federal employees, he told attendees at a campaign barbecue in Rye: “We are going to start slitting throats on Day One.”
I’m glad David hit this point in The Morning Memo. In addition to the Times article he references, the Times also published a piece by Tom Edsall (the writer who perhaps most consistently drives me crazy) casting the Trump indictment as part of a larger story of “the left’s” turn away from free speech. That premise about free speech is a complicated matter in its own right. But, as David notes, it has nothing to do with this case. The case has nothing to do with platforms or hate speech or misinformation or anything else. This is a case of a group of individuals taking coordinated and affirmative non-speech steps (i.e., a conspiracy) to fraudulently change the results of a lawful election.
Ron Brownstein: “With polls showing that most Republican voters still believe the election was stolen from Trump, that the January 6 riot was legitimate protest, and that Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 results did not violate the law or threaten the constitutional system, the United States faces a stark and unprecedented situation. For the first time in the nation’s modern history, the dominant faction in one of our two major parties has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to accept antidemocratic means to advance its interests.”
Other people might be shocked to find their image in a television ad running in a state where they don’t live, focused on an issue they have never weighed in on. But, as a prominent drag queen, Lil Miss Hot Mess has become used to political attacks of late.
Josh and Kate look at the sheer number of criminal and civil cases that will dominate Donald Trump’s 2024 calendar, while he’s also running for President on the side.
For the past few months, a sheriff who employs a distinctly old school style of policing has been clashing with a very new-school band of extremely online neo-Nazis.
