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michael schmidt

They usually dont let me do this, so this is like a were good? OK.

Its weird to hear my own voice through my

Youve got a bit of a radio voice.

[LAUGHS]: I do not think thats right.

All right. Before we start tell us who you are. Like, who are you, why what have you done in your career.

Well, early in my career I was a writer for Time magazine. I decided to become a lawyer. And early in that career I was a federal prosecutor in Manhattan. I focused on public corruption cases. I became the chief of the public corruption unit at a time when we brought successful cases against several major New York political figures. But then I was asked to join the Mueller investigation, and I moved to Washington and worked on that for two years. And now Im the head of the White Collar Practice at the law firm Cooley.

Youre not someone that I know that well. I mean, during the Mueller investigation I showed up at your house to try and get you to talk. And I went to your door and, your doorbell was broken, and we knocked on the door and I could hear you and your family inside. And I was with a colleague of mine, and I turned to the colleague, and I said, you know what, this is too invasive, weve gone too far, this man is inside with his family. And we left.

I didnt know that. Thats all a little creepy [LAUGHS]:.

Thats fair, totally fair.

But you concentrated in the Mueller investigation on a narrow question an important question, but a narrow question of whether Trump had tried to impede that investigation, right?

Thats right.

And what did you find?

As we noted in our report, we found that the presidents conduct during the course of the investigation involved a series of actions that involved attacking the investigation, publicly and privately, trying to control the investigation from his position as President and within the White House. There were efforts in both public and private to encourage witnesses not to cooperate with the investigation. And so those were our predominant findings in terms of obstruction.

And despite finding all of these things that, at the very least was not great behavior, you made a decision about what to do about whether Trump broke the law. What was that decision?

Well, ultimately we decided not to do what traditional prosecutors do when theyre considering bringing a criminal charge. We went down that road for a few different reasons. It was based on our understanding of the role of the president and our understanding of what we believe to be the proper role of a prosecutor.

So you guys basically made a decision not to make a decision, to sort of let the facts speak for themselves and say, look, if after this man, Donald Trump, leaves office and the Justice Department wants to prosecute him, they can do that based on what we found. But were not going to make a decision. Were not going to say whether we think he broke the law.

Thats basically right. And the reason for that is that normally the first step that a prosecutor takes when deciding to bring a criminal charge against somebody is to determine for yourself whether that person is, in fact, guilty. And then you weigh the admissible evidence, you see can you actually prove this case in court, will it stand up on appeal. But here we werent dealing with an ordinary subject. The President is the head of the executive branch. Under Department of Justice policy the President cannot be charged with a crime while in office. And that is because simply charging him with a crime, just making the accusation, that would infringe on his ability to be President.

Right. So that leads us to the January 6 hearings and a different set of circumstances because, of course, Trump is no longer President. Explain to me what crimes Donald Trump could be investigated for based on everything weve learned from the January 6 hearings.

I think the three main potential crimes that people have talked about and that would be at issue here are, number one, obstruction of an official proceeding, number two, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and number three, depending on the evidence, seditious conspiracy.

Lets start with seditious conspiracy. What does that mean and how hard is that to prove?

It means agreeing with one or more other people to use force or violence to prevent the law from being carried out. Some of the people who stormed the Capitol on January 6 have been charged with this and its for their efforts and their plans to stop the counting of the electoral vote by force.

So basically using violence to stop the certification of the election.

Exactly.

So for someone like Trump to be charged with that would that mean that the government would have to prove that he conspired with those individuals to use violence? Would you have to show that he told them to commit violence? Would you have to show that he actually committed violence himself?

You would not have to show that he committed violence himself. Youd have to show that he agreed with people who were going to use violence or who were planning to use violence to stop the electoral vote count from happening.

So you basically need, like, Donald Trump sitting down with the Oath Keepers and with, like, a map of the Capitol and saying, look, like, this is how you guys should break into the building to stop Pence from doing his certification.

I dont think you need that much, but you need to be able to prove that the President had an agreement or that he joined a conspiracy to not just have the vote count be stopped but to use force or violence to stop it. And the evidence thats out on the public record right now I dont think would support that.

OK, so what about the charge of defrauding the public, defrauding the American people? It seems like just from watching it that there might be a lot of grist for a charge there. Im thinking of Trumps efforts to install loyalists at the Justice Department, him pressuring the Secretary of State of Georgia to come up with the exact number of votes that he needed to win that state. It certainly looks to many like he took these acts knowing that he lost the election but was still trying to overturn them anyway. Are those examples of actions that could be used to show that he was defrauding the American people?

Look, there is a crime called conspiracy to defraud the United States, and it effectively means conspiring or agreeing with other people where the intent is to stop or obstruct the lawful function of the government using deceitful or dishonest means.

The difficulty with that kind of a charge here is that its a little novel. Conspiracy to defraud is something thats not itself novel, but applying it to this set of facts as Ive seen it is something that has not clearly been done before.

Well, then lets get to that third charge the charge of obstructing an act of Congress. Define that for us.

The proceeding itself would be the proceeding on January 6 where Congress and the Vice President were going to certify the results of the 2020 election. And the crime would be doing something or conspiring with others to do something to obstruct that proceeding and to do it corruptly.

How would you prove that someone obstructed an act of Congress or a congressional proceeding?

At the most basic level, you need two things. You need some action that would impede or would tend to impede the proceeding itself, and then you need corrupt intent. Intent is typically the hardest thing to show in a political corruption or an obstruction investigation. It requires showing that somebody was acting with an improper motive, that he was effectively conscious of wrongdoing at the time he took his action. And here theres been a lot of evidence about the Presidents advisors and lawyers and people from the Department of Justice telling the President that the election was over, that there wasnt sufficient evidence of fraud to overturn the results of the election. And so thats the kind of evidence that would get at the Presidents intent as hes continuing to push these claims of fraud even after having been told all of that.

Theres evidence that he was told that Mike Pence did not have the power to, on his own, refuse to take part in the certification or to delay the certification of the votes and that he continued to push Pence to do that. And then theres the evidence of his conduct on January 6 itself and some of the things he did not do while it was clear that the Capitol had been effectively under siege, and people were telling him to take actions, and he didnt. All of those are things that would go to helping establish the Presidents intent.

OK, so theres some evidence that could help establish intent here. But as you said, as a prosecutor, you would want to establish intent and action. What would be, putting the facts aside, which were not supposed to do in journalism, what would a clear cut example be of an action? If I said, make up an action that shows obstructing a congressional proceeding, what would that look like?

I think like, if, for example, if there is evidence that the President directed Mike Pences security detail to not let Pence go to the Capitol or, when he was there, to actually direct them to get him out of there before he could certify the vote that would be an act. It would absolutely have the effect of impairing or impeding the proceeding. And I think, if that was what happened, I think it wouldnt be that hard to show that the intent was corrupt.

So you need a clear-cut example of Trump doing something that literally impedes this certification.

Not necessarily in that you could have an attempt or you could have a conspiracy. But in the end I think a prosecutor would still need to point to an act, an action that the president either took himself or directed to have been taken that would itself obstruct the proceeding.

Based on what we know, Trump tried to pressure Pence in the days leading up to January 6 to essentially take the certification into his own hands and either decide who won or send the votes back to the states. You have Trumps actions on the Ellipse where he gives a speech, and he says, lets all march to the Capitol. And then he tries to go there himself in his own motorcade. And then when the riot is going on, Trump tweets about Pence, criticizing Pence for how Pence did. Unpack those different acts and explain to us why those different acts would potentially get you there or not get you there in terms of establishing that Trump did something to truly impede the proceeding.

I think for each of those acts there are ways to look at them where they would, in fact, have had the tendency to obstruct the proceeding, but they all have their own problems. For example, if the jawboning of Pence is basically a disagreement, and hes not trying to actually stop the proceeding, hes trying to get the proceeding to come out in a way thats in his favor, or hope that by going up there and then it getting delayed, it could buy him some time, thats different than an action that could actually obstruct the proceeding.

And the other things that you mentioned and that are out there, the speech that the president gave on the Ellipse early that afternoon telling the Secret Service to take away the magnetometers, the tweet about the Vice President when people were already inside the Capitol, these are things where, on the one hand, you can make an argument that they were designed to try to rile people up to then be able to go to the Capitol and to obstruct the proceeding. But theyre also things that politicians generally do. And theres a defense that this is political speech, that the tweet would be political speech. That the only reason he would have said to not let the magnetometers stay up would be because he wanted to pack the crowd and nothing to do with trying to get people who were armed to then go to the Capitol.

So what youre saying is that because these actions that he took are sort of braided together with his First Amendment rights it makes it more difficult for those to be actual acts because its unclear where his free speech rights begin or end, and his intent to obstruct the proceeding picks up from there. Is that right?

I think when it comes in particular to the speech itself and to the tweet or other tweets that those, he would have a legal argument that its core protected First Amendment activity. Hes the President. He needs to be able to talk to supporters. He didnt explicitly say, lets go march on the Capitol, and break the doors down, and stop this proceeding from happening. And so theres a real legal defense there. And factually theres the defense that he did not in fact say the magic words that would be true incitement. At least he would have an argument that thats not what he was actually doing.

So if Im reading between the lines on what youre saying, it seems like, in terms of these two things you need, intent and an act, based on what we know and has come out at the hearings, theres probably enough on the intent side. But on the act side, its fuzzier in terms of whether theres a clear-cut act. Is that I mean, if were sitting back, and were assessing this, and youre saying, OK just do it for us, right? So like, youre the prosecutor. How much you know, do you get there on each one?

Number one, I dont really want to weigh in on the strength of the evidence, in part because I dont know all of it. And it would be a little bit of shooting from the sidelines to weigh in. But number two, I do think its important as the evidence is coming out of the January 6 Committee to realize that there are difficulties here in proving either of these things. There are issues with, are any of the things that the President did or try to get others to do that day, would they really count as obstructive acts? And in terms of his intent, theres definitely been a lot of evidence that has come out. Does that get you over the hump of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the President was acting with a corrupt intent? I think these are very hard questions.

Beyond the obvious of, like, wanting to have witnesses in the room for everything and documents backing it all up, if you were the prosecutor here, what would you want to know? What would you really be keying in on to try and understand whether the President broke the law?

One thing that I think I would want to know if is there any evidence that the President was telling people internally, anybody internally, that he didnt believe the things he was saying. That he knew he had lost and that all of this was effectively a construct to try to stay in power. If the Department had evidence of him saying that to a confidant or to somebody who was in the inner circle, thats the kind of evidence that I think, if I were a prosecutor in this type of a case, I would really want.

And why does that change things?

I think it goes right at the heart of intent, and it would put a very strong gloss on all of the actions that have already come out through this January 6 Committee process.

So youre saying by strengthening intent it sort of helps to bolster the acts because their intentions of the actual acts are clear.

Because I think what it could end up showing is that some of the actions might be able to be read in different ways.

If the government could actually show that the reason behind them, the intent behind them was all about trying to stop the certification of the election, that would then change what might be the type of act that could be read in two different directions and read in a way where, actually, thats the kind of action where the purpose of it was to impede the certification of the election.

So bolstering one can help bolster the other.

It can.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

After our last hearing, President Trump tried to call a witness in our investigation. A witness you have not yet seen in these hearings. That person declined to answer or respond to President Trumps call and instead alerted their lawyer to the call. Their lawyer alerted us, and this committee has supplied that information to the Department of Justice. Let me say one more time, we will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously.

Weve heard Liz Cheney talk about witness tampering. Would a witness tampering charge here be more appealing to a prosecutor?

Potentially because its more straightforward than some of the other things that are out there. Its easier for the public to digest, and the law on witness tampering is very clear. Youre not going to be pushing for some aggressive view of the law. Look, I do think factually tying the former President to the type of witness tampering that came up in that congressional hearing, I think, would be a challenge.

But if that were the provable crime, that in some ways becomes easier to explain that no person can tamper with the witness as theyre going and provide testimony before Congress on an important issue.

So its cleaner and clearer.

If the facts support it, I think it would be both cleaner and clearer.

OK, so lets say if prosecutors think they can prove intent, they think they have an act, an action, and they think they can prove the count beyond a reasonable doubt, and they can survive an appeal, and they send that up the chain of command at the Justice Department, it lands on Merrick Garlands desk in Washington, and he says, OK, I accept at face value what you prosecutors have determined about intent and action, then Merrick Garland has another decision to make. A whole other set of issues to look at. What are those issues and what is that decision?

In this kind of a situation its not easy. As I said earlier, when a prosecutor makes an analysis about whether to bring a criminal charge in any case, they have to believe that the person is guilty, they have to have the evidence to prove it, and to have it withstand any challenge on appeal, but then they also have to believe that its in the publics interest to bring the case. Is there a substantial federal interest in bringing this prosecution?

Explain what that means. What does the publics interest mean to a prosecutor?

Look, in some respects its a very straightforward thing that prosecutors consider all the time. Most prosecutors believe that their job is to do justice. And so, of course, what they want to do if theyre going to charge somebody with a crime is not just do an analysis of the facts and the law but also think about and believe that this is the right thing for the country. And theyre factors that are actually listed in whats called the Justice Manual, which is the guidebook for all federal prosecutors that walk through all of the different factors that our prosecutors should consider when evaluating the public interest in bringing a prosecution. And they include things like the seriousness of the offense, the circumstances of the defendant, the ability for there to be other means of accountability, the need for deterrence in that particular situation. And the hard question is, how do you weigh all these things? And theres not an easy answer to that. It comes down to an assessment of what you think is right and what you think is ultimately in the interests of the American public.

So what youre saying is that in our system weve entrusted prosecutors with not just the ability to investigate crimes and figure out whether an individual violated the law in terms of whether the facts line up with the law, but then on top of that, whether bringing such a prosecution is essentially the right thing to do. This power that weve given prosecutors in our country is just so great that theres an added element of whether is this in the best interest of the public that every case is looked at through.

Thats right.

And why is it the prosecutors job to figure out whether its in the best interests of the country and not simply just based on the evidence? Why do they get to decide whether its in the interest of the country or not?

In the criminal law, you want prosecutors to have some measure of discretion. You want to have a prosecutor have the ability to say no, to say, you know what, theres a different forum to try to carry out the best interests of the public here. And I think all this really means is that when you apply that to a president or a former president and somebody who is a potential candidate in a presidential election potentially representing the whole country that you do want a prosecutor to consider the public interest there. Otherwise, you could effectively have your head sort of in the sand and be bull charging ahead, taking a step that could have massive ramifications for the whole country.

Why should that matter? Right, so one of the major tenets of the American legal system is that were all treated the same under the law. Why is it that it seems like the bar for someone whos such a high profile politician or a former president or someone running is higher? Why is that higher? Why is that not the same for everyone else?

I dont think its necessarily higher, but the considerations when youre talking about a political leader are certainly different and harder because there you have the very clear and important rule that the Department of Justice should try in every way possible not to interfere with elections, to not take steps using the criminal process that could end up affecting the political process. And so I think a prosecutor in evaluating what to do with potential criminal conduct by a political leader has to weigh those things. And those are things that are just not going to be present in the ordinary course.

Does it become so high profile at a point that not prosecuting is as much a political decision as prosecuting?

It certainly could be viewed that way. And one of the things that the Department of Justice has to weigh in this kind of a situation is both what are the potential ramifications of prosecuting, but also the ramifications of not prosecuting. And here, in part because of just how high profile all of this is, if there were very clear evidence of a crime and it was sort of very straightforward and provable, but the Department of Justice walked away, there is a real risk of the American people thinking that there are two systems of justice. And that would be devastating to the mission of the Department.

And in this case, in terms of assessing whether to bring a charge, is the fact that it occurred around the certification of the election, something that we are supposed to hold so sacred in this country and our democracy, does that weigh in terms of look, this is a really serious event, and because a really serious event led to complete mayhem on essentially one entire branch of government that a charge should be brought? Or, I mean

I think that shows exactly why it is so important to get this right. And Merrick Garland has said publicly that hes effectively committing all of the resources necessary to get to the bottom of what happened and to hold people accountable for it. I think we should take him at his word. But without question, what happened on January 6 was horrendous for our country and for our democracy. You certainly wouldnt want to look away if theres criminal wrongdoing there. But you also want to make sure that the cases that you bring are strong and are the right cases to bring.

But like, also the issue is, look, if we go to trial and we lose, the consequences of that could be just as great for the country, right?

That is right. And that is one of the reasons why, before bringing criminal charges at this level as part of this investigation, the Department of Justice is going to want to make sure that their cases are as bulletproof as humanly possible. One possibility to consider would be whether it would make sense to delay bringing a charge until after the 2024 election. The upside of that is that you potentially are not interfering in the actual electoral process and having a potential trial or pretrial motions right in the middle of an election. The downside is that you would still have all kinds of talk and chatter about the presidential candidate being under investigation. And if he wins, then you have an even more difficult decision. Do you then bring a charge after the election is over against a candidate who won?

So if we look at the whole landscape of this thing, in your analysis, it seems like to me that bringing a prosecution against Donald Trump would be difficult. It was difficult when he was in office because he was President. Its now difficult because hes out of office and may run for president. Maybe you have to delay this prosecution until after the 2024 election. If its so hard to prosecute a president or a former president or such a high profile politician like this, why would we even investigate it anyway?

I think if theres evidence of criminal wrongdoing and its a federal criminal wrongdoing, it is the job of the Department of Justice to investigate that. And in the end an investigation such as the one being done by the January 6 Committee or an investigation like what we did under Special Counsel Mueller there are forms of accountability that are vindicated even if criminal charges are not brought. One of the great things that the January 6 Committee has been able to do has been to show in much greater detail what was actually happening on January 6, not just inside Congress and among the people who stormed the Capitol, but also inside the White House at that time. And I think all of the American public are better for having seen these facts and knowing what is out there.

If ultimately that doesnt result in a criminal prosecution of the President or any of his top advisors, that doesnt mean that there hasnt been some real good that has come out of the January 6 Committee.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Andrew, thank you so much for coming in to talk to us today.

It was a pleasure to be here.

Look, no person is above the law in this country. Nothing stops us.

Even a former President?

No I dont know how to maybe Ill say that again. No person is above the law in this country. I cant say it any more clearly than that. There is nothing in the principles of prosecution in any other factors which prevent us from investigating anyone, anyone who is criminally responsible for an attempt to undo a democratic election.

The January 6 committees next hearing is scheduled for 8:00 PM tonight.

Well be right back.

Heres what else you need to know today. A bipartisan group of senators has reached a deal to modernize the 135-year-old Electoral Count Act, the law that President Trump sought to abuse on January 6 to remain in office. Their proposed legislation seeks to guarantee a peaceful transfer of power from one president to the next by, among other things, clarifying that the vice presidents role in certifying electoral votes on January 6 is purely ceremonial.

And on Wednesday Russia expanded its territorial ambitions in Ukraine saying that it wants to recapture land in the countrys south. Thats a reversal from a few months ago when Russia said it would only seek to capture territory in Ukraines east. But so far its unclear if Russia can follow through with the threat.

Todays episode was produced by Jessica Cheung and Asthaa Chaturvedi with help from Stella Tan. It was edited by Michael Benoist, Lisa Chow, and Paige Cowett, contains original music by Dan Powell and Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

Thats it for The Daily. Im Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

Read more from the original source:
The Case Against Donald Trump - The New York Times

Former President Donald Trump speaks during a "Save America" rally in Anchorage, Alaska, on July 9, 2022.Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Donald Trump called a witness in the House January 6 investigation within the last week.

Rep. Liz Cheney said the witness did not answer but alerted a lawyer, who then told the House panel.

Cheney previously showed evidence that Trump allies were pressing witnesses to do the "right thing."

Former President Donald Trump tried to call a witness in the congressional inquiry into the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, Rep. Liz Cheney said Tuesday, prompting House investigators to notify the Justice Department.

"After our last hearing, President Trump tried to call a witness in our investigation a witness you have not yet seen in these hearings. That person declined to answer or respond to President Trump's call and, instead, alerted their lawyer to the call," said Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, in a bombshell revelation that concluded the House January 6 committee's seventh public hearing.

"Their lawyer alerted us, and this committee has supplied that information to the Department of Justice," she added. "Let me say one more time: We will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously."

Cheney, the Hosue January 6 committee's vice chair, had previously gone public with the House January 6 committee's concerns about witness tampering as it continues to investigate the Capitol attack and Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. At the House panel's previous hearing, Cheney revealed evidence that Trump allies were pressuring witnesses, a "practice that raises significant concern," she said.

Without identifying specific individuals, Cheney said Trump allies have urged witnesses to do "the right thing" ahead of appearances before the House January 6 committee.

"I think most Americans know that attempting to influence witnesses to testify untruthfully presents very serious concerns," Cheney said at the committee's June 28 hearing.

It is unclear whether the House January 6 committee alerted the Justice Department to Trump's call in the form of a formal referral. A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment.

Story continues

The mention of Trump's call capped a three-hour hearing that focused on the former president's embrace of draconian plans to retain power and his role in galvanizing far-right groups that stormed the Capitol on January 6.

The House January 6 committee played footage of former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and two cabinet officials former Attorney General William Barr and Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia testifying that they knew Trump had lost the election after the Electoral College voted to certify the results in mid-December 2020.

Nonetheless, Trump entertained desperate plans to remain in the White House, including by seizing voting machines and appointing Sidney Powell, a conservative lawyer known for propounding conspiracy theories, as special counsel to investigate baseless claims of voter fraud.

"I was vehemently opposed. I didn't think she should be appointed to anything," Cipollone told the committee in his recorded testimony Friday, a portion of which was played publicly for the first time Tuesday.

Drawing from recorded testimony, the House committee detailed a December 18, 2020, meeting in which Powell and former national security advisor Michael Flynn urged Trump to name Powell special counsel and sign an executive order to seize voting machines. In her own testimony to the House committee, Powell recalled how Cipollone "set a land-speed record" rushing to intervene in the meeting.

"I was not happy to see the people who were in the Oval Ofice," Cipollone said.

During the second half of the hearing, the House committee turned to the incendiary rhetoric in which Trump mobilized his supporters, including members of far-right groups such as the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. The House committee highlighted a December 19, 2020 tweet in which Trump said: "Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!"

Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, said Trump's incendiary rhetoric "electrified and galvanized" supporters. Later, he invoked a phrase from Trump's 2017 inaugural address "American carnage" and delved deeper into American history to say "the Watergate break-in was like a Cub Scout meeting compared to this assault on our people and our institutions."

"American carnage: That's Donald Trump's true legacy," Raskin said. "His desire to overthrow the people's election and seize the presidency interrupted the counting of electoral college votes for the first time in American history, nearly toppled the constitutional order and brutalized hundreds and hundreds of people."

Read the original article on Business Insider

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Rep. Liz Cheney ends hearing with bombshell: Donald Trump called a ...

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Posted: Jul 10, 2022 12:01 AM

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

Back in 2019 I wrote a piece entitled, Trump Tourettes about the unhinged reactions you get from leftists anytime you mention the 45th President of the United States. It doesnt matter if youre wearing a MAGA hat or casually explaining to someone how to play euchre, any even tangential mention of his last name set off leftists in an uncontrollable rage. That hasnt changed in the three years since, but a new phenomenon has come along to join this affliction Trump Withdrawal.

Where Trump Tourettes causes involuntary ramblings and frothing at the mouth, Trump Withdrawal causes those afflicted to make every single thing they can about Donald John Trump. Celebrity stalkers are more rational about their relationships with the targets of their obsessions than those poor bastards afflicted with an insatiable need to have Trump in their lives.

People in media who made their careers or got their TV contracts because of their willingness to be a Republican who doesnt like Trump on CNN or MSNBC are adrift now. Many of these conservatives are without a home they are what happens to useful idiots when they outlive the useful part and are just left being idiots.

Bill Kristol is a prime example. This Weeble who wouldnt have ever had a job were he not the son of an accomplished man has at least found himself another sugar daddy to keep the gravy train rolling. The commodity he has to sell is his former credibility of being a conservative magazine editor and Fox News commentator. As long as people remember thats what he was, he can still get left-wing billionaires to throw him bones to blame everything on Donald Trump. All he has to do is continue to renounce everything he once claimed to stand for because he doesnt like the people accomplishing it. Hunter Bidens prostitutes have more dignity

Theres also Michael Steele. The former chairman of the Republican National Committee is on MSNBC regularly whining like a 9-year-old girl with a skinned knee about how everything is either the fault of Republicans in general or Donald Trump specifically. Still upset he wasnt reelected to another term as chair because of his incompetent management of the RNC (strip clubs, anyone?), Mikey isnt qualified for much else. He co-founded a PR firm with a liberal Democrat under the guise of caring so deeply about finding solutions to problemsthat he sold it as quickly as possible. Now practices verbal yoga via Skype, showing an amazing ability to make anything about the former President. If Donald Trump didnt exist, Michael Steele would have to invent him because the alternative would be to be a productive human being offering something people need or find useful and hes simply ill-equipped.

Washington Post resident bridge troll Jennifer Rubin is angrier that Donald Trump was President than she is that a house was dropped on her sister. The former alleged conservative now spends her time inventing ways to blame the former President for the failures of the current one. Shes another one of those people with a paper trail expressing a desire for certain policy outcomes who renounced them when they came about because of anything related to the Trump presidency. Shes one step away from performing abortions to prove her fealty to her progressive masters when all she really has to do is give every man in America a picture of herself, which is the most effective form of birth control ever devised.

There are lesser-known sufferers, minor players who never really rose as high as their fervent selling out could have taken them if theyd been even remotely intelligent or interesting before Trump came along. Amanda Carpenter, who appears to have lost her CNN gig and suffered deserved humiliation auditioning for The View, now writes for Kristols latest blog. Matt Lewis has also discovered what happens at CNN post-Trump is like what happens at a strip club after last call the stripper was only pretending to like you. Writing hottakes like Anybody but Trump Is the Only Way Forward for the GOP, he has devolved into someone writing pieces in the hope that Morning Joe will have him on to talk about them. Hes trying to wring out a little more usefulness from his idiocy.

Then again, they all are. What they once pretended to be is the only commodity they have to offer. Donald Trump broke them. Not deliberately, but by existing in a way where he didnt need them. All theyd been building was irrelevant, their lifes works werent needed. He didnt seek their advice, there were no campaign surrogate contracts or consulting deals, he didnt even tweet out their pointless columns or clips of their TV hits. They handled it about as well as an obsessed ex handles the news of your engagement.

These are but a few of the pathetic gaggle scrambling to find some attention from the home they were welcomed into so warmly only a couple of years ago. They have announced their leaving the GOP almost as many times as Max Boot or Joe Scarborough have that its performance art at this point. Perhaps they should apply for a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts? Maybe then the hole inside them will be filled. As for the Republican Party and conservative world: Go already, we still dont need you.

Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!), host of a daily nationally syndicated radio show, and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly Week in F*cking Review podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.

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Donald Trump Broke These People

Remember when then-President Donald Trump hurled a plate at a White House wall, spattering it with ketchup? You didnt see that moment. You didnt even know about it when it happened. But when Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Mark Meadows, Trumps chief of staff, told that story before the House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection of January 6, 2021, odds are pretty good you could picture it.

The ketchup wall was just one of many damning details in Hutchinsons testimony, delivered on June 28. She also testified that Trump seemed intent on allowing heavily armed people to march on the Capitol, that he reportedly attempted to seize control of a vehicle from a Secret Service agent who wouldnt drive him up to the Capitol, and that he was obsessed with the size of the crowd listening to his speech on that day. (With Trump, some things never change.)

Those were all big, shattering revelations. But in the moment, as Hutchinson was testifying, what seemed to garner the greatest buzz on social media platforms was the ketchup. It was so ridiculous, so overly dramatic, so campy. Even though Hutchinson says it really happened, it nevertheless had big reality TV vibes, a sense that what was real had been turned up a couple of notches. And that was what made the moment stand out.

Reality television made Trump, both literally (he built considerable fame atop The Apprentice) and figuratively (he seemed to subconsciously fashion himself as a reality TV character on the campaign trail). And even though Trump is no longer in office, reality TV remains a compelling way to understand him and his administration. With the hearings set to resume this week, the narrative surrounding them at least among casual observers increasingly has the feel of people discussing a reality show around the water cooler, too.

Now that his presidency is over, the January 6 hearings stand as a kind of last-minute reunion special, one where the former star has removed himself from the proceedings by refusing to testify. No less a former Trump luminary than former chief of staff Steve Bannon is set to testify this week.

Since Trump wont be testifying, he misses a chance to set the narrative and define its characters going forward. He has lost control of the story, as it were. As such, were left with the stories we didnt hear about in all those years of the Trump White House. And in the midst of that vacuum, of course were picking on the most ridiculous details.

In the summer of 2015, as Trump began his rise to the top of the Republican presidential primary polls, many political observers wrote him off as a flash in the pan. But his TV presence was fascinating.

In the early Republican primary debates, he kept finding ways to make himself the story and to pull the cameras focus back to him. His many years on the reality show The Apprentice had served him incredibly well. Trump had so internalized how to be on television that none of his opponents seemed to be anywhere near as comfortable. Being good on TV isnt the primary skill that wins presidential races, but it helps considerably. And Trump was really good on TV. The contents of Trumps message are loathsome to many, including many Republicans, but the package Trump is selling them in is market-tested and ready to ship, I wrote at the time.

The idea of understanding Trump as a scheming reality show contestant, willing to do whatever it took to win, only grew as he won the Republican nomination and the presidency. He quite willingly took on the role of reality show villain, which wasnt really a negative. In reality TV, the villain is just the person who drives the story forward through their scheming, whom the cameras are always pinned to, who does and says the most outrageous things to garner attention. The archetypal example is likely Richard Hatch from the first season of Survivor, who won the whole game by being as unscrupulous as possible. Whether Trump thought of himself this way is impossible to know, but he quite obviously understood what made good television.

Donald Trump is starring in a TV show where he is the protagonist turned out to be an incredibly useful way to understand Trumps rise to power. (The New York Timess James Poniewozik wrote an entire book about it.) It didnt help blunt the occasionally catastrophic effects of his policies, but it did explain why he seemed so comfortable with complete and utter chaos. Indeed, he seemed most at home amid it.

Trump seemed comfortable playing a reality show villain, the guy whose behavior was so unbelievable that you had to keep tuning in to see what he did next. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit and disrupted every aspect of American life, Trumps desire to be at the center of his own TV show ran aground but it wasnt as though he lost the 2020 election in a blowout either. To plenty of people, the Trump show was one they wanted to keep watching.

The Trump who attempted to subvert the election on January 6 especially the Trump portrayed in the testimony at the select committee hearings is essentially a man who believed himself to be a TV protagonist who was so intent on remaining the protagonist (or, okay, the president) that he nearly destroyed American democracy in the process of asserting that fact. His efforts ultimately failed, but the reminder of just how self-aggrandizing and destructive Trump could be may be why Hutchinsons testimony seemed to strike such a nerve.

There are few formats more poorly suited to riveting television than congressional hearings. The January 6 committee has lots of compelling visual evidence, including some truly gut-wrenching videos, but the core of the hearings are individual testimonies. And just watching someone talk makes for really boring television.

As such, almost every time there are congressional hearings for anything, those inclined to believe those hearings should move the public opinion needle fret endlessly about whether they have broken through. If hearings are so boring on TV, why would anyone watch these hearings if they were not already inclined to agree with the idea that Trumps actions require investigation? And if nobody watches them, will they matter?

A similar dynamic even struck the Watergate hearings, probably the most famous televised congressional hearings of all time. When looking back at reporting from the period, its not hard to find folks fretting over whether anyone really cares that Nixon did something bad. Eventually, enough people did, both within Washington and without, that Nixon stepped down. But it took longer than youd expect. The gap between the beginning of those hearings and Richard Nixons resignation was well over a year, and even in terms of his approval rating, it took several months to reach a true nadir.

The temptation, then, is to say that the hearing where Hutchinson testified was only the sixth hearing of this particular committee, and therefore, theres plenty of time for the hearings to reach a wider audience. But those typical congressional hearing dynamics are all scrambled in the face of Trump. Hes been playing the part of reality TV villain so long that if youre someone who just wanted him voted off the show back when he was being a garden variety asshole in Republican primary debates and not, you know, possibly committing treason, then the last several years have built an ever more frustrated sense of urgency. Something the Mueller report, the first impeachment, the second impeachment has to take down Trump. And yet nothing has. If youre that person, then Trumps ability to never face accountability seems increasingly galling. Ah. Well. Nevertheless.

Yet perversely, I think thats why Trump threw a plate at a wall broke through in a way some of the other January 6 committee revelations have not. Hutchinsons story, dryly delivered though it was, played into a different type of reality TV villain not the calculating mastermind willing to do anything to win but the unhinged person who makes everybodys life hell. (Imagine the table flip moment from Real Housewives of New Jersey and I think youll see what I mean.)

This less-controlled reality TV villain can be very fun to watch on TV, but youd rarely want them in your corner. They are, instead, cautionary tales of what happens when Im not here to make friends boils over into something so antisocial that it burns up on reentering the atmosphere. You definitely wouldnt want to hang out with this person.

Occasionally, that sort of villain simply removes themselves from the narrative altogether. Perhaps the most famous example of this happening in reality television occurred when Lisa Vanderpump abruptly stepped away from Bravos Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, the show that made her a TV star, midway through filming its ninth season. (Her employee-centric spinoff, Vanderpump Rules, continues to run.) Her reasons for doing so were varied, but at base, they boiled down to (and I paraphrase) everybody is persecuting me. Her castmates were insufficiently nice to her. The editors werent making her look good. And so on.

If that sounds at all like the former presidents obsession with how hes perceived, well, the former president was also a reality TV star. And reality TV is a uniquely deceptive beast because if youre on it, the process of getting a good edit makes it sometimes seem as though youre literally in control of reality, especially if youve got a lot of power over the creative direction of the show, as Trump did over The Apprentice. (Theres one more comparison point to be drawn here: Like Trump, Vanderpump didnt fare particularly well on the Real Housewives reunion she skipped.)

When watching Hutchinsons testimony in front of the January 6 committee, I couldnt help but fantasize about the ways that the things she was saying might have been intercut with the footage of those things happening were this an actual reality TV reunion special, the live audience oohing and aahing at all the big moments from the season prior. Ive been reading the Trump presidency through a reality TV lens for so long that I cant stop, even when the events being described are horrifying and sobering.

I say none of this to downplay the seriousness of the charges Hutchinson made against Trump but, rather, to suggest why the January 6 hearings might finally be puncturing the televisual archetype that made Trump such a formidable political force. I am under no illusions that anything will happen to make Trump suffer actual consequences for what he did, but I do think the hearings have finally exposed him for who he is, just a little bit. Hes not a scheming Survivor. Hes a snippy, back-biting Real President of DC.

Continue reading here:
The reality TV presidency of Donald Trump enters its latest phase. The January 6 hearings are the reunion spe - Vox.com

Dont be fooled. Suddenly the medias all excited about the fact that former White House counselor Stephen Bannon has agreed to testify before the January 6 Select Committee. Not only that, Bannon got former President Trumps permission to testify. And Bannon says he wants to testify in public. On national television!

All of which has generated a Niagara of wild speculation: Has Bannon finally seen the error of his ways? Is this Bannons come-to-Jesus moment? Will Bannon become the latest former top White House aide to turn on Trump and tell the truth about Trumps role in the Jan. 6 riot? Will Bannon be the new John Dean?

Dont be fooled. This is no miracle cure. This is all part of a plot cooked up by Trump and Bannon to sabotage the work of the committee. Trust Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and other members of the Jan. 6 committee to see whats really behind Bannons sudden conversion. Its so obvious.

Consider the context. Many congressional Republicans believe House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) blew it by refusing Speaker Nancy Pelosis (D-Calif.) offer to create a truly bipartisan investigative committee, one on which Republican members could call their own witnesses and cross-examine those witnesses who did appear. Trump himself has accused McCarthy of making a big mistake. This committee, it was a bad decision not to have representation on that committee, he told conservative radio talk show host Wayne Allyn Root. That was a very, very foolish decision.

Alarmed by the national attention the Jan. 6 committees been getting with its dramatic series of hearings, and frustrated that theres nobody telling his side of the story, Trump apparently came up with a plan: Unleash Bannon , which Bannon, of course, was only too willing to go for. After all, in their warped minds, its a two-fer. Bannon gets out of two counts of criminal contempt of Congress for his earlier refusal to testify, for which hes due for trial July 18. And Trump gets his man before what he has called the Unselect committee of political Thugs and Hacks who have allowed no Due Process, no Cross-Examination, and no real Republican members or witnesses.

For both, its the perfect plan: Trump makes his Big Lie part of the committee record, and Bannon stays out of jail. The perfect plan except it wont work, because members of the select committee are not dumb enough to fall for it. And neither, Bannon learned yesterday, is the Justice Department, which dismissed his sudden willingness to testify before Congress as a political stunt.

First, they know Bannon was no innocent bystander on Jan. 6. According to various media reports, he was up to his armpits in efforts to overturn the election. In his podcast, he took credit for turning out the crowd for the Stop the Steal rally in Washington. In the days leading up to Jan. 6, he reportedly was in frequent contact with Trump and his allies ; he hosted Trump advisers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman on his podcast. He frequented the Trump war room at the Willard Hotel, according to reports. and he worked to get the head of the Proud Boys out of jail. And on Jan. 5, he promised his podcast audience: All hell is going to break loose tomorrow.

Second, they wont let Bannon dictate his own terms. The committees not going to give Bannon a platform on national television to plead the Fifth or tell his own pack of lies before he testifies in private, like every other witness.

One last time: Dont be fooled. Bannons not out to save democracy by telling the truth. Bannons out to save his own butt, and Trumps butt, by telling another pack of lies.

Press is host of The Bill Press Pod. He is the author of From the Left: A Life in the Crossfire.

Read more:
Press: Is Stephen Bannon ready to turn on Donald Trump? - The Hill