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In this daily series, Newsweek explores the steps that led to the January 6 Capitol Riot.

It was the president's first public appearance since the electionapart from his golf outings. On Veterans Day, November 11, Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence attended a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Ceremony. It was a somber occasion amid a steady rain, shadowed by the president's refusal to concede the election and by his firing of Secretary of Defense Mark Esper so close to a transition.

Trump and Pence, accompanied by their wives, were late; their motorcade arrived well after the ceremony had started. The Army honor guard had already gone through most of their drill and the 21-gun salute rang out as the country's elected leaders were driving up.

At the appointed moment, Trump walked to the wreath and laid a hand on it before returning to his spot to stand for the rest of the ceremony, about a half-hour. He made no public remarks, according to the White House pool reporters there.

Unlike most years, this Veterans Day ceremony was not open to the public because of COVID. The cemetery website stated that masks were required for all visitors, but neither Trump nor anyone in his inner circle wore one.

Trump was already at war with Arlington cemetery. When he heard that the annual holiday wreath event, where thousands of volunteers lay holiday wreaths on every headstone in the cemetery, was not scheduled to take place that year, he had tweeted that he "reversed the ridiculous decision to cancel Wreaths Across America."

Despite the rules, and despite COVID, after Trump's tweet the Army reversed its decision to cancel the event and announced that it had found a "safe" plan. In fact, the Army had consulted public health officials who advised against holding the event, even though it was outside.

Among the large Pentagon entourage in attendance at the cemetery were Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller and General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

On election night, Milley had received a private call, according to the book "I Alone Can Fix It," in which a uniformed colleaguea fellow four-star and close friendreminded the top general that he and the military had an apolitical role in the post-election fracas.

"Your loyalty is to the Constitution," the caller said. "You represent the stability of this republic." Former Secretary Esper also told Milley that he hoped the outcome of the election would be crystal clear from the margin of victory, fearing that anything less might provide President Trump an excuse to refuse to leave the White House, or more important, to call out the military.

Since Esper's firing, General Milley had heard rumors that one of Trump's loyalists planted at the Pentagon told a colleague that they had to "take Milley out." Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy also thought Milley would be fired, as did the general's wife.

Milley was taken aback by the prospect of such an unprecedented action, afraid that he was witnessing the unfolding of a coup. CIA Director Gina Haspel, who also expected to be fired, shared his fear. "We are on the way to a right-wing coup," she told Milley.

In the "tank," the military-only chamber famous for deliberations and private discussion, the seven joint chiefs, plus Milley and the vice chairman, quietly and privately began talking about what their options would be if they had to block an unlawful order from the commander-in-chief. According to a retired general officer who spoke to one of the participants, in the tank the discussions were frank and emotional. "They grappled with wide-ranging questions," the senior officer said. "Not just how to protect the republic should Trump threaten, but also ways to protect the military institution, a goal that didn't always easily mesh with what needed to get done."

After the ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, acting secretary Miller and Gen. Milley went on to a celebration at the new National Museum of the United States Army. Speaking of the history of the armed forces and the role that the military played in American society, nonpartisan and now "professional," Milley drew his line in the sand.

"We are unique among militaries," he said in his speech. "We do not take an oath to a king or a queen, a tyrant or a dictator. We do not take an oath to an individual. No, we do not take an oath to a country, a tribe or religion. We take an oath to the Constitution. And every soldier that is represented in this museum, every sailor, airman, Marine, Coast Guardsman, each of us will protect and defend that document, regardless of personal price."

When Chris Miller got up to speak after Milley, he thanked the general for "setting the bar very high."

"I think all I would say to your statements is, 'Amen, well done,'" he said.

Meanwhile on television, retired four-star Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey also voiced what many in the brass were thinking, warning that Americans were "watching a slow-moving Trump coup to defy the Biden election and refuse to leave office by diktat."

What was unfolding, though, was unique among coups. Nobody really thought the disorganized and isolated Trump was capable of organizing anything. And the president didn't have the support of the military or the CIA or the FBI, or any of the other national security agencies, perhaps, with the exception of the Department of Homeland Security, which had become embarrassingly partisan. Milley even remarked privately that a coup wasn't possible because his camp had all the gunsa comment that was both comforting and chilling, one that showed how perilous the post-election period had become.

Ultimately, the uniformed military and other permanent national security professionals did take it upon themselves to decide how to defend the nation from this prospective coup, disregarding the new secretary and the other Trump cronies filling leadership positions in the Pentagon. Miller was ignored except in cases where the Secretary of Defense's approval or signature was required. Flouting the hallowed tradition of civilian control of the military that is at the core of the Constitution, and ignoring the commander-in-chief, Milley set the uniformed military as a bulwark against disaster.

As self-appointed protectors of the nation, the military took on powers that are not in the Constitution. The armed forces are barely mentioned in the document and no powers are given to them to protect the sanctity of any vote. And until the inauguration on January 20, Donald Trump was the president and commander in chief: Trump's cabinet, the Congress and the Supreme Court were the appropriate place to look if presidential powers or behavior demanded action.

President Trump could at least in theory have launched a nuclear first strike on China. Because of his evident impulsiveness, proposals had been introduced in Congress to reduce his powers, to change the reliance on a single decision-maker. But post-election, the situation became more alarming. The only other person in the civilian chain of command who on paper could thwart a presidential order was the new secretary of defense, essentially unknown.

Gen. Milley wasn't formally in that chain of command, merely the "principal military advisor" to the president and a commander of nothing. Still, he had enormous influence over the entire military and could urge others to refuse an order. Military officers at the White House who would have to physically transmit a presidential order could disagree. Once transmitted, an order from the White House could also be opposed by the four-star commander of the U.S. Strategic Commandand then, even if made it past the Omaha-based command, every missile launch crew, submarine commander and bomber pilot ordered to launch a bolt-out-of-the blue would have to search their hearts and reflect on their oaths.

This set of officers, nevertheless, weren't the only chain. Over decades of worry about a Soviet first strike, the government's nuclear priesthood had designated alternate presidentsfor the Pentagon, for Strategic Command, secreted away in bunkers and aboard airborne command posts across Americawho under certain conditions could take over (especially if communications were lost) to circumvent the official procedures and institute their own. This safety net was deeply classified, but it certainly scrambled what might happen. And there were other secret and little known alternative apparatusescontinuity of government systems fiercely guarding the survival of the president, Presidential Emergency Action Documents, secret military and federal law enforcement unitsthat were autonomous enough and certainly presented many question marks.

In the end though, many in the military and national security establishment believedas did much of the publicthat Donald Trump's last line of defense was that he firmly controlled his fanatical base. By this reasoning, containing him would neutralize the mob: thus the necessity for the silent coup.

Just eight weeks later it was clear that while Trump could fuel the fire, he could not douse it.

Excerpt from:
'We Are On the Way to a Right-wing Coup,' the CIA Director Privately Warned - Newsweek

A giant screen shows Chinese President Xi Jinping attending the sixth plenary session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), in Beijing, China November 11, 2021. REUTERS/Tingshu Wang

Nov 11 (Reuters) - Chinese President Xi Jinping is likely to invite his U.S. counterpart, Joe Biden, to attend the Beijing Winter Olympics in February next year, CNBC reported on Thursday, citing two people familiar with the matter.

Xi is likely to extend his personal invitation to Biden when the two leaders meet during a virtual summit, expected to be held next week, according to the report.

The White House National Security Council and China's embassy in Washington did not respond to Reuters' questions on the matter.

Activists and some members of Congress have been pressing the Biden administration to diplomatically boycott the event, given the U.S. government's determination that Chinese officials are carrying out a genocide against Muslim ethnic groups in its western Xinjiang region.

China vehemently deny abuses.

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators in October proposed an amendment to an annual defense policy bill that would prohibit the State Department from spending federal funds to "support or facilitate" the attendance of U.S. government employees at the Games. read more

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has also called for a diplomatic boycott.

So far the White House has been muted on how it would handle the Beijing Games. Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated on Wednesday that the United States was in "active conversation" with allies and partners on how to approach the Games.

Still, the extent of access for diplomatic delegations remains unclear due to China's strict COVID-19 protocols. Amid the pandemic, Biden didn't attend close ally Japan's Summer Games in July.

And U.S. presidents have not to traveled to host countries for recent Winter Olympics. Biden went as vice president to the 2010 Games in Vancouver, and Vice President Mike Pence went to South Korea's Winter Games in 2018, both strong U.S. allies.

A U.S. deputy secretary of state went to Russia's Winter Games in 2014, and then-first lady Laura Bush attended the 2006 Games in Italy.

Sources told Reuters on Thursday that Biden and Xi are expected to hold their virtual summit on Monday. read more

Reporting Michael Martina and David Brunnstrom in Washington; Editing by Toby Chopra and Steve Orlofsky

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Read more:
China's Xi is expected to invite Biden to Beijing Winter Olympics, CNBC reports - Reuters

WASHINGTON We are essentially in a national emergency, Michael T. Flynn declared on Jan. 5, during an interview with the internet conspiracy theorist Alex Jones recorded in a luxurious suite at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel near the White House.

The truth is going to come out, said Mr. Flynn, the former three-star general and national security adviser. Donald Trump will continue to be president of the United States for the next four years.

In another room of the five-star hotel, a phalanx of lawyers and political advisers for Mr. Trump including Rudolph W. Giuliani, his personal lawyer; Bernard B. Kerik, a former New York City police commissioner; and John Eastman, a scholar working feverishly on a legal strategy to prevent Joseph R. Biden Jr. from assuming the presidency had set up a kind of command post. On the hotels grand front steps, Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime Trump adviser, was flashing his signature Nixon victory sign to fans as members of the Oath Keepers, a militant group, protected him.

What unfolded at the Willard Hotel in the hours before the Capitol riot has become a prime focus of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack as the panel intensifies its scrutiny into whether there was any coordination or tie between those pushing a legal strategy to overturn the election results and those who stormed the Capitol that day as Congress met to count the electoral votes to formalize Mr. Bidens victory.

This week, the committee issued subpoenas to several of Mr. Trumps advisers who gathered there including Mr. Flynn, Mr. Eastman and Mr. Kerik and communications with Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Stone are among the materials investigators have demanded from the former president, who is stonewalling the inquiry.

On Tuesday, the committee announced 10 new subpoenas that seemed to expand the aperture of the inquiry even further, seeking information from top officials in Mr. Trumps White House including Stephen Miller, his senior adviser; Keith Kellogg, the national security adviser to Vice President Mike Pence; Johnny McEntee, the former presidents personnel chief; and others.

In the past two days alone, the panel has nearly doubled the number of subpoenas it has issued, bringing the total to 35.

In recent weeks, the committee has hired new investigators, pored over thousands of documents and heard privately from a stream of voluntary witnesses, from rally planners and former Trump officials to the rioters themselves.

More than 150 witnesses have been interviewed, some of whom surprised investigators by proactively contacting the committee to testify, according to two people familiar with the investigation who described the confidential inquiry on the condition of anonymity.

The panel has learned details about how Stop the Steal rally organizers used deception to obtain permits from the Capitol Police to hold rallies near the Capitol; how Mr. Trump and White House officials coordinated with organizers of the rally whose attendees would later storm the Capitol; and how deeply Mr. Trumps chief of staff, Mark Meadows, was involved in pushing false claims of widespread election fraud.

Working out of a nondescript office building at the bottom of Capitol Hill, the committees investigators have divided themselves into color-coded teams to pursue several avenues of inquiry. They are looking into:

The money trail. Investigators are scrutinizing the groups that funded the protests that preceded the violence, which involved rioters from at least 44 states, and promoted and spread lies online that helped radicalize the crowd.

Planning meetings. The panel is pressing for answers about gatherings at the Willard and other Washington hotels where Mr. Trumps allies who were involved in the effort to overturn the election, including Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Eastman, met in the hours before the riot.

Foreknowledge of violence. The most difficult piece of the investigation involves unearthing evidence that Mr. Trump or anyone in his inner circle had foreknowledge that violence was a possibility on Jan. 6, and whether they took any steps to either encourage or discourage the storming of the Capitol. Mr. Bannon, whom the House voted to hold in criminal contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the committee, predicted on his podcast a day before the riot that all hell is going to break loose tomorrow.

The committee wants to question Mr. Bannon about his presence at a meeting at the Willard on Jan. 5, when plans were discussed to try to block Congresss formalization of the election the next day.

Mr. Bannon was in the war room at the Willard on Jan. 6, Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the vice chairwoman of the committee, said during a recent hearing.

Mr. Stone, who was photographed with Mr. Flynn on Jan. 5, has claimed that he had departed his room at the Willard to leave town as rioters stormed the Capitol, after he decided against a plan to lead a march from the White House Ellipse to the Capitol, according to video posted to social media.

But the Willard was only one hub of Trump activity before the Jan. 6 riot, when members of the former presidents inner circle also congregated at the nearby Trump International and other hotels to plan their bid to invalidate the election results.

Mr. Flynn was also present at the Trump International Hotel on Jan. 5 for a meeting that included about 15 people, where the discussion centered on how to put pressure on more members of Congress to object to the Electoral College results, according to one attendee, Charles Herbster, a Republican candidate for governor of Nebraska.

Among those in attendance, according to Mr. Herbster, were Mr. Trumps sons Eric and Donald Jr.; Mr. Giuliani; Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama; the Trump advisers Peter Navarro, Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie; and Mike Lindell, the MyPillow executive and conspiracy theorist.

Unlike Mr. Bannon, many witnesses who have received subpoenas have begun complying with the committee to varying degrees.

We have a great many people who are cooperating, said Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and a member of the committee. Were conducting interviews and depositions almost every day.

But some who have agreed to talk are unlikely to help the committee find the evidence of a conspiracy that it is seeking. Mr. Kerik, for instance, said he was eager to present investigators with examples of election fraud he claimed to have uncovered.

He said he hoped to be able to present the evidence that we obtained about voting irregularities so that government officials could follow up, but became angry when the committee described him as being involved in efforts to promote false claims of election fraud and working to promote baseless litigation.

The committee has not yet sent a subpoena to any member of Congress, even those far-right Republicans who fanned the flames of conspiracy and anger with election falsehoods and incendiary rhetoric in the buildup to the riot.

The F.B.I. said in March that it had no evidence of communications between the rioters and members of Congress during the deadly attack.

In terms of the evidence of member involvement, were still at a very early stage of our investigation, Mr. Schiff said.

A key issue yet untested. Donald Trumps power as former president to keep information from his White House secret has become a central issue in the Houses investigation of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Amid an attempt byMr. Trumpto keep personal records secret and a move to hold Stephen K. Bannon in contempt of Congress, heres a breakdown of executive privilege:

What is executive privilege? It is a power claimed by presidents under the Constitution to prevent the other two branches of government from gaining access to certain internal executive branch information, especially confidential communications involving the president or among his top aides.

What is Trumps claim? Former President Trump has filed a lawsuit seeking to block the disclosure of White House files related to his actions and communications surrounding the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. He argues that these matters must remain a secret as a matter of executive privilege.

Is Trumps privilege claim valid? The constitutional line between a presidents secrecy powers and Congresss investigative authority is hazy. Though a judge rejected Mr. Trumps bid to keep his papers secret, it is likely that the case will ultimately be resolved by the Supreme Court.

Is executive privilege an absolute power? No. Even a legitimate claim of executive privilege may not always prevail in court. During the Watergate scandal in 1974, the Supreme Court upheld an orderrequiring President Richard M. Nixon to turn over his Oval Office tapes.

May ex-presidents invoke executive privilege? Yes, but courts may view their claims with less deference than those of current presidents. In 1977, the Supreme Court said Nixon could make a claim of executive privilege even though he was out of office, though the court ultimately ruled against him in the case.

Is Steve Bannon covered by executive privilege? This is unclear. If any contempt finding against Mr. Bannon evolves into legal action, it would raise the novel legal question of whether or how far a claim of executive privilege may extend to communications between a president and an informal adviser outside of the government.

What is contempt of Congress? It is a sanction imposed on people who defy congressional subpoenas. Congress can refer contempt citations to the Justice Department and ask for criminal charges. Mr. Bannon could be held in contempt if he refuses to comply with a subpoena that seeks documents and testimony.

Tom Van Flein, the chief of staff to Representative Paul Gosar, Republican of Arizona, who was deeply involved in the Stop the Steal effort, said he had not yet been asked to come in for an interview, despite being named in a documents request from the committee.

Mr. Van Flein denied that either he or his boss was involved in planning for events on Jan. 6 beyond the objections in the House to Mr. Bidens victory.

Congressman Gosar and other members of Congress have and had every right to attend rallies and speeches, Mr. Van Flein wrote in an email. None of the members could have anticipated what occurred later.

At the center of the investigation is Mr. Trump himself, who has sued in federal court to block the release of documents related to Jan. 6 and directed his associates to refuse to cooperate with the committee, citing executive privilege.

The latest round of subpoenas reflected the panels effort to ascertain the former presidents every move on the day of the riot. It is demanding testimony from Nicholas Luna, one of Mr. Trumps body men who was in the Oval Office as the former president pressured Mr. Pence to refuse to certify the election.

Also summoned was Mr. McEntee, who was reportedly in the Oval Office during a meeting with Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence when Mr. Giuliani suggested seizing Dominion voting machines, and Kayleigh McEnany, the former White House press secretary who was reportedly with Mr. Trump at times as he watched the attack.

The committee also wants to hear from Ben Williamson, a top aide to Mr. Meadows who the committee asserted had tried unsuccessfully to get Mr. Trump to issue a statement on Jan. 6 condemning the violence at the Capitol. Christopher Liddell, a former deputy White House chief of staff who investigators said tried to resign on the day of the riot but was persuaded not to do so, was also subpoenaed.

In its order to Mr. Miller, the committee said that he had helped to spread false claims of voter fraud in the election, and to encourage state legislatures to appoint alternate slates of electors in an effort to invalidate Mr. Bidens victory.

Those scheduled to receive a subpoena on Tuesday either did not respond to a request for comment or could not be reached.

Originally posted here:
At the Willard and the White House, the Jan. 6 Panel Widens Its Net - The New York Times

Foxconn has officially agreed to buy the former General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio from struggling EV startup Lordstown Motors, giving the iPhone assembler its first automotive factory and a second chance at establishing a manufacturing foothold in the United States. The Taiwanese conglomerate has spent the last year buying up or partnering with companies in the electric vehicle space in a massive effort to diversify away from laptops and smartphones.

The two companies announced Wednesday that theyve agreed to the framework deal first announced in September, meaning Foxconn will pay Lordstown Motors $230 million for the 6.2-million-square-foot factory. Foxconn has also agreed to contract manufacture Lordstown Motors electric pickup truck, the Endurance. The deal is expected to close by the end of April next year, and it has to be approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

The startup bought the plant from GM in 2019 months after the leading US automaker had shuttered it a decision that drew the ire of then-President Donald Trump. Trump pumped up Lordstown Motors effort to buy the factory in May 2019, saying in a tweet that it was GREAT NEWS FOR OHIO! After that, Lordstown Motors became something of a darling of the Trump administration. It was invited to the White House for an event, and Mike Pence appeared at the event where the startup revealed the Endurance.

Lordstown Motors has struggled mightily since, though, despite raising nearly $700 million when it went public in late 2020. It is currently under investigation by both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice after a short-selling research firm raised allegations of fraud. A number of executives have resigned, including president Rich Schmidt, which Lordstown Motors announced Wednesday morning. The startup had said earlier this year that it would run out of cash in May 2022 without more funding.

The Ohio factory is the second location where Foxconn overlaps with Trump. The first was in Wisconsin, where Trump touted Foxconns planned LCD factory as the eighth wonder of the world. The plans for that factory have been dramatically revised down in scope ever since, though, and Foxconn has done little more at the location than raze acres of land and put up some empty buildings.

Lordstown Motors will continue to rent space in the Ohio factory, but just 30,000 square feet, according to a regulatory filing. The startup announced Wednesday that will work with Foxconn to develop vehicles on the Taiwanese conglomerates new EV platform. Another EV startup, Fisker Inc., will use some space in the factory, too, to build an electric vehicle with Foxconn.

Lordstown Motors said earlier this year that it had already spent $240 million updating the factory to get it ready to build the Endurance. The startup will also get to keep its electric motor production line, as well as its battery module and pack assembly lines. In addition, certain manufacturing and operational [Lordstown Motors] employees will become employees of Foxconn.

Update 8:55PM ET: Added details from a new stock exchange filing about the deal.

Read more here:
Foxconn buys Ohio electric vehicle factory once touted by Donald Trump - The Verge

November 9, 2021

November 9, 2021

Donald Trump is many things, but he is first and foremost a moron.

This doesn't mean he isn't other things as well malicious, cruel, greedy, self-obsessed, unusually adept at demagoguery. But above all else, he is an imbecile who led an administration dominated by imbeciles. If he manages to get himself elected president again in 2024, the executive branch of the government in the most powerful nation on Earth will once more be led by half-wits and dopes.

Do you doubt it? How quickly we forget!

The 2020 presidential election took place just over a year ago. It took three days for the results to become sufficiently clear for Joe Biden to be declared the winner. The day after that, Trump's lawyer and adviser Rudy Giuliani called a press conference at the Four Seasons in Philadelphia to dispute those results. Only instead of the event taking place at the five-star hotel of that name in Center City, it was mistakenly booked at the Four Seasons Total Landscaping company in an outlying industrial part of the city. There he and a small number of staffers and Trump loyalists stood before the press, campaign signs taped to the wall of a garage door.

Over the next two months Giuliani repeatedly advanced Trump's claims of election fraud in public. On one occasion he did so with black hair dye running down the side of face. He was also joined by several other defenders people such as My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, and lawyers Sidney Powell and Lyn Wood, who made claims about the deceased Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez somehow manipulating American election results from beyond the grave or China pulling mysterious strings to deny Trump his victory. These were not madmen ranting on some closed-circuit television channel. They were people either working for the president of the United States or granted regular access to the Oval Office, where Trump eagerly drank in their idiocy.

To those who say this shows that Trump was broken by his electoral defeat, one can only respond: Do you not recall one of the very first things the 45th president did upon arriving in the White House in January 2017 was to insist the size of the crowd at his inauguration surpassed the one that gathered for Barack Obama's eight years before? And that Trump insisted on this despite the existence of photographs clearly demonstrating it wasn't true? And that he forced his press secretary to repeat this blatant nonsense before a roomful of journalists as well? Trump's four years in office was a real time test of whether the country could survive being led by an ignoramus.

The good news: We passed!

The bad news: It could have been much, much worse and Trump shows every sign of wanting to continue the examination for another four years.

But wait, isn't Trump's imbecility a good thing overall? We hear this argument a lot that, yes, Trump is a dolt, but this keeps him from doing even more damage. Far worse would be a competent Republican like former Vice President Mike Pence or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or just about anyone else, who would be more capable of enacting his right-wing agenda and subverting democracy.

I'm sorry, but this is incredibly foolish.

Trump's stupidity, his inability to accept his own loss in the election, his withdrawal into a fantasy reality in which he could reverse the results, and his willingness to listen to other morons who encouraged that idiocy all of these things are deeply intertwined. It's true a less foolhardy Republican president would be more competent at governing. But this president would also be far more capable of accepting a political loss, not to mention other inconvenient aspects of reality. When it comes to evaluating fitness for high political office, such a capacity should be considered an absolute bare minimum.

We have trouble acknowledging this because it's challenging to grasp the depth and precise character of Trump's imbecility. It's not that he lacks an education, or that he doesn't have certain talents in abundance above all, the ability to tap into and exploit the prejudices and fears of a culturally alienated and resentful segment of the electorate. Trump's stupidity has different sources. It arises from emotional defects. He is so incapable of accepting failure that he warps reality around himself, constructing alternatives to the way the world is and then plunging into them, no matter how fantastically daft they happen to be. That makes Trump's idiocy next of kin to outright delusion.

It's bad enough for people like Giuliani, Lindell, Powell, and Wood to be circling the White House, seeking to exert influence on the president. It's far, far worse for the president to listen to what these morons say and think, "Yes, this is good advice." That shows an almost psychotic level of inanity.

Even worse, when the person sitting behind the Resolute Desk is that easily manipulated, he might also come under the influence of people who aren't morons but who want to advance their own agendas by preying on presidential witlessness. Think here of John Eastman, the conservative legal scholar who convinced Trump in the days leading up to Jan. 6 that Mike Pence could single-handedly act to keep Congress from certifying Joe Biden's electoral victory.

Add it all up and it becomes clear why the worst possible outcome three years from now would be Donald Trump winning back the White House. That would be vastly worse than Pence winning or DeSantis winning or Nikki Haley winning or really anyone else in the GOP winning, except, perhaps, for those like Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene or Arizona state Sen.Wendy Rogers, who might actually be as moronic as Trump himself.

The dangerous and demoralizing truth is that the GOP is now divided into three camps: an endangered species of dissenters like Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney and Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who reject the drift of the party into outright lunacy; a larger portion of people (including Greene, Rogers, and others) who may well be as thick-headed as Trump himself; and a much larger number of people who have resigned themselves to playing along with the stupidity encouraged by the man running the Republican show. The last group includes pretty much everyone entertaining a run for the White House in 2024 who isn't named Trump.

Now don't get me wrong: It's bad to elevate public figures who feign imbecility for political gain. But it's worse for the man elected to the nation's highest office to be a genuine moron. Thanks to the ongoing devolution of the Republican Party, American voters and political analysts have no choice but to render judgments on the basis of precisely such nuanced distinctions.

View post:
The once and future idiot king - The Week Magazine