It's the 14th of December, the 348th day of 2021, but who's counting?
Today is Charley Trippi's birthday! The former Georgia Bulldog standout and Chicago Cardinals player turns 100 years young today! He was first drafted in 1945, but didn’t play that year because of WWII. When he came back in 1947, the Cardinals, then located in Chicago, won the championship his rookie year, which is also the last time the Cards have won the championship. He is the oldest living member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He is just the 2nd Hall of Famer to reach the century mark.
Last night, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol voted to hold Mark Meadows, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena. In order to justify their votes, they revealed some new details about what happened on January 6.
Liz Cheney read text messages Meadows received on January 6. They included texts from lawmakers to Meadows begging Trump to call off the rioters, making it clear that those closest to him understood that those attacking the Capitol would respond to his orders. Dozens of texts urged the president to act to stop the protesters: “POTUS needs to calm this shit down” and “Someone is going to get killed.”
Those texting Meadows about the president also included his son, Donald Trump, Jr., which brings up the question of why Trump, Jr. needed to communicate with his father through his chief of staff. Fox News personality Laura Ingraham texted Meadows during the insurrection that “this is hurting all of us.” Fox's Brian Kilmeade and Sean Hannity also texted Trump to call off the rioters.
As Cheney said, “These texts leave no doubt: the White House knew exactly what was happening at the Capitol. Members of Congress, the press, and others wrote to Mark Meadows as the attack was underway."
And yet, Trump remained unmoved for over three hours while our Capitol was under attack and lawmakers hid from the mob. Cheney said, “Hours passed without necessary action by the president. These non-privileged texts are further evidence of President Trump's supreme dereliction of duty during those 187 minutes.”
A number of lawmakers tossed the term “dereliction of duty” around immediately after the insurrection, but it has faded from conversation as Republicans have lined up behind the former president. It is, though, an offense under the U.S. military code, and therefore is something that people understand is serious. The Capitol was under attack, and the one person who everyone believed could stop the attack, the commander-in-chief, refused to do anything to stop it.
The right-wing media, including the Fox News Channel, Newsmax, and One America News, did not cover last night's committee hearing. Hannity, though, did interview Meadows, opening his show by telling viewers, "The hyperpartisan predetermined-outcome anti-Trump January 6 committee just voted 9-to-0 to hold Mark Meadows in contempt for refusing to comply with their orders." He went on to ask Meadows why Congress is not investigating what Hannity painted as the terrible riots in the summer of 2020.
Their discomfort might reflect, in part, that they, too, were implicated in the events of January 6. After begging Trump to call off his supporters during the insurrection, the same personalities went in front of their audiences on camera and lied that Trump had nothing to do with the insurrection. Ingraham, for example, blamed Antifa for the attack on the Capitol, suggested the riot was staged by provocateurs, and suggested there were just three dozen people.
The suggestion that Antifa was the real culprit on January 6 might or might not have been related to the revelation that Trump had expected counter-protesters on that day, and had been prepared to use the ensuing violence as a pretext to declare martial law. Did he allow the lawlessness to continue for over three hours in an attempt to draw Antifa and other counter-protesters to the Capitol in order to trigger his plan? And does that constitute criminal conspiracy?
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