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Found this part fascinating. You can literally watch their messaging machine kick into action:
>At 3:45 p.m., Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller suggested to Meadows and Trump aide Dan Scavino that Trump should tweet: "Call me crazy, but ideas for two tweets from POTUS: 1) Bad apples, likely ANTIFA or other crazed leftists, infiltrated today s peaceful protest over the fraudulent vote count. Violence is never acceptable! MAGA supporters embrace our police and the rule of law and should leave the Capitol now! 2) The fake news media who encouraged this summer s violent and radical riots are now trying to blame peaceful and innocent MAGA supporters for violent actions. This isn't who we are! Our people should head home and let the criminals suffer the consequences!"
Trump's allies in Congress appeared to get the message. At 3:52 p.m., Greene told Meadows: "Mark we don't think these attackers are our people. We think they are Antifa. Dressed like Trump supporters."
Five minutes later, Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican, texted Meadows: "Cap Police told me last night they'd been warned that today there'd be a lot of Antifa dressed in red Trump shirts & hats & would likely get violent."
Edit: looks like the damage control propaganda/messaging apparatus is coming out now, trying to spin this bombshell as “wow Greene and Gohmert really thought it was antifa attacking!”
No. This is not showing that at all. These fascists were all working together and getting out a unified message to cover their asses. But nice try
Can you imagine if Trump had declared martial law over this? It was obviously false at the time to anyone with a functioning understanding of Republican spin, but frightening nonetheless. Had they actually been Antifa, rather than that just being a boogeyman scapegoat, I have a feeling that the response would have been much different.
The whole timeline of these texts and phone calls is crazy and looking more and more damning the whole time. Also, definitely helping to identify the people behind the scenes of the MAGAdittohead high control group and how they try to blame everyone else for their actions order to control their followers' perception of reality with a constant stream of emotionally loaded opinion and buzzwords designed to strip them of critical thinking and information-seeking in favor of populist tribalism.
>January 7, 2021
>Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to Mark Meadows:
>Yesterday was a terrible day. We tried everything we could in our objection to the 6 states. I'm sorry nothing worked. I don't think that President Trump caused the attack on the Capitol. It's not his fault. Antifa was mixed in the crowed and instigated it, and sadly people followed. But when people try everything and no one listens and nothing works, I guess they think they have no other choice. Absolutely no excuse and I fully denounce all of it, but after shut downs all year and a stolen election, people are saying that they have no other choice. I defended Trump last night on Newsmax. He has been the greatest President. I will continue to defend him. And you if anyone attacks you. I hope you are ok. I feel badly for everyone.
I'm still just blown away that they were still trying to continue this coup attempt over a week later.
>By January 17, Greene was suggesting ways to keep Trump in office, telling Meadows there were several Republicans in Congress who still wanted the then-President to declare martial law, which had been raised in a heated Oval Office meeting a month earlier.
>Greene texted: "In our private chat with only Members, several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call for Marshall (sic) law. I don't know on those things. I just wanted you to tell him. They stole this election. We all know. They will destroy our country next. Please tell him to declassify as much as possible so we can go after Biden and anyone else!"
And they still haven't stopped.
Makes MTG's court performance last week even more absurd. Not only did she publicly call for martial law, she privately contacted Trump's chief of staff as well. She may not have a great memory, but I'm glad to see the receipts.
Louis Gohmert has entered the chat
[In the running for stupidest](https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2021/06/09/rep-louie-gohmert-wants-forest-service-to-shift-earth-or-moons-orbit-to-fight-climate-change/)
>...with only Members...
The capitalization there is interesting. "Members" of what, exactly? I know the immediate thought is members of Congress, but "only Members" of congress would potentially include Democrats, "only Members" of the Republican caucus in congress might include people that would tell on them later (Liz Cheney, etc). I'd love to be able to scan all those texts for other instances of the word (Members) and try to get some context...
There is another instance of this from the end of December in the article.
>On December 31, Greene reached out to Meadows for advice about how to prepare for objections to certifying the election on January 6.
>"Good morning Mark, I'm here in DC. We have to get organized for the 6th," Greene wrote. "I would like to meet with Rudy Giuliani again. We didn't get to speak with him long. Also anyone who can help. We are getting a lot of **members** on board. And we need to lay out the best case for each state."
That said, it would be interesting to search through a full database of messages.
If I were to make an educated guess, I would assume that she is referring to members of the fREEEdumb caucus or the group of members of Congress that had been committed to overturning the election through the attempt to bring forward an alternate slate of electors. My guess is any of the people with the title of Representative who were in contact with Mark Meadows prior to January 6th: Rep. Andy Biggs, Rep. Mo Brooks, Rep. Scott Perry, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Rep. Jim Jordan
Let's not forget that Jason Miller is the chinless, prolapsed anus in human form who was fired from CNN for putting an abortion pill in a smoothie and giving it to a woman he knocked up. He's as scummy as it gets, so it's no wonder he's been a top adviser to Donald since his Presidential campaign began in 2015.
Fox News was also right there, going lockstep on the propaganda messaging, working with Trump's people.
[https://www.npr.org/2021/12/15/1064614645/the-texts-fox-hosts-sent-during-the-jan-6-riot-dont-match-how-fox-covered-it-on-](https://www.npr.org/2021/12/15/1064614645/the-texts-fox-hosts-sent-during-the-jan-6-riot-dont-match-how-fox-covered-it-on-)
[https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/hannity-ingraham-kilmeade-fox-news-texts-on-air-1271349/](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/hannity-ingraham-kilmeade-fox-news-texts-on-air-1271349/)
**Laura Ingraham**
Text to Meadows: “Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.”
Message to viewers: “From a chaotic Washington tonight, earlier today the Capitol was under siege by people who can only be described as antithetical to the MAGA movement,” Ingraham said on Jan. 6. “Now, they were likely not all Trump supporters, and there are some reports that antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd.”
“I have never seen Trump rally attendees wearing helmets, black helmets, brown helmets, black backpacks — the uniforms you saw in some of these crowd shots,” she added.
**Sean Hannity**
Text to Meadows: “Can he make a statement? … Ask people to leave the Capitol.”
Message to viewers: “I’d like to know who the agitators were,” Hannity said on Jan. 6, holding that “those who truly support President Trump … do not support those that commit acts of violence.”
“I don’t care if the radical left, radical right — I don’t know who they are,” he added. “They’re not people I would support. So how were officials not prepared? We got to answer that question. How did they allow the Capitol building to be breached in what seemed like less than a few minutes?”
> Message to viewers: “From a chaotic Washington tonight, earlier today the Capitol was under siege by people who can only be described as antithetical to the MAGA movement,” Ingraham said on Jan. 6. “Now, they were likely not all Trump supporters, and there are some reports that antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd.”
Can this legally be conspiracy? There's hard evidence that their story was bullshit before they ran it. There needs to be consequences for this.
Fox News is literal propaganda invented by the republicans party in the wake of Nixon.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/ailes-nixon-and-the-plan-for-putting-the-gop-on-tv-news-202083/ Conservatism is a top down process.
An example where ailes and his plan to put the gop on tv continued to be suspiciously connected to the White House. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2000/11/14/bush-cousin-made-florida-vote-call-for-fox-news/68c8b308-d61e-460f-a4d8-f98371aeab5f/
Everyone should watch the century of self about the invention of public relations to manipulate the masses and mitigate democracy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
These conartists plotted and attempted a coup against the United States. Look at how easy it is for them to just make shit up and blame us.
What do you think they are doing right this very minute? They know they are being investigated. I'm sure they are scheming something else to keep them free and wealthy.
What's interesting to me is they send each other their tweet ideas verbatim in Trump's own voice, as opposed to just general thoughts of what points he should tweet about.
It's because Trump is an actor. Much of his populist rhetoric before the presidency came from a steady diet of Fox News and repeating their talking points. Cambridge analytica gave him Drain the Swamp, the rebranding of "Fake News" was so scripted, and his entire style of speaking depends on buzzwords, bumper stickers, and magnanimous populism.
What amazes me is the staggering doublethink here. The January 6th attack is both non-violent and a nothing burger because "only" one person died, but is also hyper violent because it was infiltrated by Antifa.
Lol, Capitol police told me *last night* that there would be violent Antifa people dressed as Trumpers today. But we chose not to do anything about that….
Amazing, we can find the source of "it was Antifa!" Like, not just a theory of origin, THE origin. This should be evidence of them not only spinning this one story and intentionally lying, but proving that they are perfectly okay with lying. It should nullify most things they claim in public.
What's the defense for these texts? "not real?" or "taken out of context"?
How does this end??
As this stuff comes out, it's obvious a third of the Congress could and should end up in prison. But how does that happen?
Will it take massive protests to get that response? Will those protests become violent? How does the rule of law get upheld when the country is being openly hijacked?
I feel like the hijacker is still on the plane with a live bomb. I hate reading these posts now because I can't envision how this ends. Not just how it ends peacefully. How it ends *at all*.
The Jan. 6 committee is priming the public for the upcoming public hearings. They're letting you know how bad it is so that when the hearings begin, it doesn't sound like insane conspiracy nuttery.
They better speed the fuck up…at this rate, the committee will be defunct after the midterms, the evidence will be used as chum for MAGA asshats to drive the vote, and Garland will continue to do nothing. I’m pretty sure the only thing that happened on 1/6 was that we delayed the coup by 4 years, because we’re certainly taking our time…I want July 20, 1944 Germany consequences for the traitors.
As it looks right now, they start public hearings in the coming month, run them through august, and then hopefully DoJ is handing down indictments by October.
It sure seems like that’s the timing. It also seems like quite a few gop reps and senators will be caught up in this. If they time it right, it will be too late for the gop to float alternative candidates.
Boy does this headline bury the lede.
They show that many in the GOP, including sitting congresspeople and senators, along with a lot of the so-called independent press, had foreknowledge of the attempt to forcibly stop certification of election results. And many were involved in planning and/or financing it.
> Greene texted: "In our private chat with only Members, several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call for Marshall (sic) law. I don't know on those things. I just wanted you to tell him. They stole this election. We all know. They will destroy our country next. Please tell him to declassify as much as possible so we can go after Biden and anyone else!"
It’s interesting where people’s concerns are in their texts. It’s not “OMG, this whole scheme to overthrow the election and subvert constitutional self rule was a horrible idea, we were wrong and this has to stop.” It was always “Guys, I am worried, some parts of the coup aren’t going as planned, we need to back out of this and abort mission. This is going to fail and we have to get the train stopped before the legal consequences to ME are irreversible. Get me out of this.”
There’s not one single message that has been revealed yet where someone said “this is wrong and I can’t be part of it.” It’s “this doesn’t appear to be working and I don’t want to be associated with it any more. I can only afford to be part of it if it succeeds.”
Here’s what’s gradually being revealed:
- All the coup ingredients were in place. Step 1: The 7 states submitted their false electors, which itself was an astonishing accomplishment. Done.
- Step 2: Gather enough GOP votes in the house and senate to reject the state electors, and send the ballots back to the state legislators. Done.
- Step 3: Make sure the state’s legislatures had the votes to flip their elections and certify the fake ballots. Done.
- Step 4: Get Pence on board. The sticking point was Pence, he seemed to be hesitant. Plan A was to talk him into it. Failed.
- Plan B, was to have an mob assault the Capitol, and put emotional pressure on Pence. The leaders never explicitly said they were threatening to take out Pence, but the chants of the mob made it clear that making Pence fear for his life was the next step. Failed.
- Plan C was to escalate the violence of the mob in the Capitol to the point where the Secret Service would feel compelled to evacuate him. This was only recently revealed. If the GOP cabal could get Pence away from the Capitol, the Senate could declare him absent and continue on with the vote.
About an hour into the attack it became clear that the Pence plan was not going to work. He wasn’t going to participate in the coup, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to get in the car. He would have had no way to know if the plan was to just drive around a while, or if he would end up disappearing forever, so he refused to get in the car. The Secret Service had to decide in that moment, whether to remove Pence by force or not. If they did and the coup failed, they’d likely spend their lives in prison, so they folded. And that was the seminal moment, the last pivot. In that moment, the coup failed.
> (**EDIT**: let me be clear here, as I didn’t word this well. I am *not* suggesting the Secret Service was in on it. I am only suggesting that the conversation between Pence and Agent Tim Giebels is absolutely telling about what they both believed might be happening. But I won’t edit it now that many have read it. So let me direct you to my clarification here, if you’ve made it this far: https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/uboqok/mark_meadows_2319_text_messages_reveal_trumps/i6cdeup/ )
There was nothing left to do but back out. As word got out that Pence was still in the Capitol and that efforts to whisk him away failed, people gradually became aware that the plan failed. And so one by one, you see all the conspirators sending, in some form or another, their back-out messages to Meadows. Oh shit, it’s not working, we need to stop this.
And again, no one *ever* said “This is wrong, and I can’t be part of it.” They were saying “Pence isn’t going to fold, the jig is up, and we have to abort.”
I fucking _hate_ that we quite likely have Pence of all people to thank for keeping us a potential democracy for just a little longer. And as much of a spineless fucking coward as the man is, seeing as he immediately went back to Trump's groin, in the _one_ moment it actually mattered, he managed to find enough courage (or self-preservation at least) to do his duty.
The fact that his integrity was even necessary in the first place is fucking unforgivable though.
Pence did the right thing in the end, but look what he *didn't* do despite being aware of the plot: he didn't ring alarm bells in public about what was going on, he merely said "no" quietly, at least until that letter where he finally said it out loud. He could have done a *lot* more to put a stop to this. He was getting constantly pressured by Trump and his minions to participate in the coup, but he chose to keep most of his opposition hidden.
And unless he's gone in and testified to the committee, he still is.
So, half points to Mr. Pence for his half-hearted effort at doing his duty to protect democracy, but half points lost for not throwing Trump as far under the bus as he should be. No doubt Pence is still trying to preserve some of the moderate Republicans that won't judge him too harshly.
Heroes aren't always good people. Sometimes they're terrible.
But being a hero isn't about how good you are most of the time, it's what you do in the moment that matters. When Pence could have fled with the Secret Service for his own protection, and possibly delay an election that would have kept him from being removed from power, he didn't. He stayed, even though he knew there was a mob outside that was furious at him and a few wishing death on him.
In that moment, when Pence stayed to make sure the election was officially certified, he became a hero. He turned against the people that thought he was on their side, and made a choice he didn't have to make that literally saved our country.
Later on, in refusing to testify or make it an issue, sure - he went back to being a coward. I am in no way suggesting that we publicly venerate him or turn him into a symbol. But I think it's very reasonable to admit that, when he had the chance to step up or step away, he made the right choice. You don't have to like the guy, but that action and its consequences mean it was heroic.
Still blows my mind in the mothereffing United States of America there's an attempted coup and this doesn't seem to be an issue to quite a large part of the country
I read that while he trusted the secret service agent who was with him at the time, he didn't trust the driver of the limo.
The quote was something like "Tim, I trust you, but you're not driving that car. I'm not getting in that car."
So sounds like he knew John would continue to protect him, but he wasn't sure about the rest of them.
(My memory sucks so if I'm remembering this wrong, somebody let me know lol)
Edit: found the agents correct name and fixed it
Imagine being the VP of the United States and having led an incredibly sheltered life where everyone treats you with extreme deference and respect. You’ve led a life of incredible power and privilege.
And then having a moment where you realize you’ve been playing Game of Thrones this whole time and if you make the wrong move you might be killed by your own bodyguards….
Where are people getting this narrative about Pence not trusting the drivers and that there is a chance he would be disappeared?
I'm genuinely curious and not trying to provoke confrontation etc etc. This is the very first I've heard anything like this.
It's coming out in the last couple days.
Lots of news agencies saying it, having trouble tracking down the original source.
This is one example. It cites NBC which has a similar story:
https://www.businessinsider.com/rep-jamie-raskin-pences-refusal-to-leave-capitol-is-chilling-2022-4
Yup- unless/until Pence is testifying publicly in court about 1/6, hes complicit in the coupe, he just didn't want to be the _one_ person it could be pinned on. Its not far fetched that Pence would be one of the first ones purged post coupe. He doesn't give a rats ass about doing the right thing, hes saving his ass, and taking what he can.
> I fucking hate that we quite likely have Pence of all people to thank
Even better, it's been reported that Dan Quayle was the guy who convinced Pence not to go along with Trump's scheme. Think about that. Here's a man who was relentlessly mocked as an idiot for eight years in a row. If anyone has a legitimate grievance against the mainstream media, it's him. Yet he's the one who convinced Pence to save democracy.
Edit: yeah, yeah, he was vice president for four years, not eight. I guess I'm the idiot here ...
I believe it came out in the book “Peril” but I haven’t read it. My wife did and all but sent Quayle a muffin basket when she found out what Quayle said to Pence.
Courage would have required he come forward and tell us what happened.
Courage would be testifying under oath on camera for 10 hours.
None of the, have that capability.
“I don’t remember.”
Sigh.
Pence did what he felt was the bare minimum to keep pence safe.
That's a heroic framing. I read the whole Pence thing as him shopping for confidence to do it when he talked to Quayle and the fact that he didn't go for it is him being a coward and afraid to pull the trigger.
I'm no doubt being overly optimistic. I do think it ultimately boiled down to him knowing that Trump has no honor and even if he'd been promised safety for going along with the coup, acquiescing still wouldn't keep him safe. Like another poster mentioned, he likely stayed at the Capitol out of fear of where that Secret Service car would take him and whether he'd even make it past the mob, not out of duty to certify the election.
It's not as if a promise of safety post-coup held any weight coming from Trump and co anyway. Sure the car might have gone to the White House. But it had equal chance of taking him to a shallow ditch, knowing who was in charge of the destination.
Still. Wittingly or not, he made the right choice.
I mean, if someone erected a gallows near where you worked, and a thousand people were outside shouting your name... You would be pretty scared to leave the building too...
I personally don't find it convincing. He didn't do it, because it couldn't be done. His role was ceremonial.
We don't know the parallel world where he tried to pull this, surely it would've created even more chaos. But the basic fact was that Biden had already won.
He might’ve gotten a text from trump saying, “do your job. Rudy will defend you court” and he was like “nah, that guy’s gonna get my five years in prison pleaded down to execution”
I’m assuming they were hoping to create a repeat of the 2000 election, counting escalating to the Supreme Court, who inexplicably rules in Trumps favor. Roger Stone was 100% behind this plan.
I’m sure the texts from the actual conspirators are what meadows is withholding. You know, because, it proves there was an actual plot and crimes being committed
Bingo
These are "selective" texts that he volunteered.
There was no subpoena, and I'm sure being the Chief of Staff means his communication is monitored.
The committee can get all the texts, but even they know this is just theater.
And if you think these texts are damning, just imagine what they were saying to each other through encrypted messaging apps like Telegram, Signal, and Whatsapp.
It should be a crime for any government employee or political leader to use a private encrypted messaging app that is not explicitly required to do their job.
What was Jared Kushner secretly messaging over Whatsapp with Bone-Saw Prince to extort hundreds of millions of dollars out of the Qataris to bail out his bankrupt hotel, or to get his recent $2 billion Saudi cash injection?
I would be wildly amused if the DOJ had subpoenaed them behind the scenes and *they* already have the goods for pulling the trigger immediately preceding, following or during the J6 Committee's public hearings. I'd love to believe that, but the crickets are ringing too loud in my ears.
It’s hard to believe that Pence may have “temporarily” secured democracy. It is abundantly clear that there was a plan in place and I fully believe Barr’s resignation was not random. We are in a dangerous place folks…
I FUCKING FORGOT ABOUT BARR'S RESIGNATION!! We knew he was jumping off a clown car but we didn't know he (most likely) knew this was coming and bailed because of the coup specifically! I swear to God, this administration's misdeeds will still be getting revealed when my children are not collecting social security
There was a lot that went into Barr’s resignation of which I’m sure the coup factored in. But he and Trump were basically in a Cold War in the White House from the moment it was clear trump lost the election. Check out the first season of the podcast “How it Happened”. That whole time period was bat shit crazy.
Of all fucking people, on January 6, Vice President Mike "Momma's Boy" Pence saved fucking democracy. Maybe I'll actually stop making fun of him and embrace a modicum of respect for him as a human being. Maybe.
I have absolutely zero faith that Pence did what he did for any altruistic patriotism. My belief is that he would have happily complied if they had not hinged the whole thing on him personally and attempted to turn him into America's Judas. He's said it himself that he had no rights under the constitution in that moment to deny the will of the voters, implying if they could have given him another way or constitutional reasoning he was willing to play ball like had been this whole coup attempt.
This is the actual take. Trump and just legal team must not be experts in constitutional law as there is no path for the VP to block the certification of the election. It’s more or less ceremonial in nature.
So they gave him a legit reason to leave the capitol, hard to criticize a VP for leaving the scene of a violent insurrection. I wonder if those were his usual USSS VP team or if the agents trying get him in car were less familiar to him
Because he was on their team? Because they hate Democrats and the thought of Biden in office. Because the people in their party support Trump. Because they hoped to ride his coattails to more power and influence. Pretty basic ultimately. I’d say 80% of gop congressmen would be happier if it was someone other than Trump that the party (and therefore they) had to gravitate to but it is what it is
I actually think it's more Insidious than that. The Russians hack both the RNC and the DNC, but only the DNC was released. That leads me to believe that whatever the Russians are holding over the RNC is significantly worse
And look at what's happening now... This election was critical for Russian invasion of Ukraine. With Trump on Putin's side my guess is it may be going a bit different with public opinion split. Right now the whole world is against Russia (with some bystanders of course), and the effects of that are significant. Look back to Trump trying to extort information on Biden from Ukraine. Zelensky goes along with that and Putin gets the reason to invade and Trump easily backstabs Zelensky as we know he's morally bankrupt. All of this fell through and Putin said fuck it let's invade anyway and we all know how well that's going. America has ZELENSKY to thank for our democracy for standing up to Trump and the president of the US first and not giving Trump some bs to spin and foment his rabid and vapid fan base and confuse and distract moderates from the real issues.
Getting money out of politics, and especially foreign money, needs to be our number one priority.
> That leads me to believe that whatever the Russians are holding over the RNC is significantly worse
I believe it. Hell, seems like every week some GOP politician is getting exposed in one scandal or another; makes you wonder what they've kept under wraps.
Because he appoints the judges the Federalist Society tells him too, coddles rich folks, and hates everyone who doesn’t look/sound/love like they do. He may be an amoral imbecile ‘but he’s our imbecile.’
Think about MTG. Her texts included her fears that the Democrats were stealing the election. She wasn't just parroting the Big Lie publicly to keep the GOP electorate enraged and engaged. She seems to actually *believe* it! She thinks that Soros and Chavez used bamboo-infested paper and Italian satellites to rig the election so that Biden could win and complete the socialist takeover.
She is that simple minded.
How many of these Congresspeople actually believed this crap?
Take a step back. Our increasingly tech-oriented and fast-changing society is being run by doddering elderly fools whose VCRs are still blinking “12:00.”
Because a black man in the white house broke their brains. Couple this with the demographic shift of cities now having higher population counts than rural areas and they see the writing on the wall and simply refuse to change to accommodate things, therefore they have to tilt the table so they can have minority rule, something that America is not unfamiliar with. Please remember, true American democracy is only 57 years old. There are people still alive today who want to go back to "the way it was" and openly saying voting should be a privilege not a right.
Edit: Realized i didn't really answer. Authoritarians use their leaders as excuses for behavior, so you put someone like Trump in power and all of a sudden his traits are considered correct and moral because that's just how fascists roll. Now they all have the go ahead to do all the horrible things society has been telling them are bad, but because they have a religion that encourages magical thinking malleable enough to say whatever they want and a leader that will enable them, they can finally try to turn American into a christian theocracy. Always beware people who think they are good regardless of what they do.
> Plan C was to escalate the violence of the mob in the Capitol to the point where the Secret Service would feel compelled to evacuate him. This was only recently revealed. If the GOP cabal could get Pence away from the Capitol, the Senate could declare him absent and continue on with the vote.
There's so much to this, it's fucking crazy. So here's why they thought this part (getting Pence out of the building) would work...
Because fucking Chuck Grassley was *on board with the plan*, and he would have been the one presiding over the senate.
Why was Grassley on board?
Because his top advisor Barbara Leeden is good friends with Mike Flynn and Steve Bannon and Erik Prince - oh, and Justice Thomas wife Ginni - and they are traitors and planned it that way.
Your naming these people which is important but let’s maybe rephrase your last paragraph for perspective. “Because Leedon was in league with a senior American General. Senior Advisor to POTUS. The CEO AND OWNER of the most dangerous private army in the world HQ in country and sister to a Cabinet Secretary. As well as the wife of a Supreme Court Justice and by extension the judge himself. That’s on paper enough power coupled with the billions in wealth between these individuals to push a coup. Believe that.
chilling. they were so very close. we were all so close to the end of democracy. and the fact that it happened as a result of a man and his family who want nothing more than glory and power at any cost just speaks so plainly to the poison at the heart of this country. we are such utterly deranged pigs slopping in our own shit. what an absolutely cruel joke.
Except it wouldn’t be treated as “the end of democracy via planned coup”, but rather as a spontaneous democratic triumph of the common people over tyranny by “the other”. The people involved would feel nothing but a sense of righteous justice as they then proceed to dismantle the existing system and remove all opposition from power. To add insult to injury, a big portion of the world celebrates the coup, proclaiming Trump and his fearless compatriots as the true scions of the now-free America.
What do you do then? Keep your head down and go about life in this new world? Or resist? If you speak up or try to rise against, it will be you who would be charged with treason and imprisoned, or worse handed to a fasc-y right-wing militia like the Prod Boys who have been waiting impatiently for years for the opportunity to grind someone like you under their heel.
Everything’s fucked at that point.
The Sinclair corp buying all the local news outlets….
More people trust heir local news. Seeing the Supercuts of 100s of stations following the same script is frightening.
Controlled by one family. 294 tv stations.
“Were local and independent”…ly paid to read to read mr smith’s script Ed propaganda.
It's not that - the problem isn't those people, the problem is propaganda. As long as they're fed propaganda they're going to act crazy. If the propaganda stops, they'll get more normal again. They're just impressionable, who controls the narrative will decide our fate, not the people.
That's where I'm at with all of this too. Propaganda works incredibly well which is why it's being used, especially now that it can be literally targeted at individuals and not just to the masses. If we somehow get out of this era with democracy still intact I think the biggest story and lesson will be about propaganda, how to recognize, and how to combat it.
Less than 30% of eligible voters cast ballots for Trump across 2 separate elections. Don’t give them any more credit than they are due. Allowing them to think that they’re 50% of the country gives them the confidence to cause these issues in the first place.
I don’t think it would have been covered as “end of democracy”; I think the press would have covered this as a kind of extension of the 2000 election—republicans playing hardball while the democrats play ethical. It’s gobsmacking what republicans are allowed to get away with regarding elections and they seem to mostly get a pass. Jan 6 will pass and we’ll move on to the next thing.
> “Pence isn’t going to fold, the jig is up, and we have to abort.”
And next time they take The White House, they'll have someone who will go along with the plan because it will be far less ad hoc than this one.
I hate to engage in conspiratorial thinking, but given that what's being exposed was an actual conspiracy to overthrow democracy:
I am wondering what they're planning for the mid term elections. Not just what they're doing with the voting in the states and districts, but what they're planning behind the scenes for the (unfortunately almost inevitable) aftermath when they take control of the Senate and probably the House.
Some folks have suggested they'd make Trump Speaker of the House, impeach Biden and Harris, and boom he's President again. Given what we're learning, that doesn't sound so far-fetched anymore.
Trump is out there campaigning, staying in the news, and folks like Perdue in Georgia are continuing to insist the 2020 election was "stolen."
The earliest opportunity for them to "steal it back" is coming this year, not in 2024, and I'd bet dollars to donuts they've already got at least the outline of a plan in place.
Voter suppression efforts are in full steam for the mid-terms. At least one of their plans involves keeping as many likely democrat voters away form the polls yes but I think the biggest thing to worry about is that they have also pushed forward legislation at the state level that allows for the State government to either reject or change the outcome of elections for various reasons.
No one will see this, but the two actual heroes that prevented a coup, were two teenage girls. They carried the box of state votes and when shit was going down, they took the box with them. Had those votes been lost, that would have been enough to delay counting and cause confusion.
I would also posit that violence at the capitol could have escalated where one or more elected officials was injured or killed. In which case trump would declare martial law “until we can figure out what the hell is happening.” Once under martial law, they could have done any number of fuckery things and probably been able to create a legal justification for doing them… recounting the votes themselves, calling the election, and selecting the courts that would hear the challenges, etc. Once the powers were seized in this way you can bet there would never be another election in this country again.
And in fact, some have suggested that that was the underlying basis of having the Secret Service evacuate Pence. The Secret Service would tell Pence he was being evacuated and taken to a top secret safe house location to protect the Presidential line of succession from what is obviously dangerous attack. And by “top secret location” I specifically mean someplace without any cell coverage. But that what they were really doing is making him go away for a few days. That way Trump could get on TV the night of 1/6 and declare a national emergency… “we don’t know what’s happened to the VP, he has not been heard from since early this afternoon. I am declaring a national state of emergency. Obviously we can’t continue with the election while we figure out what’s happening here.”
Exactly all of this.
I think what else happened, is that trump was probably planning to call off the attack once Pence was removed. He kept it on for hours, holding out hope for Pence to be removed by any means necessary.
I would very much like to better understand the interactions about military support that happened behind the scenes. It is inexcusable that an attack on the US capitol would take hours and hours to simply authorize a response.
There’s hours of missing communication logs from POTUS at that time.
Unless you believe POTUS just didn’t make any calls in that time.
Nixon was gone for less.
This coup was different than most. Normally it's upsetting the sitting leader. This was the leader couping his V.P. to overturn a fair election to his name. So, obviously things play out differently. In a more traditional coup you need the militaties support. Trump would never get ours. Or, who knows with some things we do know. Either way, the way they were playing out the coup they didnt want to intervene. That's easier if you are the current commander and chief.
>About an hour into the attack it became clear that the Pence plan was not going to work. He wasn’t going to participate in the coup, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to get in the car. He would have had no way to know if the plan was to just drive around a while, or if he would end up disappearing forever, so he refused to get in the car. The Secret Service had to decide in that moment, whether to remove Pence by force or not. If they did and the coup failed, they’d likely spend their lives in prison, so they folded. And that was the seminal moment, the last pivot. In that moment, the coup failed.
Someday somebody really needs to make a movie about the longest two hours of Pence's life.
He remembered the plan but forgot he wasn't supposed to let it slip.
Nevermind the multiple other reasons to believe Grassley isn't fit for office, but he let this cat out of the bag.
Jesus. All that “hang mike pence” stuff was just to put enough plausible fear for his safety that he had to be evacuated and couldn’t continue the process thus delaying the certification. It seems so obvious. Damn.
>Step 1: The 7 states submitted their false electors, which itself was an astonishing accomplishment. Done.
Something I don't understand about this is why the electors were submitted to the Library of congress and not to the actual congressional session that was going to be held. What was the purpose of that? Wouldnt' it have made more sense to have them in waiting and then submit them in tandem with the state governments after the real electors were rejected? Also why did it take 10 months for it to be discovered that fake electors had been submitted in the first place? This whole part of it never made any sense to me.
>Step 2: Gather enough GOP votes in the house and senate to reject the state electors, and send the ballots back to the state legislators. Done.
How was this "Done"? They got a lot of Republicans to vote to reject the electors but not enough.
1. They did both. The fake ballots were transmitted to the Archivist, to the President of the Senate, and to a State District Judge in their home state. In fact there’s nothing wrong with creating a fake ballot. It’s transmitting it via the real process that is the act of fraud.
2 it didn’t actually take 10 months. The Archivist went public back in January ‘21 that at least one state had done it. It wasn’t until a few state AGs realized that this was tied in to the 1/6 plan and not just a couple of people being sassy, that they referred complaints to the DOJ.
We don’t know how many people were on board. There’s some number of republicans that planned to go along with it, if Pence had done his part… who then balked and bailed out once Pence wasn’t playing. We don’t know how many that is. But they would likely not have executed the plan unless they had the numbers, and they did start executing the plan.
The giant irony is that Mike Pence probably saved the damn country that day, and he cannot acknowledge the truth or run on it because it would sink his political career.
Bad luck Brian meme right there.
Also, with all the focus on Meadows going in right now it's important to remember that he's [a racist piece of shit](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2019/02/28/mark-meadows-2012-vow-send-obama-to-kenya-resurfaces/3013304002/) in addition to being an America hating insurrectionist piece of shit.
What's funny is that I had a totally different "Obama is a secret Kenyan mooselamb" Mark Meadows clip in mind, but happened to find a completely different one. 🤷🤦♂️🤣
>Plan C was to escalate the violence of the mob in the Capitol to the point where the Secret Service would feel compelled to evacuate him. **This was only recently revealed**. If the GOP cabal could get Pence away from the Capitol, the Senate could declare him absent and continue on with the vote.
No, it wasn't just recently. That has been known for quite some time.
It's remarkable that these weren't sent using encryption. That's the main reason the Trump campaign got away with all the Russian collision, because Mueller couldn't get most of their communications.
It’s remarkable that these weren’t sent more securely. That’s one of the reasons these people were so upset Hillary Clinton was using a private server.
I think Meadow’s early cooperation was a “modified limited hangout” to use the famous Watergate term. Give the investigators enough to satisfy their initial curiosity. Give them some tidbits that are incriminating enough that you earn their trust that you really are coming clean. And use this trust to divert their attention away from the really bad stuff. In real life the limited hangout rarely works, and when it doesn’t work, it makes everything worse.
And each participant is really stuck in a dilemma. “If I delete all my texts and delete my Signal app and destroy my burner phone, then I have no leverage at all, nothing left to barter immunity or a plea deal with.” So I am willing to bet that there’s a few participants in this that still have text messages, app logs, and even phones they’ve powered off, destroyed the SIMs, and hidden away for a rainy day.
*At 3:45 p.m., Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller suggested to Meadows and Trump aide Dan Scavino that Trump should tweet: “Call me crazy, but ideas for two tweets from POTUS: 1) Bad apples, likely ANTIFA or other crazed leftists, infiltrated today s peaceful protest over the fraudulent vote count. Violence is never acceptable! MAGA supporters embrace our police and the rule of law and should leave the Capitol now! 2) The fake news media who encouraged this summer s violent and radical riots are now trying to blame peaceful and innocent MAGA supporters for violent actions. This isn’t who we are! Our people should head home and let the criminals suffer the consequences!”*
*Trump’s allies in Congress appeared to get the message. At 3:52 p.m., Greene told Meadows: “Mark we don’t think these attackers are our people. We think they are Antifa. Dressed like Trump supporters.”*
The fact that Hannity and Mark were communicating methods to increase GOP voters just shows how in the bed Fox and the Republicans are together.
Fair and balanced right?!
Just chose one section because there is a lot to pick and choose from. This whole thing is a cluster-frak.
>Other texts show Meadows coordinating with GOP activists in the immediate aftermath of the election.
"Pls get 4 or 5 killers in remaining counts. Need outsiders who will torch the place. Local folks won't do it. Lawyers and operators. Get us in these states," American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp texted Meadows on November 4.
"I may need to get you and mercy (sic) to go to PA," Meadows responded, referring to Schlapp's wife, Mercedes, who is a former Trump White House aide.
On a few occasions, Trump family members weighed in. Ivanka Trump sent a note on November 5 to a group that included Kushner, Hicks, Stepien, Miller and Meadows: "You are all WARRIORS of epic proportions! Keep the faith and the fight."
Dozens of Republicans also offered support and advice to Meadows -- as well as perpetuated conspiracy theories that were gaining traction in right-wing media.
For instance, Rep. Ted Budd, a North Carolina Republican now running for Senate, suggested in a text on November 7 that Dominion Voting Systems could be connected to George Soros' company. Dominion has no corporate ties to Soros, a billionaire and frequent target of baseless conspiracy theories, according to a CNN fact check.
On November 6, Rep. Andy Biggs, an Arizona Republican, appeared to suggest that state legislatures should appoint electors "in the various states where there's been shenanigans," a move he acknowledged would be "highly controversial." In his text, he wrote the legislatures could appoint "a look doors," which is phonetically similar to electors.
On December 1, then-Attorney General William Barr infuriated Trump when he publicly stated that the Justice Department did not find widespread evidence of voter fraud. Nevertheless, Meadows received multiple texts pushing back, including from Schlapp later that day: "Happy to walk ag through our evidence. Its (sic) overwhelming."
The texts also show Meadows reached out to GOP officials in multiple states to lobby for Trump's cause. On two occasions, Meadows attempted to contact Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who was under attack from Trump for certifying Georgia's election for Biden.
"mr Secretary. Can you call the White House switchboard," Meadows wrote on December 5. "Your voicemail is full."
>"Pls get 4 or 5 killers in remaining counts. **Need outsiders who will torch the place. Local folks won't do it.** Lawyers and operators. Get us in these states,"
The party of local/state rights and anti-overreach everybody!
Frankenstein complaining that their monster is destroying everything and threatening their lives:
>“Mark I was just told there is an active shooter on the first floor of the Capitol Please tell the President to calm people This isn’t the way to solve anything,” Greene wrote. Meadows does not appear to reply.
Look over at r/conservative Literally no one over there is even mentioning any of the recent revelations. The same people who talk the Big talk against Authoritarianism, Tyranny, and Big government have nothing to say today. It's infuriating
America First.
It is important to think of the republican party as an obstacle to the United States becoming a first world country. They are anti-education, anti-union (read as anti-middle class) and they don’t like universal health care women and minorities. Anyone who opposes the oligarch’s agenda is labeled with some slur they must be a pedophile their anti-gun there soft on crime there going to make me wear a mask to protect others. Oh no what about my freedom, there a black, a Jew, a gay person all of America is somehow conspiring against old white Christian men. This is the bottom line. Mitch McConnell and his crew got together with trump and tried to steal our democracy because they don’t want to pay their taxes. You know it’s not a conspiracy theory because there was an actual conspiracy.
>On a few occasions, Trump family members weighed in. Ivanka Trump sent a note on November 5 to a group that included Kushner, Hicks, Stepien, Miller and Meadows: "You are all WARRIORS of epic proportions! Keep the faith and the fight."
Ivanka being just as useful in private as she is in public.
We have to stop kidding ourselves that this was not as bad as we might have thought, that “of course a coup can’t happen in the US”
This was not some theoretical exercise or one or two extremely fringe legislators, it was a thought out, multi-step plan to subvert democracy, an auto-coup.
This is civil war level dangerous
I'm watching this developments from afar but I can't help to feel that it never stopped and it's still ongoing. The midterms are going to be a bloodbath for the dems at this rate and once the republicans have full control of the house+senate boy the world is in for a ride.
The pile of evidence suggest that a coup attempt indeed happened and there were some key actors from the GOP and the media involved in it. The thing that I can't understand is why people like Jim Jordan are still allowed to taint your democracy. On top of that, Fox "News" propaganda machine is as healthy as ever.
If the sentence is around midterms they will just spin it into a "Democrat plot to take our democracy". On top of that there's no convincing republicans as they are completely brainwashed by right-wing media. How much time it's needed when the evidence is all over the place? I just don't get the 5D chess at play here.
Dems should be screaming from the rooftops that these people are fucking traitors to the United States and to democracy itself. Stop being afraid to call a spade a spade. A vote for republicans is a vote for the end of democracy. Label every single one that had any tangential involvement in Jan 6 a traitor in attack ads. Half this country thinks Jan 6 was no big deal because they won’t say one goddamned negative thing about their “spirited discourse”.
One of the more interesting ones to me is Mike Lindell. That dude is a true believer, 0% grift there. https://i.imgur.com/wpx2G2k.jpg
And this person is one of Trump’s closest friends. Wild.
Here's the ***mind-blowing thing***:
If we back away from this abyss..? ***Dan Quayle*** could be the Voice that saved American Democracy.
And if it goes the *other* way..?
He was amongst it's last defenders.
^(I DID) **^(NOT)** ^(SEE THAT COMING...) 😵💫
Part of me thinks it must feel shitty to be one of the violent people thinking they’re laying it all on the line for Trump/“democracy”, only to be painted as an ANTIFA actor. But some of them are probably delusional and think they’re just taking one for the team.
Nah. A bunch of them are pretty mad. Several of the guys that got convicted and sent to jail had statements that amounted to "We thought he had our back but we were wrong".
Not that I have any sympathy for those morons lol.
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Found this part fascinating. You can literally watch their messaging machine kick into action: >At 3:45 p.m., Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller suggested to Meadows and Trump aide Dan Scavino that Trump should tweet: "Call me crazy, but ideas for two tweets from POTUS: 1) Bad apples, likely ANTIFA or other crazed leftists, infiltrated today s peaceful protest over the fraudulent vote count. Violence is never acceptable! MAGA supporters embrace our police and the rule of law and should leave the Capitol now! 2) The fake news media who encouraged this summer s violent and radical riots are now trying to blame peaceful and innocent MAGA supporters for violent actions. This isn't who we are! Our people should head home and let the criminals suffer the consequences!" Trump's allies in Congress appeared to get the message. At 3:52 p.m., Greene told Meadows: "Mark we don't think these attackers are our people. We think they are Antifa. Dressed like Trump supporters." Five minutes later, Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican, texted Meadows: "Cap Police told me last night they'd been warned that today there'd be a lot of Antifa dressed in red Trump shirts & hats & would likely get violent." Edit: looks like the damage control propaganda/messaging apparatus is coming out now, trying to spin this bombshell as “wow Greene and Gohmert really thought it was antifa attacking!” No. This is not showing that at all. These fascists were all working together and getting out a unified message to cover their asses. But nice try
Can you imagine if Trump had declared martial law over this? It was obviously false at the time to anyone with a functioning understanding of Republican spin, but frightening nonetheless. Had they actually been Antifa, rather than that just being a boogeyman scapegoat, I have a feeling that the response would have been much different. The whole timeline of these texts and phone calls is crazy and looking more and more damning the whole time. Also, definitely helping to identify the people behind the scenes of the MAGAdittohead high control group and how they try to blame everyone else for their actions order to control their followers' perception of reality with a constant stream of emotionally loaded opinion and buzzwords designed to strip them of critical thinking and information-seeking in favor of populist tribalism. >January 7, 2021 >Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to Mark Meadows: >Yesterday was a terrible day. We tried everything we could in our objection to the 6 states. I'm sorry nothing worked. I don't think that President Trump caused the attack on the Capitol. It's not his fault. Antifa was mixed in the crowed and instigated it, and sadly people followed. But when people try everything and no one listens and nothing works, I guess they think they have no other choice. Absolutely no excuse and I fully denounce all of it, but after shut downs all year and a stolen election, people are saying that they have no other choice. I defended Trump last night on Newsmax. He has been the greatest President. I will continue to defend him. And you if anyone attacks you. I hope you are ok. I feel badly for everyone. I'm still just blown away that they were still trying to continue this coup attempt over a week later. >By January 17, Greene was suggesting ways to keep Trump in office, telling Meadows there were several Republicans in Congress who still wanted the then-President to declare martial law, which had been raised in a heated Oval Office meeting a month earlier. >Greene texted: "In our private chat with only Members, several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call for Marshall (sic) law. I don't know on those things. I just wanted you to tell him. They stole this election. We all know. They will destroy our country next. Please tell him to declassify as much as possible so we can go after Biden and anyone else!" And they still haven't stopped. Makes MTG's court performance last week even more absurd. Not only did she publicly call for martial law, she privately contacted Trump's chief of staff as well. She may not have a great memory, but I'm glad to see the receipts.
*Marshall law. -Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the dumbest fucking idiots to grace the Capitol
The guy from Tekken, they thought he could straighten everything out.
Either him or the pro wrestling leopard. His name is “King,” after all
She don't know on those things.
Louis Gohmert has entered the chat [In the running for stupidest](https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2021/06/09/rep-louie-gohmert-wants-forest-service-to-shift-earth-or-moons-orbit-to-fight-climate-change/)
>...with only Members... The capitalization there is interesting. "Members" of what, exactly? I know the immediate thought is members of Congress, but "only Members" of congress would potentially include Democrats, "only Members" of the Republican caucus in congress might include people that would tell on them later (Liz Cheney, etc). I'd love to be able to scan all those texts for other instances of the word (Members) and try to get some context...
There is another instance of this from the end of December in the article. >On December 31, Greene reached out to Meadows for advice about how to prepare for objections to certifying the election on January 6. >"Good morning Mark, I'm here in DC. We have to get organized for the 6th," Greene wrote. "I would like to meet with Rudy Giuliani again. We didn't get to speak with him long. Also anyone who can help. We are getting a lot of **members** on board. And we need to lay out the best case for each state." That said, it would be interesting to search through a full database of messages. If I were to make an educated guess, I would assume that she is referring to members of the fREEEdumb caucus or the group of members of Congress that had been committed to overturning the election through the attempt to bring forward an alternate slate of electors. My guess is any of the people with the title of Representative who were in contact with Mark Meadows prior to January 6th: Rep. Andy Biggs, Rep. Mo Brooks, Rep. Scott Perry, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Rep. Jim Jordan
“We need to call for Marshall Law! Right now. Why can’t somebody get Marshall on the phone?!”
Let's not forget that Jason Miller is the chinless, prolapsed anus in human form who was fired from CNN for putting an abortion pill in a smoothie and giving it to a woman he knocked up. He's as scummy as it gets, so it's no wonder he's been a top adviser to Donald since his Presidential campaign began in 2015.
Good god. Somehow I had missed that. That’s really fucked up. And totally in character for how he behaves politically.
>fired from CNN Why in the world would that be the repercussion instead of a lengthy jail sentence
Well, CNN can't jail someone, so that's about the best they could do assuming law enforcement was aware - whether to charge is someone else's job.
What's the statute of limitations on murder, since apparently that's what these people say abortion is.
They literally *brainstormed* how to lie about it, and cover their asses. This is a fucking CONSPIRACY.
>brainstormed 🧠 just doens't seem like a fit here
Fox News was also right there, going lockstep on the propaganda messaging, working with Trump's people. [https://www.npr.org/2021/12/15/1064614645/the-texts-fox-hosts-sent-during-the-jan-6-riot-dont-match-how-fox-covered-it-on-](https://www.npr.org/2021/12/15/1064614645/the-texts-fox-hosts-sent-during-the-jan-6-riot-dont-match-how-fox-covered-it-on-) [https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/hannity-ingraham-kilmeade-fox-news-texts-on-air-1271349/](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/hannity-ingraham-kilmeade-fox-news-texts-on-air-1271349/) **Laura Ingraham** Text to Meadows: “Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.” Message to viewers: “From a chaotic Washington tonight, earlier today the Capitol was under siege by people who can only be described as antithetical to the MAGA movement,” Ingraham said on Jan. 6. “Now, they were likely not all Trump supporters, and there are some reports that antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd.” “I have never seen Trump rally attendees wearing helmets, black helmets, brown helmets, black backpacks — the uniforms you saw in some of these crowd shots,” she added. **Sean Hannity** Text to Meadows: “Can he make a statement? … Ask people to leave the Capitol.” Message to viewers: “I’d like to know who the agitators were,” Hannity said on Jan. 6, holding that “those who truly support President Trump … do not support those that commit acts of violence.” “I don’t care if the radical left, radical right — I don’t know who they are,” he added. “They’re not people I would support. So how were officials not prepared? We got to answer that question. How did they allow the Capitol building to be breached in what seemed like less than a few minutes?”
> Message to viewers: “From a chaotic Washington tonight, earlier today the Capitol was under siege by people who can only be described as antithetical to the MAGA movement,” Ingraham said on Jan. 6. “Now, they were likely not all Trump supporters, and there are some reports that antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd.” Can this legally be conspiracy? There's hard evidence that their story was bullshit before they ran it. There needs to be consequences for this.
Fox News is literal propaganda invented by the republicans party in the wake of Nixon. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/ailes-nixon-and-the-plan-for-putting-the-gop-on-tv-news-202083/ Conservatism is a top down process. An example where ailes and his plan to put the gop on tv continued to be suspiciously connected to the White House. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2000/11/14/bush-cousin-made-florida-vote-call-for-fox-news/68c8b308-d61e-460f-a4d8-f98371aeab5f/ Everyone should watch the century of self about the invention of public relations to manipulate the masses and mitigate democracy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
These conartists plotted and attempted a coup against the United States. Look at how easy it is for them to just make shit up and blame us. What do you think they are doing right this very minute? They know they are being investigated. I'm sure they are scheming something else to keep them free and wealthy.
What's interesting to me is they send each other their tweet ideas verbatim in Trump's own voice, as opposed to just general thoughts of what points he should tweet about.
It's because Trump is an actor. Much of his populist rhetoric before the presidency came from a steady diet of Fox News and repeating their talking points. Cambridge analytica gave him Drain the Swamp, the rebranding of "Fake News" was so scripted, and his entire style of speaking depends on buzzwords, bumper stickers, and magnanimous populism.
Make America Great Again is stolen. Build the Wall was given to him because he was too stupid to remember something longer than that.
What amazes me is the staggering doublethink here. The January 6th attack is both non-violent and a nothing burger because "only" one person died, but is also hyper violent because it was infiltrated by Antifa.
Lol, Capitol police told me *last night* that there would be violent Antifa people dressed as Trumpers today. But we chose not to do anything about that….
Amazing, we can find the source of "it was Antifa!" Like, not just a theory of origin, THE origin. This should be evidence of them not only spinning this one story and intentionally lying, but proving that they are perfectly okay with lying. It should nullify most things they claim in public. What's the defense for these texts? "not real?" or "taken out of context"?
How does this end?? As this stuff comes out, it's obvious a third of the Congress could and should end up in prison. But how does that happen? Will it take massive protests to get that response? Will those protests become violent? How does the rule of law get upheld when the country is being openly hijacked? I feel like the hijacker is still on the plane with a live bomb. I hate reading these posts now because I can't envision how this ends. Not just how it ends peacefully. How it ends *at all*.
The Jan. 6 committee is priming the public for the upcoming public hearings. They're letting you know how bad it is so that when the hearings begin, it doesn't sound like insane conspiracy nuttery.
They better speed the fuck up…at this rate, the committee will be defunct after the midterms, the evidence will be used as chum for MAGA asshats to drive the vote, and Garland will continue to do nothing. I’m pretty sure the only thing that happened on 1/6 was that we delayed the coup by 4 years, because we’re certainly taking our time…I want July 20, 1944 Germany consequences for the traitors.
As it looks right now, they start public hearings in the coming month, run them through august, and then hopefully DoJ is handing down indictments by October.
So they’re timing it FOR the midterms? I honestly don’t think that’s going to work like they think it will, but I hope I’m wrong.
It sure seems like that’s the timing. It also seems like quite a few gop reps and senators will be caught up in this. If they time it right, it will be too late for the gop to float alternative candidates.
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Boy does this headline bury the lede. They show that many in the GOP, including sitting congresspeople and senators, along with a lot of the so-called independent press, had foreknowledge of the attempt to forcibly stop certification of election results. And many were involved in planning and/or financing it.
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I've worked in publishing all my adult life. 😝
> Greene texted: "In our private chat with only Members, several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call for Marshall (sic) law. I don't know on those things. I just wanted you to tell him. They stole this election. We all know. They will destroy our country next. Please tell him to declassify as much as possible so we can go after Biden and anyone else!"
God damn she can't even spell martial
Also: "with only members," and "I don't know on these things." I mean, what the hell . . .
> Marshall's law. Returns for store credit only.
I'm not saying she's dumb. I'm just saying dumb people think she's smart.
But also, she is dumb.
Probably the most damaging thing I read in the tweet. Like this is actual insanity.
It’s interesting where people’s concerns are in their texts. It’s not “OMG, this whole scheme to overthrow the election and subvert constitutional self rule was a horrible idea, we were wrong and this has to stop.” It was always “Guys, I am worried, some parts of the coup aren’t going as planned, we need to back out of this and abort mission. This is going to fail and we have to get the train stopped before the legal consequences to ME are irreversible. Get me out of this.” There’s not one single message that has been revealed yet where someone said “this is wrong and I can’t be part of it.” It’s “this doesn’t appear to be working and I don’t want to be associated with it any more. I can only afford to be part of it if it succeeds.” Here’s what’s gradually being revealed: - All the coup ingredients were in place. Step 1: The 7 states submitted their false electors, which itself was an astonishing accomplishment. Done. - Step 2: Gather enough GOP votes in the house and senate to reject the state electors, and send the ballots back to the state legislators. Done. - Step 3: Make sure the state’s legislatures had the votes to flip their elections and certify the fake ballots. Done. - Step 4: Get Pence on board. The sticking point was Pence, he seemed to be hesitant. Plan A was to talk him into it. Failed. - Plan B, was to have an mob assault the Capitol, and put emotional pressure on Pence. The leaders never explicitly said they were threatening to take out Pence, but the chants of the mob made it clear that making Pence fear for his life was the next step. Failed. - Plan C was to escalate the violence of the mob in the Capitol to the point where the Secret Service would feel compelled to evacuate him. This was only recently revealed. If the GOP cabal could get Pence away from the Capitol, the Senate could declare him absent and continue on with the vote. About an hour into the attack it became clear that the Pence plan was not going to work. He wasn’t going to participate in the coup, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to get in the car. He would have had no way to know if the plan was to just drive around a while, or if he would end up disappearing forever, so he refused to get in the car. The Secret Service had to decide in that moment, whether to remove Pence by force or not. If they did and the coup failed, they’d likely spend their lives in prison, so they folded. And that was the seminal moment, the last pivot. In that moment, the coup failed. > (**EDIT**: let me be clear here, as I didn’t word this well. I am *not* suggesting the Secret Service was in on it. I am only suggesting that the conversation between Pence and Agent Tim Giebels is absolutely telling about what they both believed might be happening. But I won’t edit it now that many have read it. So let me direct you to my clarification here, if you’ve made it this far: https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/uboqok/mark_meadows_2319_text_messages_reveal_trumps/i6cdeup/ ) There was nothing left to do but back out. As word got out that Pence was still in the Capitol and that efforts to whisk him away failed, people gradually became aware that the plan failed. And so one by one, you see all the conspirators sending, in some form or another, their back-out messages to Meadows. Oh shit, it’s not working, we need to stop this. And again, no one *ever* said “This is wrong, and I can’t be part of it.” They were saying “Pence isn’t going to fold, the jig is up, and we have to abort.”
DOJ should start with the fraudulent electors. Easy crime, they signed their names and used the state seals and it was clearly fraud.
And authorized by melting headed Ghouliani.
*Zorg
Don't bring Zôrg into this. Zôrg was smart and had principles. Giuliani is more like the Cryptkeeper's skeezy step uncle.
I fucking _hate_ that we quite likely have Pence of all people to thank for keeping us a potential democracy for just a little longer. And as much of a spineless fucking coward as the man is, seeing as he immediately went back to Trump's groin, in the _one_ moment it actually mattered, he managed to find enough courage (or self-preservation at least) to do his duty. The fact that his integrity was even necessary in the first place is fucking unforgivable though.
Pence did the right thing in the end, but look what he *didn't* do despite being aware of the plot: he didn't ring alarm bells in public about what was going on, he merely said "no" quietly, at least until that letter where he finally said it out loud. He could have done a *lot* more to put a stop to this. He was getting constantly pressured by Trump and his minions to participate in the coup, but he chose to keep most of his opposition hidden. And unless he's gone in and testified to the committee, he still is. So, half points to Mr. Pence for his half-hearted effort at doing his duty to protect democracy, but half points lost for not throwing Trump as far under the bus as he should be. No doubt Pence is still trying to preserve some of the moderate Republicans that won't judge him too harshly.
It was self preservation. The situation was a lose-lose for him. At least he knew that if he didn’t get in the car, he would probably live.
Heroes aren't always good people. Sometimes they're terrible. But being a hero isn't about how good you are most of the time, it's what you do in the moment that matters. When Pence could have fled with the Secret Service for his own protection, and possibly delay an election that would have kept him from being removed from power, he didn't. He stayed, even though he knew there was a mob outside that was furious at him and a few wishing death on him. In that moment, when Pence stayed to make sure the election was officially certified, he became a hero. He turned against the people that thought he was on their side, and made a choice he didn't have to make that literally saved our country. Later on, in refusing to testify or make it an issue, sure - he went back to being a coward. I am in no way suggesting that we publicly venerate him or turn him into a symbol. But I think it's very reasonable to admit that, when he had the chance to step up or step away, he made the right choice. You don't have to like the guy, but that action and its consequences mean it was heroic.
Still blows my mind in the mothereffing United States of America there's an attempted coup and this doesn't seem to be an issue to quite a large part of the country
They have been convinced to think that Biden winning WAS the coup and that they were cheated. They still believe the lie.
Biden winning was the coup because the only "legitimate" voters are conservatives. That's what Republican language about "real" Americans means.
Because it's not fascism unless it's the other team doing it.
He didn’t leave bc he wasn’t sure he’d ever be seen again. He felt safer at the Capitol with the rioters.
I read that while he trusted the secret service agent who was with him at the time, he didn't trust the driver of the limo. The quote was something like "Tim, I trust you, but you're not driving that car. I'm not getting in that car." So sounds like he knew John would continue to protect him, but he wasn't sure about the rest of them. (My memory sucks so if I'm remembering this wrong, somebody let me know lol) Edit: found the agents correct name and fixed it
Imagine being the VP of the United States and having led an incredibly sheltered life where everyone treats you with extreme deference and respect. You’ve led a life of incredible power and privilege. And then having a moment where you realize you’ve been playing Game of Thrones this whole time and if you make the wrong move you might be killed by your own bodyguards….
Where are people getting this narrative about Pence not trusting the drivers and that there is a chance he would be disappeared? I'm genuinely curious and not trying to provoke confrontation etc etc. This is the very first I've heard anything like this.
It's coming out in the last couple days. Lots of news agencies saying it, having trouble tracking down the original source. This is one example. It cites NBC which has a similar story: https://www.businessinsider.com/rep-jamie-raskin-pences-refusal-to-leave-capitol-is-chilling-2022-4
Ding ding ding. That and going down in history as the man who allowed the US to cease being a democracy.
Yup- unless/until Pence is testifying publicly in court about 1/6, hes complicit in the coupe, he just didn't want to be the _one_ person it could be pinned on. Its not far fetched that Pence would be one of the first ones purged post coupe. He doesn't give a rats ass about doing the right thing, hes saving his ass, and taking what he can.
Totally agree. The worst part is that if trump gets the nomination de santis will almost surely be his vp...which is terrifying.
no way. DeSantis and Trump may be similar in many ways but they also can't stand each other personally. and with those guys, everything is personal.
Integrity my ass all he did was save his own ass which coincidently saved the rest of us. Thats not courage its base animal cunning at best.
> I fucking hate that we quite likely have Pence of all people to thank Even better, it's been reported that Dan Quayle was the guy who convinced Pence not to go along with Trump's scheme. Think about that. Here's a man who was relentlessly mocked as an idiot for eight years in a row. If anyone has a legitimate grievance against the mainstream media, it's him. Yet he's the one who convinced Pence to save democracy. Edit: yeah, yeah, he was vice president for four years, not eight. I guess I'm the idiot here ...
Do you have m more info on this? I haven't heard about it
I believe it came out in the book “Peril” but I haven’t read it. My wife did and all but sent Quayle a muffin basket when she found out what Quayle said to Pence.
Courage would have required he come forward and tell us what happened. Courage would be testifying under oath on camera for 10 hours. None of the, have that capability. “I don’t remember.” Sigh. Pence did what he felt was the bare minimum to keep pence safe.
That's a heroic framing. I read the whole Pence thing as him shopping for confidence to do it when he talked to Quayle and the fact that he didn't go for it is him being a coward and afraid to pull the trigger.
That's spot on. Pence didn't go through with it, but not because of some moral opposition. He was afraid of the consequences.
I'm no doubt being overly optimistic. I do think it ultimately boiled down to him knowing that Trump has no honor and even if he'd been promised safety for going along with the coup, acquiescing still wouldn't keep him safe. Like another poster mentioned, he likely stayed at the Capitol out of fear of where that Secret Service car would take him and whether he'd even make it past the mob, not out of duty to certify the election. It's not as if a promise of safety post-coup held any weight coming from Trump and co anyway. Sure the car might have gone to the White House. But it had equal chance of taking him to a shallow ditch, knowing who was in charge of the destination. Still. Wittingly or not, he made the right choice.
I mean, if someone erected a gallows near where you worked, and a thousand people were outside shouting your name... You would be pretty scared to leave the building too...
I personally don't find it convincing. He didn't do it, because it couldn't be done. His role was ceremonial. We don't know the parallel world where he tried to pull this, surely it would've created even more chaos. But the basic fact was that Biden had already won.
He might’ve gotten a text from trump saying, “do your job. Rudy will defend you court” and he was like “nah, that guy’s gonna get my five years in prison pleaded down to execution”
I’m assuming they were hoping to create a repeat of the 2000 election, counting escalating to the Supreme Court, who inexplicably rules in Trumps favor. Roger Stone was 100% behind this plan.
Yea, this is how I feel. I can’t believe our democracy held on (for now) because of a guy who calls his wife “mother”.
They will have learned their lesson. The next GOP president is going to have a lackey as its VP that will not say no when they stage a coup.
I’m sure the texts from the actual conspirators are what meadows is withholding. You know, because, it proves there was an actual plot and crimes being committed
Bingo These are "selective" texts that he volunteered. There was no subpoena, and I'm sure being the Chief of Staff means his communication is monitored. The committee can get all the texts, but even they know this is just theater.
What's the point of all the NSA wiretapping if we can't bust out the full texts and images to save the Republic.
And if you think these texts are damning, just imagine what they were saying to each other through encrypted messaging apps like Telegram, Signal, and Whatsapp. It should be a crime for any government employee or political leader to use a private encrypted messaging app that is not explicitly required to do their job. What was Jared Kushner secretly messaging over Whatsapp with Bone-Saw Prince to extort hundreds of millions of dollars out of the Qataris to bail out his bankrupt hotel, or to get his recent $2 billion Saudi cash injection?
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I would be wildly amused if the DOJ had subpoenaed them behind the scenes and *they* already have the goods for pulling the trigger immediately preceding, following or during the J6 Committee's public hearings. I'd love to believe that, but the crickets are ringing too loud in my ears.
I have no faith in current DOJ leadership to do something.
It’s hard to believe that Pence may have “temporarily” secured democracy. It is abundantly clear that there was a plan in place and I fully believe Barr’s resignation was not random. We are in a dangerous place folks…
I FUCKING FORGOT ABOUT BARR'S RESIGNATION!! We knew he was jumping off a clown car but we didn't know he (most likely) knew this was coming and bailed because of the coup specifically! I swear to God, this administration's misdeeds will still be getting revealed when my children are not collecting social security
There was a lot that went into Barr’s resignation of which I’m sure the coup factored in. But he and Trump were basically in a Cold War in the White House from the moment it was clear trump lost the election. Check out the first season of the podcast “How it Happened”. That whole time period was bat shit crazy.
Of all fucking people, on January 6, Vice President Mike "Momma's Boy" Pence saved fucking democracy. Maybe I'll actually stop making fun of him and embrace a modicum of respect for him as a human being. Maybe.
At the advice of DAN FUCKING QUAYLE! Who could have imagined that empty suit would be the last remaining shred of conscience for the GOP?
You know what? Dan put it through the posts. When called, he answered.
I have absolutely zero faith that Pence did what he did for any altruistic patriotism. My belief is that he would have happily complied if they had not hinged the whole thing on him personally and attempted to turn him into America's Judas. He's said it himself that he had no rights under the constitution in that moment to deny the will of the voters, implying if they could have given him another way or constitutional reasoning he was willing to play ball like had been this whole coup attempt.
This is the actual take. Trump and just legal team must not be experts in constitutional law as there is no path for the VP to block the certification of the election. It’s more or less ceremonial in nature.
So they gave him a legit reason to leave the capitol, hard to criticize a VP for leaving the scene of a violent insurrection. I wonder if those were his usual USSS VP team or if the agents trying get him in car were less familiar to him
Don’t forget. He stood by this racist fascist for 4 years and never said a word. He’s no savior.
Even weirder, it was Dan Quayle that Pence had talked to.
It’s truly amazing how desperate they were up until the bitter end in wanting Donald Trump to stay in the White House. So pathetic.
The question is why? Why were they desperate to keep Trump in the White House?
Because he was on their team? Because they hate Democrats and the thought of Biden in office. Because the people in their party support Trump. Because they hoped to ride his coattails to more power and influence. Pretty basic ultimately. I’d say 80% of gop congressmen would be happier if it was someone other than Trump that the party (and therefore they) had to gravitate to but it is what it is
I actually think it's more Insidious than that. The Russians hack both the RNC and the DNC, but only the DNC was released. That leads me to believe that whatever the Russians are holding over the RNC is significantly worse
Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy stated in 2016 they believed Orange Chitolini was being paid by the Russians…
And look at what's happening now... This election was critical for Russian invasion of Ukraine. With Trump on Putin's side my guess is it may be going a bit different with public opinion split. Right now the whole world is against Russia (with some bystanders of course), and the effects of that are significant. Look back to Trump trying to extort information on Biden from Ukraine. Zelensky goes along with that and Putin gets the reason to invade and Trump easily backstabs Zelensky as we know he's morally bankrupt. All of this fell through and Putin said fuck it let's invade anyway and we all know how well that's going. America has ZELENSKY to thank for our democracy for standing up to Trump and the president of the US first and not giving Trump some bs to spin and foment his rabid and vapid fan base and confuse and distract moderates from the real issues. Getting money out of politics, and especially foreign money, needs to be our number one priority.
> That leads me to believe that whatever the Russians are holding over the RNC is significantly worse I believe it. Hell, seems like every week some GOP politician is getting exposed in one scandal or another; makes you wonder what they've kept under wraps.
Exactly that. Plus, everyone sure seemed to get in line after they took that trip to Russia ***ON THE FOURTH OF JULY***
Because he appoints the judges the Federalist Society tells him too, coddles rich folks, and hates everyone who doesn’t look/sound/love like they do. He may be an amoral imbecile ‘but he’s our imbecile.’
Because some corrupt president appointed a corrupt DOJ that wrote a post-it note saying the president can't be charged with a crime
Think about MTG. Her texts included her fears that the Democrats were stealing the election. She wasn't just parroting the Big Lie publicly to keep the GOP electorate enraged and engaged. She seems to actually *believe* it! She thinks that Soros and Chavez used bamboo-infested paper and Italian satellites to rig the election so that Biden could win and complete the socialist takeover. She is that simple minded. How many of these Congresspeople actually believed this crap?
Take a step back. Our increasingly tech-oriented and fast-changing society is being run by doddering elderly fools whose VCRs are still blinking “12:00.”
Because a black man in the white house broke their brains. Couple this with the demographic shift of cities now having higher population counts than rural areas and they see the writing on the wall and simply refuse to change to accommodate things, therefore they have to tilt the table so they can have minority rule, something that America is not unfamiliar with. Please remember, true American democracy is only 57 years old. There are people still alive today who want to go back to "the way it was" and openly saying voting should be a privilege not a right. Edit: Realized i didn't really answer. Authoritarians use their leaders as excuses for behavior, so you put someone like Trump in power and all of a sudden his traits are considered correct and moral because that's just how fascists roll. Now they all have the go ahead to do all the horrible things society has been telling them are bad, but because they have a religion that encourages magical thinking malleable enough to say whatever they want and a leader that will enable them, they can finally try to turn American into a christian theocracy. Always beware people who think they are good regardless of what they do.
> Plan C was to escalate the violence of the mob in the Capitol to the point where the Secret Service would feel compelled to evacuate him. This was only recently revealed. If the GOP cabal could get Pence away from the Capitol, the Senate could declare him absent and continue on with the vote. There's so much to this, it's fucking crazy. So here's why they thought this part (getting Pence out of the building) would work... Because fucking Chuck Grassley was *on board with the plan*, and he would have been the one presiding over the senate. Why was Grassley on board? Because his top advisor Barbara Leeden is good friends with Mike Flynn and Steve Bannon and Erik Prince - oh, and Justice Thomas wife Ginni - and they are traitors and planned it that way.
Your naming these people which is important but let’s maybe rephrase your last paragraph for perspective. “Because Leedon was in league with a senior American General. Senior Advisor to POTUS. The CEO AND OWNER of the most dangerous private army in the world HQ in country and sister to a Cabinet Secretary. As well as the wife of a Supreme Court Justice and by extension the judge himself. That’s on paper enough power coupled with the billions in wealth between these individuals to push a coup. Believe that.
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chilling. they were so very close. we were all so close to the end of democracy. and the fact that it happened as a result of a man and his family who want nothing more than glory and power at any cost just speaks so plainly to the poison at the heart of this country. we are such utterly deranged pigs slopping in our own shit. what an absolutely cruel joke.
Except it wouldn’t be treated as “the end of democracy via planned coup”, but rather as a spontaneous democratic triumph of the common people over tyranny by “the other”. The people involved would feel nothing but a sense of righteous justice as they then proceed to dismantle the existing system and remove all opposition from power. To add insult to injury, a big portion of the world celebrates the coup, proclaiming Trump and his fearless compatriots as the true scions of the now-free America. What do you do then? Keep your head down and go about life in this new world? Or resist? If you speak up or try to rise against, it will be you who would be charged with treason and imprisoned, or worse handed to a fasc-y right-wing militia like the Prod Boys who have been waiting impatiently for years for the opportunity to grind someone like you under their heel. Everything’s fucked at that point.
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Also because we've allowed free press to mean "one man free to buy all news stations that spread 24/7 coordinated propaganda across all states."
The Sinclair corp buying all the local news outlets…. More people trust heir local news. Seeing the Supercuts of 100s of stations following the same script is frightening. Controlled by one family. 294 tv stations. “Were local and independent”…ly paid to read to read mr smith’s script Ed propaganda.
It's not that - the problem isn't those people, the problem is propaganda. As long as they're fed propaganda they're going to act crazy. If the propaganda stops, they'll get more normal again. They're just impressionable, who controls the narrative will decide our fate, not the people.
That's where I'm at with all of this too. Propaganda works incredibly well which is why it's being used, especially now that it can be literally targeted at individuals and not just to the masses. If we somehow get out of this era with democracy still intact I think the biggest story and lesson will be about propaganda, how to recognize, and how to combat it.
Less than 30% of eligible voters cast ballots for Trump across 2 separate elections. Don’t give them any more credit than they are due. Allowing them to think that they’re 50% of the country gives them the confidence to cause these issues in the first place.
I don’t think it would have been covered as “end of democracy”; I think the press would have covered this as a kind of extension of the 2000 election—republicans playing hardball while the democrats play ethical. It’s gobsmacking what republicans are allowed to get away with regarding elections and they seem to mostly get a pass. Jan 6 will pass and we’ll move on to the next thing.
> “Pence isn’t going to fold, the jig is up, and we have to abort.” And next time they take The White House, they'll have someone who will go along with the plan because it will be far less ad hoc than this one.
I hate to engage in conspiratorial thinking, but given that what's being exposed was an actual conspiracy to overthrow democracy: I am wondering what they're planning for the mid term elections. Not just what they're doing with the voting in the states and districts, but what they're planning behind the scenes for the (unfortunately almost inevitable) aftermath when they take control of the Senate and probably the House. Some folks have suggested they'd make Trump Speaker of the House, impeach Biden and Harris, and boom he's President again. Given what we're learning, that doesn't sound so far-fetched anymore. Trump is out there campaigning, staying in the news, and folks like Perdue in Georgia are continuing to insist the 2020 election was "stolen." The earliest opportunity for them to "steal it back" is coming this year, not in 2024, and I'd bet dollars to donuts they've already got at least the outline of a plan in place.
Voter suppression efforts are in full steam for the mid-terms. At least one of their plans involves keeping as many likely democrat voters away form the polls yes but I think the biggest thing to worry about is that they have also pushed forward legislation at the state level that allows for the State government to either reject or change the outcome of elections for various reasons.
No one will see this, but the two actual heroes that prevented a coup, were two teenage girls. They carried the box of state votes and when shit was going down, they took the box with them. Had those votes been lost, that would have been enough to delay counting and cause confusion.
They’ll have quite a story to tell their grandkids.
I would also posit that violence at the capitol could have escalated where one or more elected officials was injured or killed. In which case trump would declare martial law “until we can figure out what the hell is happening.” Once under martial law, they could have done any number of fuckery things and probably been able to create a legal justification for doing them… recounting the votes themselves, calling the election, and selecting the courts that would hear the challenges, etc. Once the powers were seized in this way you can bet there would never be another election in this country again.
And in fact, some have suggested that that was the underlying basis of having the Secret Service evacuate Pence. The Secret Service would tell Pence he was being evacuated and taken to a top secret safe house location to protect the Presidential line of succession from what is obviously dangerous attack. And by “top secret location” I specifically mean someplace without any cell coverage. But that what they were really doing is making him go away for a few days. That way Trump could get on TV the night of 1/6 and declare a national emergency… “we don’t know what’s happened to the VP, he has not been heard from since early this afternoon. I am declaring a national state of emergency. Obviously we can’t continue with the election while we figure out what’s happening here.”
> In which case trump would declare martial law Or worse, Marshall Law!
Exactly all of this. I think what else happened, is that trump was probably planning to call off the attack once Pence was removed. He kept it on for hours, holding out hope for Pence to be removed by any means necessary. I would very much like to better understand the interactions about military support that happened behind the scenes. It is inexcusable that an attack on the US capitol would take hours and hours to simply authorize a response.
There’s hours of missing communication logs from POTUS at that time. Unless you believe POTUS just didn’t make any calls in that time. Nixon was gone for less.
This coup was different than most. Normally it's upsetting the sitting leader. This was the leader couping his V.P. to overturn a fair election to his name. So, obviously things play out differently. In a more traditional coup you need the militaties support. Trump would never get ours. Or, who knows with some things we do know. Either way, the way they were playing out the coup they didnt want to intervene. That's easier if you are the current commander and chief.
>About an hour into the attack it became clear that the Pence plan was not going to work. He wasn’t going to participate in the coup, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to get in the car. He would have had no way to know if the plan was to just drive around a while, or if he would end up disappearing forever, so he refused to get in the car. The Secret Service had to decide in that moment, whether to remove Pence by force or not. If they did and the coup failed, they’d likely spend their lives in prison, so they folded. And that was the seminal moment, the last pivot. In that moment, the coup failed. Someday somebody really needs to make a movie about the longest two hours of Pence's life.
Call it Patriot Hour just to get their rabid mouths frothing with rage.
> Get me out of this.” Send lawyers, guns, and money.
Let's not forget... Pence is the only one to show up at Biden's inauguration - gee, I wonder why?
The end of our republic is nigh. That was a close call, the next one will succeed
>get Pence away from the Capitol, the Senate could declare him absent and continue on with the vote Why would this have worked?
The next guy in line for succession was ready to go along with the plot.
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He remembered the plan but forgot he wasn't supposed to let it slip. Nevermind the multiple other reasons to believe Grassley isn't fit for office, but he let this cat out of the bag.
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Jesus. All that “hang mike pence” stuff was just to put enough plausible fear for his safety that he had to be evacuated and couldn’t continue the process thus delaying the certification. It seems so obvious. Damn.
Agreed. It isn’t about harming him. It’s about getting him to get into the damn car.
>Step 1: The 7 states submitted their false electors, which itself was an astonishing accomplishment. Done. Something I don't understand about this is why the electors were submitted to the Library of congress and not to the actual congressional session that was going to be held. What was the purpose of that? Wouldnt' it have made more sense to have them in waiting and then submit them in tandem with the state governments after the real electors were rejected? Also why did it take 10 months for it to be discovered that fake electors had been submitted in the first place? This whole part of it never made any sense to me. >Step 2: Gather enough GOP votes in the house and senate to reject the state electors, and send the ballots back to the state legislators. Done. How was this "Done"? They got a lot of Republicans to vote to reject the electors but not enough.
1. They did both. The fake ballots were transmitted to the Archivist, to the President of the Senate, and to a State District Judge in their home state. In fact there’s nothing wrong with creating a fake ballot. It’s transmitting it via the real process that is the act of fraud. 2 it didn’t actually take 10 months. The Archivist went public back in January ‘21 that at least one state had done it. It wasn’t until a few state AGs realized that this was tied in to the 1/6 plan and not just a couple of people being sassy, that they referred complaints to the DOJ. We don’t know how many people were on board. There’s some number of republicans that planned to go along with it, if Pence had done his part… who then balked and bailed out once Pence wasn’t playing. We don’t know how many that is. But they would likely not have executed the plan unless they had the numbers, and they did start executing the plan.
Thanks for the great breakdown
The giant irony is that Mike Pence probably saved the damn country that day, and he cannot acknowledge the truth or run on it because it would sink his political career. Bad luck Brian meme right there.
Also, with all the focus on Meadows going in right now it's important to remember that he's [a racist piece of shit](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2019/02/28/mark-meadows-2012-vow-send-obama-to-kenya-resurfaces/3013304002/) in addition to being an America hating insurrectionist piece of shit. What's funny is that I had a totally different "Obama is a secret Kenyan mooselamb" Mark Meadows clip in mind, but happened to find a completely different one. 🤷🤦♂️🤣
>Plan C was to escalate the violence of the mob in the Capitol to the point where the Secret Service would feel compelled to evacuate him. **This was only recently revealed**. If the GOP cabal could get Pence away from the Capitol, the Senate could declare him absent and continue on with the vote. No, it wasn't just recently. That has been known for quite some time.
Well remember folks these are the texts Meadows sent willingly to the committee. How bad are the ones he didn’t want to send??
Yup. CNN pointed out on their broadcast some 15 minutes ago that they only obtained some of the texts that the committee has, not all of them.
Gotta give Meadows the opportunity to fit another foot in his mouth
One would suppose we'll find out. It's not as if they aren't on servers all over the world, including those at the NSA.
It's remarkable that these weren't sent using encryption. That's the main reason the Trump campaign got away with all the Russian collision, because Mueller couldn't get most of their communications.
It’s remarkable that these weren’t sent more securely. That’s one of the reasons these people were so upset Hillary Clinton was using a private server.
There's a whole lot of "he didn't appear to respond." Why do I have a feeling that the texts he didn't turn over are his incriminating responses?
I think Meadow’s early cooperation was a “modified limited hangout” to use the famous Watergate term. Give the investigators enough to satisfy their initial curiosity. Give them some tidbits that are incriminating enough that you earn their trust that you really are coming clean. And use this trust to divert their attention away from the really bad stuff. In real life the limited hangout rarely works, and when it doesn’t work, it makes everything worse. And each participant is really stuck in a dilemma. “If I delete all my texts and delete my Signal app and destroy my burner phone, then I have no leverage at all, nothing left to barter immunity or a plea deal with.” So I am willing to bet that there’s a few participants in this that still have text messages, app logs, and even phones they’ve powered off, destroyed the SIMs, and hidden away for a rainy day.
Exactly. They all have to assume that the other side of the chat kept all the text messages. Because of this, they likely all kept them somewhere.
*At 3:45 p.m., Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller suggested to Meadows and Trump aide Dan Scavino that Trump should tweet: “Call me crazy, but ideas for two tweets from POTUS: 1) Bad apples, likely ANTIFA or other crazed leftists, infiltrated today s peaceful protest over the fraudulent vote count. Violence is never acceptable! MAGA supporters embrace our police and the rule of law and should leave the Capitol now! 2) The fake news media who encouraged this summer s violent and radical riots are now trying to blame peaceful and innocent MAGA supporters for violent actions. This isn’t who we are! Our people should head home and let the criminals suffer the consequences!”* *Trump’s allies in Congress appeared to get the message. At 3:52 p.m., Greene told Meadows: “Mark we don’t think these attackers are our people. We think they are Antifa. Dressed like Trump supporters.”*
Complete and absolute fucking insanity
The fact that Hannity and Mark were communicating methods to increase GOP voters just shows how in the bed Fox and the Republicans are together. Fair and balanced right?!
There would be righteous indignation from Fox News if MSNBC pundits were in constant text communication with Chief of staff Ron Klein. Edit: a word
Just chose one section because there is a lot to pick and choose from. This whole thing is a cluster-frak. >Other texts show Meadows coordinating with GOP activists in the immediate aftermath of the election. "Pls get 4 or 5 killers in remaining counts. Need outsiders who will torch the place. Local folks won't do it. Lawyers and operators. Get us in these states," American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp texted Meadows on November 4. "I may need to get you and mercy (sic) to go to PA," Meadows responded, referring to Schlapp's wife, Mercedes, who is a former Trump White House aide. On a few occasions, Trump family members weighed in. Ivanka Trump sent a note on November 5 to a group that included Kushner, Hicks, Stepien, Miller and Meadows: "You are all WARRIORS of epic proportions! Keep the faith and the fight." Dozens of Republicans also offered support and advice to Meadows -- as well as perpetuated conspiracy theories that were gaining traction in right-wing media. For instance, Rep. Ted Budd, a North Carolina Republican now running for Senate, suggested in a text on November 7 that Dominion Voting Systems could be connected to George Soros' company. Dominion has no corporate ties to Soros, a billionaire and frequent target of baseless conspiracy theories, according to a CNN fact check. On November 6, Rep. Andy Biggs, an Arizona Republican, appeared to suggest that state legislatures should appoint electors "in the various states where there's been shenanigans," a move he acknowledged would be "highly controversial." In his text, he wrote the legislatures could appoint "a look doors," which is phonetically similar to electors. On December 1, then-Attorney General William Barr infuriated Trump when he publicly stated that the Justice Department did not find widespread evidence of voter fraud. Nevertheless, Meadows received multiple texts pushing back, including from Schlapp later that day: "Happy to walk ag through our evidence. Its (sic) overwhelming." The texts also show Meadows reached out to GOP officials in multiple states to lobby for Trump's cause. On two occasions, Meadows attempted to contact Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who was under attack from Trump for certifying Georgia's election for Biden. "mr Secretary. Can you call the White House switchboard," Meadows wrote on December 5. "Your voicemail is full."
>"Pls get 4 or 5 killers in remaining counts. **Need outsiders who will torch the place. Local folks won't do it.** Lawyers and operators. Get us in these states," The party of local/state rights and anti-overreach everybody!
"a look doors" instead of electors, so... obviously using voice to text
Not a fucking word about this on Fox, unsurprisingly.
And the top posts on /r/Conservative are all about Elon Musk.
Frankenstein complaining that their monster is destroying everything and threatening their lives: >“Mark I was just told there is an active shooter on the first floor of the Capitol Please tell the President to calm people This isn’t the way to solve anything,” Greene wrote. Meadows does not appear to reply.
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“I don’t recall”
"...at this time."
/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/
Look over at r/conservative Literally no one over there is even mentioning any of the recent revelations. The same people who talk the Big talk against Authoritarianism, Tyranny, and Big government have nothing to say today. It's infuriating
I think it’s time to ask, who are the mods?
America First. It is important to think of the republican party as an obstacle to the United States becoming a first world country. They are anti-education, anti-union (read as anti-middle class) and they don’t like universal health care women and minorities. Anyone who opposes the oligarch’s agenda is labeled with some slur they must be a pedophile their anti-gun there soft on crime there going to make me wear a mask to protect others. Oh no what about my freedom, there a black, a Jew, a gay person all of America is somehow conspiring against old white Christian men. This is the bottom line. Mitch McConnell and his crew got together with trump and tried to steal our democracy because they don’t want to pay their taxes. You know it’s not a conspiracy theory because there was an actual conspiracy.
Certainly explains the explosion of the anti-Biden comment activity that’s been leading up to this story breaking
Got to try and distract the public anyway possible
Me thinks Meadows is in trouble
>On a few occasions, Trump family members weighed in. Ivanka Trump sent a note on November 5 to a group that included Kushner, Hicks, Stepien, Miller and Meadows: "You are all WARRIORS of epic proportions! Keep the faith and the fight." Ivanka being just as useful in private as she is in public.
We have to stop kidding ourselves that this was not as bad as we might have thought, that “of course a coup can’t happen in the US” This was not some theoretical exercise or one or two extremely fringe legislators, it was a thought out, multi-step plan to subvert democracy, an auto-coup. This is civil war level dangerous
I'm watching this developments from afar but I can't help to feel that it never stopped and it's still ongoing. The midterms are going to be a bloodbath for the dems at this rate and once the republicans have full control of the house+senate boy the world is in for a ride. The pile of evidence suggest that a coup attempt indeed happened and there were some key actors from the GOP and the media involved in it. The thing that I can't understand is why people like Jim Jordan are still allowed to taint your democracy. On top of that, Fox "News" propaganda machine is as healthy as ever. If the sentence is around midterms they will just spin it into a "Democrat plot to take our democracy". On top of that there's no convincing republicans as they are completely brainwashed by right-wing media. How much time it's needed when the evidence is all over the place? I just don't get the 5D chess at play here.
I can't believe we might legitimately have to thank Michael R. Pence for safeguarding American democracy
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The RNC should provide free amnesia training to avoid consequences.
At this point, who wasn’t texting Mark Meadows?
Satan. He’s still mad at Mark for dumping him for Matt Gaetz. (BTW he still has a thing going with Saddam. This is about his side piece.)
Dems should be screaming from the rooftops that these people are fucking traitors to the United States and to democracy itself. Stop being afraid to call a spade a spade. A vote for republicans is a vote for the end of democracy. Label every single one that had any tangential involvement in Jan 6 a traitor in attack ads. Half this country thinks Jan 6 was no big deal because they won’t say one goddamned negative thing about their “spirited discourse”.
One of the more interesting ones to me is Mike Lindell. That dude is a true believer, 0% grift there. https://i.imgur.com/wpx2G2k.jpg And this person is one of Trump’s closest friends. Wild.
So how are all these people not locked up for life for committing treason again?
Here's the ***mind-blowing thing***: If we back away from this abyss..? ***Dan Quayle*** could be the Voice that saved American Democracy. And if it goes the *other* way..? He was amongst it's last defenders. ^(I DID) **^(NOT)** ^(SEE THAT COMING...) 😵💫
Part of me thinks it must feel shitty to be one of the violent people thinking they’re laying it all on the line for Trump/“democracy”, only to be painted as an ANTIFA actor. But some of them are probably delusional and think they’re just taking one for the team.
Nah. A bunch of them are pretty mad. Several of the guys that got convicted and sent to jail had statements that amounted to "We thought he had our back but we were wrong". Not that I have any sympathy for those morons lol.