Trump Has Every Intention Of Taking America Down With Him
Lucky Jon Tester! He has to run for reelection in one of the reddest states— a state where Trump beat Biden by double digits— 343,602 (56.9%) to 244,786 (40.5%). How’s that lucky? The NRSC has been trying to recruit a rich mainstream conservative, Tim Sheehy, to take him on. But now, Rep. Matt Rosendale, a blatant fascist has all but publicly announced he’s running. He told his allies in the House and Senate he is. He’s absolutely among the half dozen most extreme right members of Congress. He challenged Tester in 2018 and Tester beat him 253,876 (50.3%) to 235,963 (46.8%). While Biden won just 7 of Montana’s 56 counties, Tester won 13. Tester also swamped Rosendale in fundraising— $19,499,290 to 5,034,075.
Meanwhile, Rosendale and his neo-Nazi allies in Congress have made DC unbearable with a majority party riven with factionalism and backbiting— and not just Marjorie Traitor Greene threatening to beat up Lauren Boebert and calling her a “little bitch” for 3 days straight. (Meanwhile, the House “Freedom” Caucus is discussing whether or not to boot Taylor Greene for, wait for it, not being fascist and nihilistic enough!
Friday afternoon, before they took off for a long vacation, McCarthy and some of his cronies met with the “Freedom” Caucus to get their marching orders. They’re demanding the government be shut down to create a chaotic and untenable situation that they think will help Trump’s campaign. McCarthy would prefer to keep the government functioning so as to help the swing district incumbents get reelected. Scalise “said the focus of the meeting Friday was on figuring out how Republicans can work together to vote the six appropriations bills that have already passed in committee on the floor. Scalise predicted there could be hundreds of amendments as part of this process and there will have to be an effort made by Republicans to come together.” Garret Graves (R-LA), McCarthy’s fixer said he plans to meet with the “Freedom” Caucus nihilists over the break.
Tensions in the easily-factored Republican conference is very high and members are angry— at each other. Sarah Ferris and Olivia Beavers reported yesterday that Matt Gaetz says the kind of disruption that the extremists are doing to get their way is just beginning and that “many GOP lawmakers worry that tensions in their midst could make for a summer of hell, with internal battles raging ahead of September’s government shutdown deadline… Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO) captured the mood on Wednesday, getting caught on a hot mic after a colleague checked in on her during a Foreign Affairs Committee hearing: ‘Seven straight weeks, this is not healthy,’ she said. ‘I hate Republicans. I hate Democrats. I hate my staff. My staff hates me. Seven weeks is not good,’ Wagner said in exaggerated jest. ‘John Boehner would have never put up with this. He thought if we were together for more than four weeks, then you know— I guess that is why we are all doing all this stupid shit.’”
The extremist MAGAts now want to force the conference to impeach Biden and his cabinet members, something that will “cost precious floor time during Congress’ busiest stretch— while risking their more vulnerable colleagues’ political fates.
Some hard-liners are so angry that they’re considering rerunning their floor strategy from earlier this month, when they stunned GOP leaders by blocking their own party’s ability to bring up any legislation.
“I can see it happening, bringing people to the table,” said Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee, one of the 11 Republicans who held the floor hostage this month.
The strategy that gets deployed, Burchett suggested, would hinge on the outcome of ongoing conversations between McCarthy and the GOP conference: “I think Speaker McCarthy understands how serious folks are. I think the important thing is— and what he’s told us— everybody will be at the table.”
In some ways, the foul mood in the House is a reflection of the foul mood in the Trump camp. Trump has demanded that McCarthy and Gym Jordan push investigations of Hunter Biden and Joe Biden and his own myriad criminal cases. On Thursday Trump hosted a benefit for the Patriot Freedom Project at Bedminster on behalf of the incarcerated Jan. 6 insurrectionists. Trump spoke and pledged a contribution.
Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department official under Trump who sought to help overturn the 2020 election, also spoke at the event. The crowd included Cynthia Hughes, the founder of Patriot Freedom Project and aunt of Jan. 6 defendant Timothy Hale-Cusanelli— a Nazi-sympathizer sentenced to four years in prison— as well as Derrick Evans, a Jan. 6 defendant who is a former West Virginia lawmaker now running for the GOP nomination for a House seat. Geri Perna, the aunt of Jan. 6 defendant Mattthew Perna, who died by suicide, also attended.
…Trump has increasingly touted the Jan. 6 defendants’ cause on the campaign trail. His rallies have featured the song “Justice for All,” Trump’s version of the national anthem with the “J6 choir” of inmates awaiting trial for their roles in the insurrection.
In April, at a campaign stop in New Hampshire, he embraced a woman who served time in jail for her role in the Jan. 6 riot and has called for former Vice President Mike Pence to be executed. He has also said he would pardon “a large portion“ of the Jan. 6 rioters if he is re-elected to the White House.
The NY Times reported the whole GOP milieu as a through-the-looking-glass narrative with Robert Draper that “an ecosystem of true believers is promoting a tale of persecution rather than prosecution that has migrated to the heart of presidential politics [and have] embraced ‘J6’ as the animating force of their lives. They attend the criminal trials of the more prominent rioters charged in the attack. They gather to pray and sing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ on the outer perimeter of the District of Columbia jail, where some two dozen defendants are held. Last week, dozens showed up at an unofficial House hearing convened by a handful of Republican lawmakers to challenge ‘the fake narrative that an insurrection had occurred on Jan. 6,’ as set forth by Jeffrey Clark, a witness at the hearing and a former Justice Department official who worked to undo the results of the 2020 election.”
There were 5 crackpot neo-fascist members of Congress there: Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Ralph Norman (R-SC), Marjorie Traitor Greene (Q-GA) and Troy Nehls (R-TX) claiming “Jan. 6 was an elaborate setup to entrap peaceful Trump supporters, followed by a continuing Biden administration campaign to imprison and torment innocent conservatives… Trump has pledged to pardon some of the Jan. 6 defendants if he returns to the White House, and his chief challenger for the 2024 Republican nomination, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, has signaled he may do the same.”
The audience for the hearing in the Capitol Visitor Center included several of the most avid and successful promoters of the Jan. 6 counter-narrative.
Among them were Micki Witthoeft, the mother of Ashli Babbitt, the Air Force veteran and QAnon adherent who was fatally shot by a Capitol police officer during the riot and is now heralded as a martyr by the far right; Nicole Reffitt, whose husband, Guy Reffitt, was sentenced to more than seven years in prison for his role in the riot and who now helps organize nightly vigils at the D.C. jail; Tayler Hansen, who has claimed to possess videotaped evidence of Antifa elements instigating the violence at the Capitol, but who did not respond to a request from the New York Times to view the footage; and Tommy Tatum of Mississippi, who describes himself as an independent journalist and has inferred from various unidentified characters who appear in his own footage that sophisticated teams of plainclothes federal agents orchestrated the breach of the Capitol.
The Jan. 6 deniers range from true believers to flighty opportunists, with fevered arguments among them as to who is which. Tatum and William Shipley, a lawyer who has represented more than 30 Jan. 6 defendants, have for example accused each other on Twitter of cynical profiteering.