On Meet The Press today, Peter Meijer, a conservative fool who will soon to be a one-term congressman from central Michigan, told Chuck Todd that after the attempted coup, Republicans still kept supporting Trump because "there was no alternative. There was no other path and given how President Biden, when he was elected into office, you know, said he would be moderate and look for bipartisan solutions. But then after, and frankly, I blame the former president for this, after we lost the two Senate seats in Georgia and the Senate flipped, it became an exercise in trying to be an LBJ or FDR style presidency and enact transformational change in the absence of any compelling mandate from the American people to do so. So that gave the rallying signal, that created a very steep divide, and at the end of the day, there’s no other option right now in the Republican Party." He kept making "both sides" excuses for his entire sad segment, which you can watch above.
Two big polls were released today. First the ABC News/Ipsos poll showed that most Americans (72%) think that the people involved in the attack on the Capitol of Jan. 6 were threatening democracy-- although a sizable minority (dangerous Trump Republicans) say they were protecting democracy (25%). 58% of Respondents assign significant blame to Trump himself while that same 25% say Trump should not be blamed at all.
The second poll was conducted by YouGov for CBS News and it dealt with similar questions, which are worth examining to understand the minds of the Americans who have slipped or are slipping into the full-on fascism being promoted by Trump and his inner circle and by members of Congress who we refer to here as the Gang Greene (basically Marjorie Traitor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Madison Cawthorn, Gym Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Mo Brooks, Paul Gosar, Louie Gohmert, Mary Miller, Ronny Jackson, Andy Biggs, Scott Perry, Jody Hice, Michael Cloud, Andrew Clyde, Jim Banks, Beth Van Duyne, Barry Moore...).
CBS News pollster Anthony Salvanto and his team wrote that "there are some Americans who generally view force or political violence undertaken by others as justifiable, depending on the situation. That applies to the violence on January 6, and to a few for whom 2020 remains unsettled, but also extends to other issues, from abortion to gun policy to civil rights. And it's partially related to beliefs that political opponents are an existential threat, or being convinced they'll do worse to you... The implications of January 6 are reverberating through the polity: two-thirds see the events as a harbinger of increasing political violence, not an isolated incident. Only 33% of those polled feel that U.S. democracy is safe. 17% of Americans (up 4 points over the last year) approve of the insurrection and coup attempt and 83% disapprove (down from 87%). Among Americans who believe in QAnon conspiracy theories, 50% approve of the coup attempt and riot.
Despite overall disapproval of the events on January 6, Republicans do stand apart from others in offering descriptions that are less harsh. One, the intensity with which Republicans disapprove softened over the summer and has stayed softer. A year ago, most Republicans strongly disapproved, but today, their disapproval is spread between strongly and a bit more only somewhat disapproving.
Americans who no longer strongly disapprove are less likely to describe the day's events as an insurrection than they were in January. They are also much likelier to consume conservative media than those consistent in strongly disapproving.
Moreover, four in 10 Republicans have a different conception of who was involved in the first place, saying most of those who forced their way into the Capitol were left-leaning groups pretending to be Trump supporters.
Outright approval of what happened comes only from a minority of Americans, but it certainly is there. Those who approve are younger and use right-leaning news sources and social media more, but they also have what seem like larger items than just their views about 2020 or an election. They are more likely to say the United States should divide into "red" and "blue" countries. There's a relationship between approval and conspiracy theories: among Americans who think QAnon ideas are at least probably true, approval of the Capitol events goes up to 50%.
...Most Americans-- including most Democrats, but just a fifth of Republicans-- call [the attempted coup] an insurrection and describe it as an attempt to overturn the election and the government.
Four in 10 Republicans say those who went into the Capitol were actually left-leaning groups pretending to be Trump supporters. Only a quarter of Americans call what happened "patriotism" or "defending freedom." They tend to be on the political right, identifying as conservatives. When asked why they describe it that way, they say those who entered the Capitol were "exercising their right to protest" and drawing attention to (what they see as) election fraud-- more than twice as often as they say January 6 participants were trying to stop the electoral count, per se. So, they are still supportive of the act, even though it didn't meet its alleged goals, which could partially explain why they're also willing to see other actions as justified.
62% of the general public oppose the idea of Trump running again, while 26% say he should run and 12% say he should fight to be made president right now. And 62% of those polled expect to see political violence again after an election. And then there's this:
Liz Cheney wasn't included in the sample but this morning she was a guest on This Week where she told George Stephanopoulos that it's "important for the American people to understand how dangerous Donald Trump was. We know as he was sitting there in the dining room next to the Oval Office, members of his staff were pleading with him to go on television, to tell people to stop. We know Leader McCarthy was pleading with him to do that. We know members of his family, we know his daughter. We have firsthand testimony that his daughter Ivanka went in at least twice to ask him to please stop this violence. Any man who would not do so, any man who would provoke a violent assault on the Capitol to stop the counting of electoral votes, any man who would watch television as police officers were being beaten, as his supporters were invading the Capitol of the United States, is clearly unfit for future office, clearly can never be anywhere near the Oval Office ever again... I think it is critically important, given everything we know about the lines that he was willing to cross-- he crossed lines no American president has ever crossed before. You know, we entrust the survival of our republic into the hands of the chief executive, and when a president refuses to tell the mob to stop, when he refuses to defend any of the coordinate branches of government, he cannot be trusted. And we watched what this president did from-- throughout the election, the lies that he told, the extent to which he went to war with the rule of law. He completely ignored the rulings of over 60 courts, including judges he had appointed and refused to send help, refused to tell people to stand down for multiple hours while that attack was under way."