Ted Budd Was Doing Both At The Same Time!
Remember when the DOJ seized Pennsylvania insurrection Scott Perry’s phone back in August? Yesterday CNN reported that Perry’s lawyers have prevented them from accessing the texts— or at least accessing them in a way that they could be used as evidence— that prove his complicity in the attempted coup. Perry’s case is coming back to the fore now that 2,319 Mark Meadow texts are suddenly available, showing “the senior-most official in the Trump White House communicating with members of Congress, state-level politicians, and far-right activists as they work feverishly to overturn Trump’s loss in the 2020 election. The Meadows texts illustrate in moment-to-moment detail an authoritarian effort to undermine the will of the people and upend the American democratic system as we know it.”
When a bunch on Nazis and monarchists plotted to overthrow the German government last week, they all got rounded up and arrested, starting with Prince Heindrich XIII. They're in jail waiting trial. A couple years have gone by and our insurrectionists are still running around free and still plotting. Yesterday, Jonathan Last wrote that “we’re not talking about Twitter randos, or AmGreatness cosplayers. These aren’t a couple of sad incels with a podcast. The figures involved in these texts are elected officials in the federal government. Mark Meadows was the chief of staff to the president of the United States.”
Almost 2 weeks after the sacking of the Capitol South Carolina traitor Ralph Norman texted Meadows: “Mark, in seeing what’s happening so quickly, and reading about the Dominion law suits attempting to stop any meaningful investigation we are at a point of no return in saving our Republic !! Our LAST HOPE is invoking Marshall Law!! PLEASE URGE TO PRESIDENT TO DO SO!!” On the same day Marjorie Traitor Greene also text Meadows, also misspelling martial law: “In our private chat with only Members, several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call for Marshall law..”
Last noted that “Several members of the Republican House caucus believed that the president should invoke ‘Marshall law’ in order to prevent the transfer of power. Two of them (at least) put this request in writing. Both of these elected representatives will be members in good standing in the new House majority.”
Another neo-fascist, Mark Green of Tennessee texted Meadows that “Dick Morris is saying State Leg can intervene and declare Trump winner. NC, PA, MI, WI all have GOP Leg.” Apparently Green was getting legal advice from Newsmax.
Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC), on the other hand, was getting his news from Revolver. He copied bits of a piece from the site arguing that states should appoint Trump-loyal electors and texted them to Meadows. “Why are we not pursuing this strategy?” Murphy asked.
And Rep. Ted Budd (R-NC) texted Meadows claiming that Dominion Voting Systems was a stalking horse for George Soros:
FYI Dominion Voting Systems is owned by State Street Capital, which are Carlyle (Rubenstein alums), Rubenstein is a longtime co-investor with Soros Capital.
The portrait which emerges from these texts is of Republican congressmen who are as judicious, well-informed, and patriotic as your average Gateway Pundit commenter.
Every state has its own villains this story: Mo Brooks reportedly described as ‘ringleader’ of effort to overturn election in Mark Meadows texts. He must feel like a fool now! Pennsylvania has more villains than most states, even beyond Perry: Report: Meadows’ Texts Show Perry, Keller, Kelly Efforts To Reverse Trump 2020 Defeat. Steve Benen, reporting for the MaddowBlog, explained why the texts are so important. Before Trump persuaded Meadows to stop cooperating with the J-6 committee, he handed over the texts showing how many of Trump’s allies in Congress— at least 34 of them— were in on the effort to try to overthrow the government.
When Ted Budd (R-NC) wasn’t figuring out what he had to do to access stolen crypto-cash from Scam Bankman-Greed and the others at FTX— his campaign wound up with hundreds of thousands of dollars— he was texting Meadows on the day Biden was named the president-elect, sharing that absurd message, smacking of antisemitic tropes about conspiratorial links between Dominion Voting Systems and George Soros. All that was missing was something about the Rothschilds. “North Carolinians last month,” wrote Benen, “thought it’d be a good idea to give Budd a promotion, elevating him to the U.S. Senate.”
The night before the Jan. 6 attack, meanwhile, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan also reached out to the then-White House chief of staff and presented a plan for then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject the election results during the certification process. Next month, the GOP will put the far-right Ohioan in charge of the House Judiciary Committee.
Rep. Scott Perry also stood out, not just for the volume of texts he sent to Meadows, but also for the bizarre nature of his ideas: The Pennsylvania Republican apparently believed there were secret Italian satellites rigging American voting machines and the Trump-appointed CIA director was in cahoots with the British.
To be sure, this might make Perry sound like a bit of a nut, but Republicans have nevertheless put him on the House Foreign Affairs Committee— and the House Freedom Caucus has made him its chairman.
…MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell was seen at the White House with a paper with the phrase “martial law if necessary” on it. It was outlandish to think the fringe conspiracy theorist had access to the West Wing and the ear of the sitting president.
But Lindell was ultimately a powerless sideshow whose weird opinions generated little more than eye-rolling. Norman, in contrast, was recently re-elected to another term on Capitol Hill, where he’ll help write laws for the world’s preeminent superpower.
Behold, our new majority party in the United States House of Representatives.
“The pretense,” wrote Tom Nichols last night, “that the seditionists in the GOP are limited to a handful of kooks who worship Donald Trump is no longer sustainable. If there are any Republicans left who care about the Constitution, the time to speak up is now… [W]e must ask when those Republicans are going to rise up and oppose the enemy in their midst. What conclusion can we reach about the GOP when a supposed centrist such as Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin campaigned for Trump’s would-be clone in Arizona, Kari Lake? How much fidelity to the Constitution can we presume from Ohio Senator-elect J. D. Vance (a Yale Law School graduate) when he gladly accepts Greene’s endorsement and support? It is not enough to say, as New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu did, that the GOP should stop nominating “crazy, unelectable candidates.” That is a utilitarian argument, not a moral one. What will it take for prominent Republican leaders to say that they will not share a party or a platform with the likes of Norman, Gosar, and Greene? Who will stay, and who will go? If there was ever a time for the last sensible Republicans to remember that they are the party of Lincoln, the man who saved the Union and its Constitution, and to declare a war against their seditionist wing, this is it. And if they won’t— or can’t— then that should tell Americans everything they need to know about the party and its base.”