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Content warning: This story contains descriptions of child abuse.

In an effort to generate publicity for his scandal-ridden Senate campaign, Missouri Republican Eric Greitens posed on Monday with Donald Trump Jr. at a shooting range. As he empties his semi-automatic pistol into the targets, he pointedly mutters, “Liberals beware.” For his part, Trump Jr., mugging for the camera, adds, “Striking fear into the hearts of liberals everywhere, folks,” after both he and Greitens fire semi-automatic weapons. 

The staged event was clearly edited and spliced for maximum effect and dissemination on Twitter by Greitens himself.

Unfortunately (and as they are both well aware), neither Greitens nor Trump are likely to face any repercussions or consequences for what is essentially an expression of approval and implicit permission for Republicans to murder Democrats. The use of suggestive or “stochastic” invitations for Republicans to terrorize Democrats is now—thanks to Donald Trump—an accepted and familiar staple of Republican rhetoric. It provides an opportunity for channeling their base’s already well-stoked hatreds while allowing both Greitens and Trump Jr. plausible deniability for actually fomenting and encouraging violence: the “We were only joking!” defense. Conversely, any criticism is automatically characterized as overreaction and, implicitly, weakness. 

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The fact that less discerning viewers may take it quite seriously and act on such threats is of no concern to these people, because at present there is little that a hypothetical shooting victim whose attacker felt motivated or validated in his actions by this video can do to trace liability or responsibility back to Trump Jr. and Greitens.

Dictionary.com defines stochastic terrorism as follows:

Stochastic terrorism is “the public demonization of a person or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act, which is statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted.”

The word stochastic, in everyday language, means “random.” Terrorism, here, refers to “violence motivated by ideology.”

From the same source, four factors are indicative of this type of terrorism:

1. A leader or organization uses rhetoric in the mass media against a group of people.
2. This rhetoric, while hostile or hateful, doesn’t explicitly tell someone to carry out an act of violence against that group, but a person, feeling threatened, is motivated to do so as a result.
3. That individual act of political violence can’t be predicted as such, but that violence will happen is much more probable thanks to the rhetoric.
4. This rhetoric is thus called stochastic terrorism because of the way it incites random violence.

For Greitens in particular, the “shock value” of employing these demonstrative tactics is particularly revealing. He is attempting to distract from serious allegations of child and spousal abuse that have come to light in a custody dispute with his former wife, Sheena Greitens. In an affidavit filed last month, Sheena Greitens provided some of the details of that alleged abuse, which she claims she will back up with photographic and other evidence as the case proceeds.

As CNN reports:

“In early June 2018, I became afraid for my safety and that of our children at our home, which was fairly isolated, due to Eric’s unstable and coercive behavior,” she said. “This behavior included physical violence toward our children, such as cuffing our then three-year-old son across the face at the dinner table in front of me and yanking him around by his hair.”

Sheena Greitens said she and others were so concerned about Eric Greitens’ behavior that they limited his access to firearms on three occasions. She said she was concerned about the “escalation of physical violence” and eventually, “I started sleeping in my children’s room simply to try to keep them safe,” according to her affidavit.

The irony that Greitens is denying his former wife’s allegations while at the same time escalating the very violence-fueled rhetoric and use of firearms that she describes in her affidavit—albeit now in the pursuit of his political ambitions—is fairly inescapable.

The sad fact is that this type of rhetoric will continue to proliferate as long as Americans continue to treat both the tactics and those who employ them as legitimate rather than something despicable and unworthy of our country.  

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Boeing has had its share of problems over the past several years—its planes abruptly dropping out of the sky like remote-controlled canned hams being chief among them. But while the whole “oops, our plane crashed but it won’t happen again—erm, okay, it happened again, but this time we’ve really fixed it—lol” PR nightmare has continued to dog Boeing, in one important way we can all relate to the company’s problems, because Donald John Trump has made those problems worse.

On Wednesday, Boeing reported disappointing quarterly revenue figures, announcing that it had missed analysts’ targets largely as a result of production delays on its 777X airliner.

Boeing also doesn’t expect deliveries of the plane to start until 2025, more than a year later than it previously forecast. Its shares were down more than 7% in morning trading Wednesday after it reported results.

Boeing has enjoyed a resurgence in demand for its 737 Max plane, which returned to service in late 2020 after two fatal crashes. But production problems and certification delays have hampered other aircraft programs.

Another drag on the company’s earnings? The deal Trump struck with Boeing for its work on the new Air Force One, which has bored a $660 million revenue crater into the company’s balance sheet. In fact, the deal was so bad for Boeing, CEO Dave Calhoun says the company should have rejected it:

Calhoun spoke Wednesday on the company’s quarterly earnings call, just hours after Boeing disclosed that it has lost $660 million transforming two 747 airliners into flying White Houses.

“Air Force One I’m just going to call a very unique moment, a very unique negotiation, a very unique set of risks that Boeing probably shouldn’t have taken,” Calhoun said. “But we are where we are, and we’re going to deliver great airplanes.”

The former president, an aviation enthusiast, took a keen interest in the new presidential jets, involving himself in everything from contract negotiations to the plane’s color scheme. As part of the deal, Boeing signed a fixed-price contract that required the company, not taxpayers, to pay for any cost overruns during the complicated conversion of the two airliners.

So should we be thanking Trump for saving taxpayers money while sticking one of America’s biggest employers and most essential corporations with a giant bill? Does that make up for all the money he wasted on golf trips or take any of the sting out of Jared Kushner’s grotesque $2 billion conflict of interest? Maybe, but given that the company is a key fixture in our military-industrial complex, it’s a safe bet they’ll get that money back one way or another. 

Markos and Kerry talk Ukraine and speak with Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler on how hitting back at Republicans helps win elections

And maybe we should be happy that Trump was sticking to his managerial strengths—i.e., picking out colors for things—instead of, say, negotiating an even worse deal with the Taliban. But I have a feeling at least $100 million of the cost Boeing has been forced to eat involves a complex apparatus for hosing the excess McRib sauce off POTUS. 

In fact, I’d be a little shocked if Trump’s new plane—which I can only hope he’ll never see up close—looks and feels a bit like the car Homer designed for himself on The Simpsons. 

Who really knows?

Fortunately for Boeing, Trump won’t be writing the checks, so he can’t stiff the company entirely. Hey, that’s something, at least.

It made comedian Sarah Silverman say, “THIS IS FUCKING BRILLIANT,” and prompted author Stephen King to shout “Pulitzer Prize!!!” (on Twitter, that is). What is it? The viral letter that launched four hilarious Trump-trolling books. Get them all, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE. 

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Over the weekend, Republicans in Michigan were busy in Grand Rapids at their spring convention. This is where members of the Michigan GOP go to discuss strategy, who is running to represent them, who they will support, and how much support they will give to various candidates. Traditionally, this would also be the time to discuss policy distinctions between candidates and the lines they are and are not willing to cross in regard to compromise—depending on the candidate and district in question. AHAHAHAHA. That last part was a joke. The Republican Party has zero policy platforms that fall within the purview of our Constitution!

The conservative civil war is raging across the country, and while traditional media is mostly worried about their personal stock portfolios, GOP operatives continue to battle it out between the recently solemn neocons of the party versus the furiously misdirected MAGA-cum-tea party fascists in the party. The Michigan convention was filled with all of the bile we have come to expect from a meeting of Republicans. The major “themes” (because once again, there is no policy in the GOP) were anti-LGBTQ+, anti-education rhetoric wrapped up in “parental rights” and the promotion of Trump’s big lie that the election was stolen.

Tony Daunt was a longtime Michigan state GOP committee member. I say ‘was’ because on Tuesday night, Daunt reportedly resigned from the state committee, saying the Republican Party is going down a sewer hole.

The Detroit News was able to get a copy of the emailed resignation that Daunt sent to Judy Rapanos, chairwoman of the 4th Congressional District Republican Committee. In it Daunt criticized what he said was a litmus test of loyalty to disgraced disaster of a person Donald Trump. In fairness to Daunt, he described Trump as a “deranged narcissist.”

Markos and Kerry talk Ukraine and speak with Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler on how hitting back at Republicans helps win elections

Daunt isn’t some woke liberal cancel culture warrior, mind you. He is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative who believes the Democratic Party has “myriad failures” that the GOP should run candidates against. Daunt has supported proposals like doing away with Michigan’s personal income tax and is highly critical of government spending over tax cuts—the classic, proven-to-fail policies that conservatives have always pushed.

And while he believed the GOP should be trying to win elections by going after Democratic Party policy, he now says his fellow “feckless, cowardly party ‘leaders’ have made the election here in Michigan a test of who is the most cravenly loyal to Donald Trump and re-litigating the results of the 2020 cycle.” Maybe the most damning part of Daunt’s resignation letter is Daunt’s assertion that Michigan GOP leader know the election fraud claims are lies and Trump’s general election claims are lies. The best part? He calls Trump an “undisciplined loser.”

Listen to Daily Kos Elections’ The Downballot podcast’s David Nir and David Beard discuss Michigan

“Incredibly, rather than distancing themselves from this undisciplined loser, far too many Republican ‘leaders’ have decided that encouraging his delusional lies — and, even worse — cynically appeasing him despite knowing they are lies, is the easiest path to ensuring their continued hold on power, general election consequences be damned.” That’s the stuff. Who will or won’t Daunt and other Republicans like him vote for this coming fall, nobody knows. Hopefully this conservative civil war continues to erode the Republican Party in the same way the party has been eroding America for the last five decades.

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A California bill could end offshore drilling for the state, though drilling further out in federal waters near the coast would still continue. SB953 seeks a “relinquishment of the leases and termination of all oil and gas production associated with these leases” from the companies still in operation. The bill was brought forth by state Sen. Dave Min in the wake of the October 2021 oil spill near Huntington Beach in which a pipeline running from the Port of Long Beach to Platform Elly ruptured, sending 25,000 gallons of crude oil into the ocean. The bill cleared the Natural Resources and Water Committee on Tuesday and has been re-referred to the Senate Appropriations Committee, so it could be a while before SB953 moves any closer to becoming law.

Once passed, it could take at least a yearn and a half before drilling ceases. Though 11 leases are active in state waters, just three offshore oil and gas platforms remain. The bill would not impact the 23 platforms in federal waters, which includes Platform Elly. Advocates nonetheless believe that SB953 could send a strong message were it to become law. “The only way to prevent more oil-related disasters like the one we experienced in October of 2021 is to transition off of fossil fuels as quickly as possible,” Natural Resources Defense Council Director of California Government Affairs Victoria Rome said in a press release. “SB 953 allows for negotiations with the industry on how to voluntarily relinquish their state leases. If an agreement can’t be reached, the bill requires termination of those leases with fair compensation provided to the leaseholders.”

According to a poll conducted in the wake of the spill, a full 70% of Californians oppose more offshore oil drilling. Though a recent Phys.org piece contended that SB953 could prove costly for residents, Sen. Min assured Spectrum News 1 that “it won’t affect oil prices even a cent.” There is also precedent to limiting offshore drilling, most recently with Huntington Beach and Laguna Beach tightening restrictions. But it was the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill that truly changed the way the California coastline looked in the wake of a major disaster, prompting the California State Lands Commission to place a moratorium on offshore drilling in state waters. The disaster even inspired the first Earth Day, according to Smithsonian Magazine.

There is absolutely a chance that actions inspired by the 2021 Huntington Beach oil spill could further strengthen the movement against drilling, though there is still an uphill battle to be fought against federal offshore drilling, to say nothing of the oil and gas drilling still occurring on California’s lands. Some movement has been made on a local level, such as Los Angeles’ ban of any new oil and gas wells and its commitment to phase out old wells within five years. But last year’s ban of oil and gas wells from being drilled within 3,200 feet of schools is comparatively weak in terms of environmental justice and true climate change mitigation.

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Outside the Supreme Court building on Tuesday, pro-refugee advocates chanted “Si, se puede” (“Yes, we can”) and “Say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here.” Inside, justices heard oral arguments around the previous administration’s inhumane Remain in Mexico policy, officially known as Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP).

The big question is not the legality of the program itself (though it is illegal), it’s whether the Biden administration has the power to end it. (Of course it does, but we are not the Supreme Court.) In light of an openly hostile 6-3 court, the odds do not seem good at all. But following Tuesday’s hearing, observers seemed to indicate that a ruling in favor of the administration could be possible. Maybe.

RELATED STORY: Remain in Mexico case in front of SCOTUS is also about whether Biden will be allowed to govern

“Questions from conservative and liberal justices during nearly two hours of arguments suggested that the court could free the administration to end the ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy that forces some people seeking asylum in the U.S. to wait in Mexico for their hearings,” The Washington Post reported.

Markos and Kerry talk Ukraine and speak with Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler on how hitting back at Republicans helps win elections

CNN reports that while right-wing justices asked “tough questions of the administration … Chief Justice John Roberts expressed sympathy for the government’s argument that it wants to end a program that had been put forward by the previous administration.” Vox, meanwhile, reported  justices seemed “fed up with a Trump judge who sabotaged Biden.” That right-wing judge forced himself into foreign policy, because reinstating this policy has required cooperation from Mexico. “Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk is not secretary of homeland security, even though he might think he is,” Vox said.

Of course, how justices vote is a whole different matter, and this is a right-wing court that has had no qualms about using the secretive “shadow docket” to issue momentous decisions, as Daily Kos’ Joan McCarter has previously noted. So we’ll see what really happens in late June when the court is expected to issue a decision on this case.

In the meantime, we know that Remain in Mexico continues to inflict harm on vulnerable people, because that was the entire point of the program when it was instituted by the previous administration. It’s been more than two years since a government attorney representing that administration admitted in court that everyone enrolled in Remain in Mexico could be at risk of being kidnapped by a cartel. President Biden’s Department of Homeland Security acknowledged these dangers in the October 2021 memo that again attempted to terminate the policy following Kacsmaryk’s ruling. 

There’s also the possibility that Remain in Mexico remains a danger to asylum-seekers even if the Biden administration wins. Both Vox and Immigration Impact said Brett Kavanaugh was among justices who suggested the case could go back to Kacsmaryk.

“Despite the October memo not being before the court, Justice Kavanaugh expressed significant skepticism that the Biden administration had explained itself enough in its 39-page memo terminating the program,” Immigration Impact said. “Unfortunately, that suggests that even a victory for the Biden administration in this case may not be enough in the long run to end MPP.”

RELATED STORIES: Dozens of groups file brief opposing Remain in Mexico policy as Supreme Court arguments approach

‘Operate with impunity’: Internal email warns of risks facing asylum-seekers under Remain in Mexico

Conservative appeals court’s decision keeping Remain in Mexico in place slammed as ‘nonsensical’

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More than two years into the pandemic and some people still haven’t learned right from wrong. Despite the number of arrests in connection to and warnings that selling fake vaccine cards is illegal, some people, especially Trump supporters, continue to do so. In the most recent incident of selling fraudulent vaccine cards to the Feds, a Colorado man identified as Robert Van Camp was arrested on Tuesday. Van Camp faces a charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States in a federal court with an investigation spanning multiple states. He is accused of running a business that sold cards in several states.

“It was the purpose of the conspiracy for Van Camp, Co-Conspirator-1, and their co-conspirators to (a) fraudulently obstruct the government’s administration and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines and the government’s federal employee vaccination mandate,” the arrest complaint stated.

Van Camp was arrested after allegedly selling fake COVID-19 vaccination cards to at least four undercover agents after obtaining an electronic copy of a blank card. Prosecutors said Van Camp carried out the scheme with a co-conspirator who had a top-secret security clearance. His partner has been unidentified in court records.

“Pretty fucking nice, huh? I call them a work of art,” Van Camp told an undercover federal agent who was pretending to buy cards.

Markos and Kerry talk Ukraine and speak with Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler on how hitting back at Republicans helps win elections

To another agent, Van Camp bragged about selling hundreds of cards, including in “Honduras, Costa Rice, Canada, France, Turks and Caicos, twelve different states, so my cards are fucking worldwide.”

“I mean, these things are gold,” he said, noting he sold some for over $170 each.

In efforts to hide his business, prosecutors said, Van Camp referred to the cards by code names and told buyers to do the same, calling them “gift cards.” His scheme lasted over a year.

According to court documents, Van Camp claimed he was making and selling the cards because of vaccination requirements.

”I’m not making cards ’cause I’m bored, I’m making cards ’cause I’m in the middle of a fucking war and I, and I have a lot of guns and ammo, like an arsenal,” he told one of the undercover agents, according to the court document.

Since the start of the pandemic, people have been creating fake vaccine cards in an attempt to make a quick buck off those individuals unwilling to follow safety precautions. Daily Kos reported multiple warnings issued by the FBI noting that fraudulent cards not only increase the risk of COVID-19, but that both buying and selling the fraudulent cards is illegal and could be charged as forgery. Making or buying counterfeit vaccine cards violates federal laws and can result in heavy fines and imprisonment.

According to CNBC, after announcing charges against two people in California who allegedly raised more than $140 million by falsifying COVID-19 tests, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday that criminal cases against 19 other defendants are in process. Van Camp was amongst the defendants, many of whom were medical professionals. He was noted as the one who bragged about selling vaccine cards to Olympic athletes. 

“And like I said, I’m in 12 or 13 states, so until I get caught and go to jail, fuck it. I’m taking the money!” he said according to court records. “I don’t care, I’ve saved a thousand lives.”

Seems like he is going to care now that he has been caught. Saving lives, though? Who is he kidding?

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Republicans are teeing up their next move toward making the U.S. government completely unable to function. If they take control of the House, as they are favored to do, they will come in already having laid the groundwork to begin impeaching Cabinet officials, starting with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandra Mayorkas.

On Monday, 133 Republican House members sent Mayorkas a letter accusing him of “disregard for the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws” and actions that have “willingly endangered American citizens and undermined the rule of law and our nation’s sovereignty.” Basically, Mayorkas has not kept every single one of Donald Trump’s hateful immigration policies in place. 

RELATED STORY: Dear reporters: Please don’t parrot back whatever noted liar Kevin McCarthy says at the border today

Though the letter doesn’t use the word “impeach,” it makes a not very veiled threat: “Your failure to secure the border and enforce the laws passed by Congress raises grave questions about your suitability for office.”

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House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy made the threat explicit in the Monday border visit he used to try to distract from having been caught in a set of big lies about his attitude toward Trump and Jan. 6. “This is his moment in time to do his job,” McCarthy said of Mayorkas. “But at any time if someone is derelict in their job, there is always the option of impeaching somebody.”

Mayorkas is supposedly “derelict,” while Republicans have nothing bad to say about expensive and useless theater conducted at the border by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

But a move to impeach Mayorkas probably wouldn’t be the end of Republican efforts to hobble President Biden’s administration and make being a Cabinet official from one party punishable by impeachment if the other party held the House. The reporting at Axios can be faulted on many fronts, but the outlet has excellent Republican sourcing. Here’s what it takes from its sources: “For the first year of President Biden’s term, it was mostly the hard right of the GOP who entertained impeaching the president and his Cabinet secretaries. But those deliberations are now happening among a much larger group — even with virtually no precedent or legal justification.”

One Cabinet official has ever been impeached in U.S. history. Republicans are getting ready to make that commonplace, not because Cabinet officials suddenly magically got worse, but because the Republican Party is committed to sabotaging not just a Democratic administration but voters’ faith that the government can function effectively.

RELATED STORIES: 

Texas’ corrupt attorney general hopes the courts can yet again help him sabotage Biden’s agenda

Far-right Freedom Caucus is poised to have serious sway if Republicans take the House

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“I’m not getting in the car.”

This is what former Vice President Mike Pence said on Jan. 6, 2021 to Tim Giebels, the lead special agent tasked to protect him.

Thousands of rioters, many of them armed with weapons makeshift and otherwise, were laying siege to the U.S. Capitol while clamoring to hang him, the second person in line for the presidency of the United States. This conversation reportedly happened just before 2:30 PM.

It had been a little more than 90 minutes since Pence—after weeks of silence—finally released an official statement acknowledging he was constrained “unilaterally” by the Constitution, so could not do anything other than count Electoral College votes when he presided over a joint session of Congress that afternoon. 

Pressure had been mounting around him for weeks publicly and privately. In an interview with Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, this March, Short told Politico the vice president spent days crafting his statement. And agonizing over it.

“I do not believe that the Founders of our country intended to invest the Vice President with unilateral authority to decide which electoral votes should be counted during the Joint Session of Congress, and no Vice President in American history has ever asserted such authority,” Pence wrote on Jan. 6.

The whole statement was laden with historic contextual references and citations to clarify his reasoning. Line by line, Pence’s letter cut at the core of a strategy that those like attorney John Eastman had proposed to Trump to keep him in power: Use Pence as his puppet. 

In another time or place, a statement from a vice president before Congress met to certify electoral votes would have been perfunctory. 

But Pence understood, according to his chief of staff, he would have to do more. And he would have to be clear.

Trump, his aides, allies, and attorneys like Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, and Sidney Powell, among others, had for weeks broadcast a conspiracy theory about rampant fraud in the 2020 election and the need for “alternate electors” for Trump.

But those “alternate electors” were not properly sanctioned by the states they came from, and Pence knew long before he was headed to the Capitol that the bid was doomed. In the book Peril by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, Pence reportedly called on former Vice President Dan Quayle for guidance in late December 2020.

When Quayle told him there was “no flexibility” to avoid certifying the results and to “put it away,” Pence kept searching for a way through. The vice president was hopeful Trump’s many ongoing legal challenges to election results in battleground states would offer a remedy.

When it became clear there was nothing to be done legally, Pence put the wheels in motion for his role on Jan. 6, as he saw it. 

“It was a transparent effort to get in front of any accusations that there was any other slate that could’ve been legally accepted,” Short said of the Jan. 6 letter last month. 

So when Pence was in the Capitol at 2:26 PM on Jan. 6—a target newly painted on his back courtesy of a tweet from Trump two minutes before, saying his veep didn’t have the “courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution”—Pence was insistent that he wasn’t leaving the building. 

“I’m not getting in the car Tim. I trust you, Tim, but you’re not driving the car. If I get in that vehicle, you guys are taking off. I’m not getting in the car,” he said.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and investigator serving the Jan. 6 committee, recently described that remark from Pence to Giebels as the “six most chilling words of this entire thing I’ve seen so far.” 

The exchange was reported by Carol Leonning and Philip Rucker in their book, I Alone Can Fix It, for the first time last year. They also reported that the then-vice president was distrustful that his security detail would do as he wished if he went with them on Jan. 6. 

Anthony Ornato, who oversaw the Secret Service detail operations at the time for the White House, ran into Pence’s National Security Adviser Keith Kellogg in the West Wing on Jan. 6, according to Leonning and Rucker. 

Kellogg said Ornato told him then they were preparing to move Pence to Joint Base Andrews in nearby Maryland.

According to an excerpt from I Alone Can Fix It, Kellogg also urged him not to take Pence anywhere.

“You can’t do that, Tony. Leave him where he’s at. He’s got a job to do. I know you guys too well. You’ll fly him to Alaska if you have a chance. Don’t do it,” Kellogg said. 

Ornato, a former Secret Service agent, was appointed by Trump in 2019 to serve as deputy chief of staff for operations at the White House. The decision was controversial given that crossover between those two worlds is often frowned upon. 

Leonning and Rucker are not sure whether Pence understood that what was transpiring was an attempted coup, but Leonning told MSNBC recently she was sure Pence was “super suspicious and insistent on staying” regardless. 

For his part, Ornato has denied ever having the conversation with Kellogg about moving Pence. 

Having returned to the Secret Service full time after Biden was inaugurated, the Jan. 6 committee has already interviewed Ornato. He appeared voluntarily.

According to recently released testimony provided to the committee by Cassidy Hutchinson, Trump’s special assistant for legislative affairs, it was also Ornato who warned Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on Jan. 4 that violence was possible in D.C. on Jan. 6.

RELATED STORY: Former aide says Meadows warned about violence coming to D.C. on Jan. 6

As for Pence, Short has said his boss simply did not leave because he did not want to give America’s global adversaries the fodder if he was seen “fleeing the Capitol in a 15-car motorcade” as rioters scaled the walls with everything from loaded handguns to sharp sticks. 

During his recent speech at Georgetown University, Raskin did not make a blanket suggestion that Ornato was part of a grand conspiracy on Jan. 6 to remove Pence from office or that the Secret Service was involved in a conspiracy. 

“I can’t say because we haven’t discussed that yet and we’re not there yet,” he said.

Though Raskin did say that what happened on Jan. 6 was unequivocally a “marriage between an inside political coup at the highest levels of the administration, with street thugs and hooligans and neo-fascists.” 

“No president has ever come close to doing what happened here in terms of trying to organize an inside coup and overthrow an election and bypass the constitutional order and then also use a violent insurrection made up of domestic extremist groups,” Raskin said. 

What exactly prompted Pence to tell Giebels that he trusted him but wouldn’t go with him in a car because Giebels wasn’t driving is unknown for now. 

The Secret Service is sworn to protect men like Pence, and whisking him away from the scene at the Capitol would not be beyond the normal bounds. He did eventually leave with his detail and was taken to a secure undisclosed location under the Capitol.

But the detail is notable, and the fact that Raskin finds it chilling is more so. He has been privy to information underlying more than 800 witness interviews by the committee, and has seen thousands upon thousands of pages of records. 

When there’s an attempted overthrow, no details can be taken for granted. 

“The hearings will tell a story that will really blow the roof of the House because it is a story of the most heinous and dastardly political offense ever organized by a president and his followers and his entourage in the history of the United States,” Raskin said during his remarks at Georgetown. “No president has ever come close to doing what happened here in terms of trying to organize an inside coup to overthrow an election and bypass the constitutional order.”

Raskin said for four years Pence demonstrated “nothing other than invertebrate sycophancy and obsequiousness to Donald Trump.”

But on Jan. 6, he was a “constitutional patriot” when he decided to stand against the push to stop the count.

“He knew exactly what this inside coup they had planned for was going to do,” Raskin said.

RELATED STORY: ‘Prepare to be mesmerized’: An interview with Jan. 6 investigator Jamie Raskin

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Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has a message for her fellow Democrats ahead of the 2022 midterm elections: DO STUFF! “We’ve got nearly 200 days. If we don’t deliver, if we don’t get up off our rear ends and make it happen, we’re in real trouble,” she said in a Tuesday interview with Politico. “But if we do deliver, if we can get some tangible results that touch people’s lives, then we can go to the polls in November with our heads held high.”

She also wrote about it in The New York Times last week: “Democrats win elections when we show we understand the painful economic realities facing American families and convince voters we will deliver meaningful change. To put it bluntly: if we fail to use the months remaining before the elections to deliver on more of our agenda, Democrats are headed toward big losses in the midterms.”

Where she wants Democrats to deliver: an anti-price gouging bill, banning insider trading for Congress, lowering drug prices, taxing the rich, expanding overtime pay eligibility, and canceling student debt. These are promises made in the 2020 campaign that she says need to be delivered on, and soon.

Put a bill on the floor giving the Federal Trade Commission authority to investigate price gouging, she argues in the Politico interview, and “dare the Republicans to vote against it. A clean, simple bill.” Republicans keep yammering on about inflation, so here’s their chance, she says. “Let’s put it to the Republicans. Do they care about price gouging from the perspective of helping the consumers? Or from the perspective of letting the big corporations continue to get away with it?”

Voters, she writes at the NYT, have long identified corruption in government as a top concern, so Congress should act by starting at home. “[M]embers of Congress and their spouses shouldn’t be allowed to own or trade individual stocks.” She has bipartisan legislation with Montana Sen. Steve Daines to enforce just that, because “to tackle the urgent challenges we face—climate change, income inequality, systemic injustice—we must root out corruption.”

What else Congress can do, she says, is make billionaires pay more in taxes. “About two-thirds of likely American voters—including a majority of Republicans—say it’s time for billionaires to pay more in taxes,” she writes. “Nearly three-quarters of Americans want to put an end to wildly profitable corporations paying nothing or little in federal income taxes (yes, Amazon, I’m looking at you) and put into place a global minimum corporate tax.”

That can be done with just Democratic votes in the budget reconciliation bill that Democrats have available to use right now, and even Joe Manchin (WV) is theoretically in support of that (Arizona Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema could still be a problem).

As far as Manchin and the Build Back Better package he’s been fighting is concerned, she told Politico, “I don’t care about the titles, labels, I don’t care about who gets to carry the leadership mantle or the authorship for doing the pieces. We need to pick the pieces that the American people are counting on us to deliver on.”

That’s the Congress side of the equation. She also wants President Joe Biden to act. She outlined how the administration can cut prescription drug prices with executive action in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra this week. She urged Becerra to “move swiftly to use your existing authorities to give sorely needed relief to the millions of Americans paying far too much for their prescription drugs.”

Biden can also, she argues, act decisively “on everything from lowering prescription drug prices to ensuring that more workers are eligible for overtime pay can be executed by the president alone, using the authority already given to him by existing laws, without rounding up 50 Senate votes.”

Senate Republicans are already trying to flex their muscle with legislation trying to ban Biden from canceling student debt, Daily Kos’ Laura Clawson writes. There’s another issue where Democrats should dare Republicans to oppose them, Warren argues, again pointing to polling that shows how popular debt cancellation is with the voters that Democrats need to have turn out this November—women and Black and brown people. “With the stroke of a pen, the president could make massive strides to close gender and racial wealth gaps,” she writes.

Given the new polling from Daily Kos/Civiqs, Biden should heed her call. “The survey found that 67% of Democratic voters aged 18-34 believe Biden ‘made a lot of promises during his campaign that he hasn’t delivered on,’” Daily Kos’ Kerry Eleveld writes. That’s reinforced by a new Harvard Youth Poll which shows an 18-point loss in approval for Biden in the past year among 18-29 year olds; 85% of the respondents in that poll said they favor student debt relief.

“The urgency of the moment” demands that Democrats answer, Warren told Politico. “The things we need to do are things that touch people’s lives directly,” Warren said. “We promised to act on this. The Republicans did not.”

Force the votes, take the executive actions, and make Republicans—and Manchin and Sinema, if necessary—fight against the things that people want. The things that people need. What better argument to increase the Democratic majority in the Senate than making those two irrelevant.

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