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In a recorded interview made newly public Friday, former President Donald Trump defended his supporters who laid siege to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and in particular, those devotees who clamored to hang his second-in-command, former Vice President Mike Pence.  

It was mere seconds that separated Pence from the angry mob that stormed the complex, assaulted more than a hundred police officers, and attempted to halt the certification of the 2020 election.

And fresh off his speech that incited the insurrectionists, Trump, for 187 minutes, watched from the safety of his perch in the White House as the chaos unfolded.

Then, this March, long after being impeached for the second time, Trump sat down with reporter Jonathan Karl of ABC News for an interview at Mar-a-Lago. Without missing a beat, the former president told Karl he was not concerned about Pence’s safety during the melee as calls to hang the vice president rang out while a noose and gallows were erected for the world to see on the Capitol lawn.  

“No, I thought he was well protected, and I thought he was in good shape,” Trump told Karl on March 18. “No, because I had heard he was in very good shape. But, but, no I think—”

“Because you heard those chants—that was terrible. I mean—,” Karl interjects.

“He could have, well, the people were very angry,” Trump continued.

When Karl then proceeded to remind Trump that the mob was specifically chanting “hang Mike Pence,” the 45th president responded casually while peppering in lie after lie about the election results.

“Because it’s common sense, Jon. It’s common sense that you’re supposed to protect. How can you—if the vote is fraudulent right?—how can you pass on a fraudulent vote to Congress? How can you do that? […] And I’m telling you: 50/50, it’s right down the middle for top constitutional scholars when I speak to them. Anybody I spoke to—almost all of them at least pretty much agree, and some very much agree with me—because he’s passing on a vote that he knows is fraudulent. How can you pass a vote that you know is fraudulent? Now when I spoke to him, I really talked about all of the fraudulent things that happened during the election. I didn’t talk about the main point, which is the legislatures did not approve five states. The legislatures did not approve all of those changes that made the difference between a very easy win for me in the states or a loss that was very close, because the losses were all very close.”

The interview was only published this week in the run-up to the release of Karl’s book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show. It comes out on Nov. 16.

Karl said Friday morning it is just a piece of the 90-minute interview he conducted with Trump.

In truth, Trump’s nonchalant abandonment of his vice president is nothing new.

On Jan. 6, just ten minutes after Pence was yanked out of the Senate chamber by security and as Keith Kellogg, Pence’s national security adviser, was in the White House with Trump, Trump took to Twitter and admonished the vice president.

“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!” Trump tweeted.

An hour or so before Trump’s irate missive just around 1 p.m., Pence publicly released a letter where he asserted he could not, under his Constitutional authority as veep “claim unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not.”

Pence did not, however, make an effort in that letter to dissuade lawmakers from casting objections. Notably, hours later, as lawmakers were preparing to reconvene in a secured Capitol, attorney to Trump John Eastman fired off an irate message to Pence’s aide, Greg Jacob.

“The ‘siege’ is because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this to be aired in a public way so that the American people can see for themselves what happened,” Eastman wrote to Jacob.

A draft op-ed penned by Jacob was published in The Washington Post on Oct. 29 where Jacob condemned the use of “outside lawyers” like Eastman that “spun a web of lies and disinformation” to Trump and the public.

And all, he wrote, “for the purpose of pressuring the Vice President to betray his oath to uphold our laws and the Constitution of the United States.”

“That was a fool’s errand,” Jacob wrote.

ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl, while promoting his book on the late-night television circuit this week, has also said he has seen photos taken of Pence on Jan. 6 as he was sheltering from the menace trawling the Capitol.

“He’s like, holed up in a basement,” Karl told The Late Show host Stephen Colbert.

According to Karl, Pence’s team would not allow the photos to be published. One of the images captures Pence appearing to read the tweet Trump sent out mere moments after the vice president was rescued.

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Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn announced Thursday evening that he would run for North Carolina’s new 13th District, which includes part of the Charlotte area and counties to the west, instead of the 14th District, which occupies the state’s western reaches and is home both to the far-right congressman and the vast majority of his current constituents. Around that same time, the News & Observer reported that state House Speaker Tim Moore would campaign to keep his current post rather than launch his own anticipated run for the 13th District, news he quickly confirmed.

Until just one day before, there didn’t seem to be much of a question that Cawthorn, who represents the current 11th District, would run for the new 14th. According to calculations from Daily Kos Elections, 93% of the population in the 14th is already represented by Cawthorn, and at 53-45 Trump, it’s likely to easily remain in GOP hands outside of an unusually strong Democratic year. Political observers, meanwhile, have long bet that Moore would run in the 13th District, a 60-39 Trump constituency that Cawthorn represents just 12% of.

All of that conventional wisdom, though, went out the window after a Cawthorn call this week with local party officials, where he told them he was thinking about making his switch. Multiple GOP leaders including Michele Woodhouse, who chairs the party in the current 11th District, said Wednesday evening they were surprised, with her declaring that “there hadn’t really been any kind of Republican buzz or gossip about it at all.”

If Woodhouse was surprised by the development, however, she began thinking ahead even before Cawthorn made his plans clear. On Thursday afternoon, when WLOS reporter Caitlyn Penter asked her if she was considering running for an open 14th District, she notably avoided answering the question even after Penter called her on her dodge.

Cawthorn put out a video hours later where he declared that “the new lines have split my constituents,” though he didn’t note which side of the split most of them fell under.  “I have every confidence in the world that, regardless where I run, the 14th Congressional District will send a patriotic fighter to [Washington,] D.C,” he continued, “But knowing the political realities of the 13th District, I’m afraid that another establishment, go-along-to-get-along Republican will prevail there. I will not let that happen.” Cawthorn did not mention Moore or anyone else by name, but his declaration seems to have had its intended effect.

It’s always possible that Cawthorn actually upended everyone’s plans because he simply wanted to run for a constituency that will almost certainly remain safely red no matter what, rather than risk getting washed away in a future blue wave. However, the National Journal’s Matt Holt may have had it right when he tweeted Thursday morning, “Cawthorn has a safe seat but wants to run in a competitive primary because it seems to him that politics is a bloodsport, not about public service.”

Cawthorn may indeed relish the opportunity to establish his dominance in state GOP politics now that he’s thwarted Moore’s expected campaign. The N&O’s Brian Murphy, who described the proposed district switch as “a huge power play by Cawthorn,” noted that he could also use the opportunity to “try to be a kingmaker in his old district, too.”

Murphy speculated that the congressman might also want to run in a different part of the state in order to build up his name recognition for a future campaign, though he pointed out that Cawthorn is already pretty well-known. Quite so: Cawthorn made national headlines last year when he decisively won the GOP nomination in the old 11th District by defeating a Trump-backed candidate, and he’s only gained more attention since then for his eagerness to court violent groups in spreading the Big Lie.

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You would think someone working to convince a jury his client didn’t help form a white supremacist mob and murder a Black man would avoid trying to outright ban Black people from the trial. You would think the last person that attorney would try to ban would be a noted civil rights leader and minister like Al Sharpton. You would think that, but you’d be wrong. “We don’t want any more Black pastors in here,” attorney Kevin Gough actually said in court on Thursday. He spoke as if he were making some kind of compromise after granting himself the power to allow Sharpton’s presence.

Gough represents William “Roddie” Bryan, who—along with former cop Gregory McMichael and his son Travis—are accused of murdering Ahmaud Arbery on Feb. 23, 2020 after spotting him running near the site of a home under construction in Brunswick, Georgia. The case, in which a prosecutor is indicted for alleged misconduct, has prompted so much outrage in Georgia and beyond that although some 1,000 potential jurors were summoned, attorneys had a hard time seating 12 people who didn’t openly communicate a bias during voir dire. Only one of them is Black, and social media users have frequently spread a running-while-Black hashtag denoting the popular belief that Arbery was only targeted because he was a Black man. This is the context in which Gough felt it appropriate to target Sharpton. 

The white attorney said:

“My understanding while I was cross-examining investigator (Stephan) Lowry yesterday is that the right Reverend Al Sharpton managed to find his way into the back of the courtroom. I’m guessing he was somehow there at the invitation of the victim’s family in this case, and I have nothing personally against Mr. Sharpton. My concern is that it’s one thing for the family to be present, it’s another thing to ask for the lawyers to be present, but if we’re going to start a precedent starting yesterday, where we’re going to bring high-profile members of the African American community into the courtroom to sit with the family during the trial in the presence of the jury, I believe that’s intimidating, and it’s an attempt to pressure—could be consciously or unconsciously—an attempt to pressure or influence the jury. To my knowledge, Reverend Al Sharpton has no church in Glynn County, never has.”

His voice oozed with so much privilege even the white judge appeared offended, and not for the first time. Judge Timothy Walmsley called another defense attorney in the case “rude” on Tuesday. In Gough’s instance, Walmsley offered these words: “I don’t hear a motion, and I will tell you this, I am not going to blanketly [sic] exclude members of the public from this courtroom.”

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After what appear to be a series of fruitless and time-consuming negotiations, the attorney for former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows made it clear on Thursday that his client was not going to appear, or product documents for, the House Select Committee on Jan. 6. Responding to that committee, the attorney said that Meadows “remains under the instructions of former President Trump to respect longstanding principles of executive privilege. It now appears the courts will have to resolve this conflict.”

It now appears they’re going to get a chance to do so more quickly than Meadows might have anticipated. That’s because, despite the fact that a request to hold Steve Bannon in contempt is still awaiting an official decision from the Department of Justice after almost a month, the committee has now delivered Meadows an ultimatum and a deadline.

In a Thursday evening letter, Committee Chair Rep. Bennie Thompson informed Meadows’ attorney that his client must appear before the committee on Friday, Nov. 12 to provide testimony, answer questions, and turn over documents by 10 AM ET. If not, wrote Thompson, the committee will view his absence as “willful noncompliance” with the subpoena that Meadows was sent all the way back on Sept. 24, leaving the committee with no choice but to send another criminal referral across the street to the Department of Justice.

It’s a demand that should hold the serious threat of being placed in jail until compliance, or being sentenced to six months in prison. But whether that still holds true is an absolute mystery.

As far as existing court cases go, the ability of Congress to hold witnesses in contempt seems clear enough. The existing law, as defined by Supreme Court rulings on cases such as Watkins v. United States (1957) and Eastland v. United States’ Servicemen Fund (1975) seems clear in showing that the “power of the Congress to conduct investigations is inherent in the legislative process” and that to conduct those investigations, Congress must be able to compel testimony and the production of documents. 

Those defining cases show Congress operating with an intention that may seem downright scary today. Watkins involved the infamous House Committee on Un-American Activities attempting to force a labor organizer into providing the names of former members of the Communist Party. The committee lost that case, fortunately. Eastland featured the almost as sketchy Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security seeking records from a nonprofit organization that had published articles critical of the Vietnam War. The Senate subcommittee won the day.

Between them, these cases helped lay out the limits of Congressional authority. House or Senate committees can’t demand anything from anyone and start locking up people willy-nilly. However, that inherent investigative power means that Congress can hold people who refuse to testify in contempt as long as they can show the information requested is within the purview of the committee’s work.

It is “unquestionably the duty of all citizens to cooperate with the Congress in its efforts to obtain the facts needed for intelligent legislative action,” the Court wrote in the Watkins case. “It is their unremitting obligation to respond to subpoenas, to respect the dignity of the Congress and its committees and to testify fully with respect to matters within the province of proper investigation.”

And still, the Court ruled against the committee on Watkins, because the goals of the committee itself were too vague and the demands placed on the witness violated his Fifth Amendment rights against self incrimination. 

Both Watkins and Eastland were about defining the limits of Congressional powers to hold people in contempt, but the Court never expressed any doubt that those powers exist. In the case of both Bannon and Meadows, the questions they are being asked and the documents being demanded are directly aimed at their knowledge of events leading up to the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. The charter of the select committee is expressly:

To investigate and report upon the facts, circumstances, and causes relating to the January 6, 2021, domestic terrorist attack upon the United States Capitol Complex and relating to the interference with the peaceful transfer of power…

There seems to be no doubt that the documents and testimony being sought from Meadows, and from Bannon, fall within that definition.

As Thompson’s letter states in its opening paragraph:

The law requires that Mr. Meadows comply with the subpoena absent an applicable immunity or valid assertion of a Constitutionally based privilege. The attached letter from the White House Counsel’s Office, dated today, eviscerates any plausible claim of testimonial immunity or executive privilege, and compels compliance with the Select Committee’s subpoena.

Until this week, Meadows was reportedly “negotiating” with the committee, which had granted him what was described as a “short” period to work out limits on the documents and testimony he might provide. However, it became clear that Meadows was essentially doing what Trump himself has done so often: simply stalling for time and attempting to run down the clock. Unless there is some unexpected last-minute maneuver, expect a contempt citation for Meadows to also be raised in the committee and to follow the citation issued concerning Bannon to the House floor.

And then everyone can go back to waiting on the Department of Justice to do … whatever it’s doing.

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House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has made it his job to throw his caucus members under the bus whenever Donald Trump demands, so it’s perhaps not surprising that he is actively fomenting rage against the 13 House Republicans who voted to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill last week.

What is notable is the fact that the Republican Party has devolved into a circular firing squad over the $1 trillion bipartisan measure—negotiated by Senate Republicans and backed by no fewer than 19 of them, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell himself.

On Monday, McConnell called the bill a “godsend” to his state after touring a farming company in Morehead, Kentucky.

“We have a lot of infrastructure needs, both in rural areas and with big bridges,” McConnell told local CBS affiliate WKYT. “It’s a godsend for Kentucky.”

But McConnell didn’t stop there. At a separate stop in Covington on Monday, the dry-as-dust senator said he was “delighted the House finally found a way to pass the infrastructure bill last week,” according to NPR affiliate WKU.

“This will be the first time I have come up here in a quarter of a century where I thought maybe there was a way forward on the Brent Spence Bridge,” he said of the aged bridge that connects northern Kentucky and Ohio.

Let’s leave aside the fact that it took Democrats to deliver a bill that finally helped McConnell’s constituents after 25 years of GOP inaction. Nonetheless, mark down the date! This is likely as close as we may ever come in our lifetimes to hearing McConnell gush about a legislative accomplishment that stands to benefit more than just his wealthy donors.

Meanwhile, Trump—whose four-year “infrastructure week” stretch made him an international laughingstock—is out for blood after President Joe Biden nailed down a deal in about nine months.

“Why is it that Old Crow Mitch McConnell voted for a terrible Democrat Socialist Infrastructure Plan, and induced others in his Party to do likewise, when he was incapable of getting a great Infrastructure Plan wanting to be put forward by me and the Republican Party?” Trump complained in a statement. Let’s hope he didn’t spend too much crafting that pitiful train wreck of a message.  

Trump also used a private event Monday hosted by the National Republican Congressional Committee—which exists for the sole purpose of electing House Republicans—to bash the 13 House Republicans who voted for the measure.

“I love all the House Republicans. Well, actually I don’t love all of you. I don’t love the 13 that voted for Biden’s infrastructure plan,” Trump reportedly said amid a 90-minute speech mostly devoted to grousing about his 2020 election loss and hating on Biden.

That probably didn’t help someone like Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan, a veteran member whose “yea” vote invited a voicemail from someone saying, “I hope you die. I hope everybody in your fucking family dies.”

The same caller tagged Upton a “fucking piece of shit traitor,” aping the language of extremist GOP Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.  

Greene disparaged the legislation as socialist, saying, “I can’t believe Republicans just gave the Democrats their socialism bill.” She was one of the ringleaders of a fringe faction that promised to get revenge on her GOP colleagues, who likely thought it might be good politics to facilitate fixing some potholes, bridges, and tunnels in their districts through well-paying jobs.

That “socialism bill” passed the upper chamber with support from nearly 40% of the GOP caucus. So now House Republicans are calling a substantial number of Senate Republicans socialists.

Outside of Washington, the bipartisan bill gave GOP 2024 presidential hopefuls the opportunity to demonstrate their fancy footwork.  

On Monday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis denigrated the bill as “pork barrel spending,” presumably referring to beneficiaries like McConnell, who hailed it as a godsend to his constituents.

But by Tuesday, DeSantis was grousing about not getting enough of his own pork.

“So I’d like to know more about this,” DeSantis told reporters in Spring Hill. “Is Florida being treated well in this? Or are they basically funneling money to a bunch of very, very high tax and dysfunctional states?”

Such as Kentucky, governor?

DeSantis maintained that he wasn’t “apprised of the legislation” as he continued to rail against it, wondering whether Florida was getting its fair share of the spoils.

A top GOP 2024 contender, folks. They’re not getting any brighter, are they?

But the split screen between the Senate and the House GOP was perhaps most stark. McConnell effectively surrendered to a cohort of his caucus members who, for once, wanted to do at least something for their constituents. Heck, he even voted for the bill, probably because he knew not doing so was shit politics.

Meanwhile, McCarthy—Trump’s mini-me—helped his fringiest members demonize their colleagues as “traitors,” thereby spurring a round of death threats against them and their families.

Rep. John Katko of New York, who voted for the bill, defended his vote by invoking a one-time GOP patron saint.

“Ronald Reagan cut deals all the time with Democrats for the good of the country. That is what we’re supposed to do. This isn’t a zero-sum game,” Katko told Spectrum News. “The bottom line is, we got to move this country forward.”

If only Katko’s colleagues actually cared more about their country than their cult.

This isn’t your grandfather’s GOP anymore. Ronald Reagan is dead to them.

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The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, Carolyn Fiddler, and Matt Booker, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.

Leading Off

● Primary Calendar: Daily Kos Elections is pleased to unveil our 2022 primary calendar, where you’ll find a complete list of major-party filing deadlines, primaries, and runoffs for all 50 states.

One of the things we pay careful attention to at Daily Kos Elections is each state’s candidate filing deadline, since it represents the point at which prospective candidates need to decide whether or not they’ll actually run for office. The first deadlines are coming up very soon, in Texas on Dec. 13 and North Carolina shortly thereafter on Dec. 17. Filing season doesn’t end, though, until July 22 in Louisiana, which traditionally brings up the rear.

We also include important notes about those deadlines. Nebraska, for example, has a unique law that requires any incumbents, regardless of whether they are seeking re-election or another office, to file by Feb. 15; the deadline for everyone else is March 1. We also list states where party conventions are important for determining ballot access, winnowing the field, or officially picking nominees. As conventions are scheduled, we’ll add those dates to our calendar.

Finally, we provide details about which states require primary runoffs, including what percentage of the vote is needed in each state to trigger a primary runoff. For instance, in Georgia, a primary runoff is needed if no candidate takes a majority of the vote, while in North Carolina, runoffs are only conducted if no one takes more than 30%—and then only if the runner-up requests one.

Campaign Action

The 2022 primary season officially kicks off on March 1 in Texas, which helps explain the state’s early filing deadline, and continues through September. Some dates could change, though. Last year, for instance, many states delayed their primaries because of the pandemic. While that’s much less likely next year, we could see schedules shift if states fail to complete the decennial redistricting process in a timely manner. If there are any changes, we’ll be sure to update our calendar and note them.

There’s a lot to explore, so you should check out—and bookmark—our calendar for all the details.

Redistricting

● CA Redistricting: California’s independent redistricting commission unanimously voted to advance new congressional and legislative maps on Wednesday, though commissioners cautioned that further changes are likely before any proposals are finalized. The maps, which are available on the commission’s site, differ from earlier plans the panel released last month. The commission must complete its work by Dec. 27.

● SD Redistricting: In a fascinating development, a group of Republicans in the South Dakota House banded together with Democrats to pass a new legislative redistricting plan over the objections of a sizable bloc of conservative GOP dissenters. All seven Democrats present (one was excused) voted in favor of the map, along with 30 Republicans, while 31 Republicans were opposed, meaning Democrats provided the winning majority. The plan, which originated in the Senate, easily passed the upper chamber 30-2, with all three Democrats likewise in favor.

The Republican objectors complained that the map would double-bunk some of their members and undermine their ability to elect far-right legislators. But at issue as well was the matter of Native representation. In particular, the new map places the northern parts of Rapid City, which are home to a large Native population, into a single legislative district, a move that Democratic state Sen. Red Dawn Foster would enhance the community’s voice.

In addition, the map preserves two districts that are split in half in order to give Native voters a better opportunity to elect their preferred candidates. Normally, South Dakota legislative districts elect two represents and one senator each (both chambers use the same map), but two House districts are divided into separate sections that elect one member each. At least one plan backed by conservatives would have done away with this approach.

The map now goes to Republican Gov. Kristi Noem, who has not yet indicated whether she will sign it into law.

● UT Redistricting: Following passage of the GOP’s new congressional map, lawmakers in Utah’s Republican-run legislature also approved new maps for the state House and Senate. They now go to Republican Gov. Spencer Cox, who has all but said he will sign the plans.

Senate

● AL-Sen: Unnamed sources close to retiring Sen. Richard Shelby tell the Washington Post‘s Michael Scherer that the incumbent plans to use $5 million in his campaign account to fund a super PAC that will aid his one-time chief of staff, former Business Council of Alabama head Katie Boyd Britt, in next year’s Republican primary to succeed him. Shelby’s office didn’t deny anything in a statement that said, “The Senator’s support for Katie is well known. He will continue to back her as the race develops in whatever ways are most appropriate, as he believes she is the best candidate to serve the people of Alabama.”

Britt ended September with a $3.3 million to $1.9 million cash-on-hand advantage over her main intra-party foe, Trump-endorsed Rep. Mo Brooks, but the congressman also has the deep-pocketed Club for Growth in his corner. The primary will take place in late May, and if no one wins a majority of the vote, a runoff would occur a month later.

● IN-Sen: The Federal Election Commission has accused Republican Sen. Mike Braun of taking $8.5 million in “apparent prohibited loans and lines of credit” to benefit his successful 2018 election campaign, according to a newly released memorandum and draft audit report. The problematic loans include $7 million from banks that were obtained without collateral, indicating that they “did not appear to be made in the ordinary course of business,” and $1.5 million from Meyer Distributing, an auto parts company that Braun founded in the 1980s. Corporations have long been prohibited from donating or loaning money to candidates.

Braun denied any wrongdoing and claims that he was able to obtain unsecured bank loans due to his personal wealth: At the time of his campaign, the financial disclosures required of all federal candidates indicated he was worth anywhere from $35 million to $96 million, making him one of the richest members of Congress. As for the funds from Meyer Distributing, Braun says the money was owed to him as compensation under his employment agreement with the firm.

But the FEC’s report disputes both claims, saying that Braun’s campaign failed to provide relevant documentation, including full copies of loan agreements from the banks. The Commission’s auditors also say that Braun’s team provided conflicting answers about the $1.5 million payment from Meyer, at one point characterizing it as a stock sale rather than as compensation, and likewise failing to produce a relevant stock purchase agreement.

Braun’s camp sought to place blame on the campaign’s former treasurer, Travis Kabrick, whom it claims “began making mistakes and failing to perform his services” and then “vanished,” leaving the campaign unable to locate him since the end of 2018. But not so, reports the Daily Beast’s Roger Sollenberger, who says he found the ex-treasurer “within minutes” and “confirmed Kabrick’s current job in a phone call with his employer, as well as his location, contact information, and three social media accounts.” Kabrick did not respond to any requests for comment, however, and disabled his social media accounts after the Daily Beast’s piece appeared.

● MO-Sen: State Sen. Dave Schatz acknowledged this week that he was still considering entering the Republican primary for this open seat, though he didn’t give a timeline for when he expected to decide. Schatz also said he could run for local office instead but added, “I’m going to say it’s more than likely going to be on the federal level as opposed to the state level.”

● NH-Sen: Republicans still don’t have an obvious backup choice to take on Democratic incumbent Maggie Hassan now that Gov. Chris Sununu has slammed the door on a Senate bid, but two notable names tell WMUR’s John DiStaso that they’re interested in running.

State Senate President Chuck Morse, who acknowledged that he had spent months getting organized for an open seat race for governor that now won’t be happening, said that he was considering. He added that he had been encouraged to take on Hassan by both former Sen. Kelly Ayotte and ex-Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown.

Morse, who has led the upper chamber since 2013, also served as acting governor for two days in January of 2017, which technically made Morse New Hampshire’s first Republican chief executive in 12 years: His brief time in charge came about because then-Gov. Hassan resigned to join the Senate two days before her gubernatorial term ended and Sununu’s began. Morse himself got a security detail during his tenure and participated in some ceremonial events, but nothing remarkable happened during his governorship.

Attorney Phil Taub, who our sources say has never been acting governor of New Hampshire for any amount of time, also told DiStaso that he’s looking at a Senate bid. Taub has not been on the ballot before, but DiStaso describes him as “a longtime influential donor and fundraising catalyst” for the state party and GOP candidates.

DiStaso writes that Londonderry town manager Kevin Smith has been encouraged to run by his supporters, though there’s no word on his interest. Smith ran for governor in 2012 but lost the primary 68-30 to Ovide Lamontagne, whom Hassan defeated weeks later.

A few other Republicans seem unlikely to campaign for Senate, though they don’t appear to have dismissed the idea. While DiStaso says that state and national Republicans have encouraged 2020 House nominee Matt Mowers to drop his second bid for the 1st Congressional District in order to take on Hassan, he adds that Mowers remains “focused” on taking on Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas. It’s the same story with brewery owner Jeff Cozzens, who is taking on Democratic Rep. Annie Kuster in the 2nd District.

Finally, DiStaso says that Lamontagne “we understand, is not interested in running.”

Governors

● FL-Gov: Democratic Rep. Charlie Crist has earned an endorsement from the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents close to 300,000 current or retired federal workers in the state.  

● IL-Gov: An unnamed source close to Chicago Cubs co-owner Todd Ricketts tells Politico that, despite recently stepping down as RNC finance chair, he’s not interested in challenging Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

● NE-Gov: Former state Sen. Theresa Thibodeau announced Wednesday that she’d run in the Republican primary for this open seat. Thibodeau joins a contest that includes University of Nebraska Regent Jim Pillen, who is close to termed-out Gov. Pete Ricketts; state Sen. Brett Lindstrom; and agribusinessman Charles Herbster, Donald Trump’s endorsed candidate and her own one-time running mate.

In Nebraska candidates for governor and lieutenant governor compete as a ticket in primaries, and Herbster revealed in April that his second-in-command would be none other than Thibodeau. The former state senator, however, declared in July she was dropping out because of undisclosed “potential opportunities that would conflict with the campaign,” adding, “At this time, I do not feel I will be able to devote the needed time to the campaign.” Thibodeau said last month, though, that this matter has been taken care of and she could run for office now that she’d sold her daycare.

Thibodeau earned her seat in the legislature in 2017 when Ricketts appointed her to fill a vacancy in an Omaha area constituency. Her tenure in the officially nonpartisan chamber proved short, though, as she lost the next year to Machaela Cavanaugh, who campaigned as a Democrat, 51-49.

● NH-Gov: While two state Democrats said early Thursday that they’d heard former Gov. John Lynch was interested in running for his old job, Lynch himself declared that evening, “Running for governor is not something I’m even considering.” Lynch added that “at this point, it’s not something I’m not even considering” (emphasis ours), which may not be quite a definitive no but is still pretty close. 

Meanwhile, WMUR reports that Cinde Warmington, who is the only Democratic member of the five-member Executive Council, “appears to be strongly considering” a bid against Republican incumbent Chris Sununu. Warmington did not rule anything out when she was asked about a statewide campaign in August.

● PA-Gov: While state Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman postponed his planned “special announcement” this week after testing positive for COVID, an unnamed advisor tells the Associated Press he’ll be kicking off a bid for the Republican nomination sometime in the future.

Corman’s eventual candidacy could also entice one of his colleagues to drop out of the primary. State Sen. Dan Laughlin tells the Erie Times-News that, if Corman decides to step down from his role as the chamber’s leader in order to concentrate on a gubernatorial bid, “I would certainly consider running for pro tem instead.” Laughlin adds that he would only quit the governor’s race if he won the leadership race.

House

● CA-10: While redistricting is far from finished in California, Politico writes that former Trump administration official Ricky Gill “isn’t waiting for those new maps to challenge Democratic Rep. Josh Harder.” Gill, who was the GOP nominee in 2012 for the current 9th District against Democratic Rep. Jerry McNerney, has not yet said anything publicly about another run for the House.

● FL-01: Air Force veteran Bryan Jones announced Thursday that he was launching a primary challenge against Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Republican who reportedly remains under federal investigation for sex trafficking of a minor and other alleged offenses. While Gaetz has not yet been charged, the New York Times wrote last month that the Justice Department added two top prosecutors to its probe during the summer.

● NC-04: Democratic state Sen. Ben Clark has filed FEC paperwork for a potential bid for the new 4th District, though he said this week that he’s still making up his mind about running for a Fayetteville-area seat that supported Donald Trump 53-46. Clark promised a decision before candidate filing opens on Dec. 6; the deadline for candidates to make up their minds is Dec. 17.

● NC-13, NC-14: Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn announced Thursday evening that he would run for the new 13th District, which includes part of the Charlotte area and counties to the west, instead of the 14th District, which occupies the state’s western reaches and is home both to the far-right congressman and the vast majority of his current constituents. Around that same time, the News & Observer reported that state House Speaker Tim Moore would campaign to keep his current post rather than launch his own anticipated run for the 13th District, news he quickly confirmed.

Until just one day before, there didn’t seem to be much of a question that Cawthorn, who represents the current 11th District, would run for the new 14th. According to calculations from Daily Kos Elections, 93% of the population in the 14th is already represented by Cawthorn, and at 53-45 Trump, it’s likely to easily remain in GOP hands outside of an unusually strong Democratic year. Political observers, meanwhile, have long bet that Moore would run in the 13th District, a 60-39 Trump constituency that Cawthorn represents just 12% of.

All of that conventional wisdom, though, went out the window after a Cawthorn call this week with local party officials, where he told them he was thinking about making his switch. Multiple GOP leaders including Michele Woodhouse, who chairs the party in the current 11th District, said Wednesday evening they were surprised, with her declaring that “there hadn’t really been any kind of Republican buzz or gossip about it at all.”

If Woodhouse was surprised by the development, however, she began thinking ahead even before Cawthorn made his plans clear. On Thursday afternoon, when WLOS reporter Caitlyn Penter asked her if she was considering running for an open 14th District, she notably avoided answering the question even after Penter called her on her dodge.

Cawthorn put out a video hours later where he declared that “the new lines have split my constituents,” though he didn’t note which side of the split most of them fell under. “I have every confidence in the world that, regardless where I run, the 14th Congressional District will send a patriotic fighter to [Washington,] D.C,” he continued, “But knowing the political realities of the 13th District, I’m afraid that another establishment, go-along-to-get-along Republican will prevail there. I will not let that happen.” Cawthorn did not mention Moore or anyone else by name, but his declaration seems to have had its intended effect.

It’s always possible that Cawthorn actually upended everyone’s plans because he simply wanted to run for a constituency that will almost certainly remain safely red no matter what, rather than risk getting washed away in a future blue wave. However, the National Journal’s Matt Holt may have had it right when he tweeted Thursday morning, “Cawthorn has a safe seat but wants to run in a competitive primary because it seems to him that politics is a bloodsport, not about public service.” 

Cawthorn may indeed relish the opportunity to establish his dominance in state GOP politics now that he’s thwarted Moore’s expected campaign. The N&O’s Brian Murphy, who described the proposed district switch as “a huge power play by Cawthorn,” noted that he could also use the opportunity to “try to be a kingmaker in his old district, too.”

Murphy also speculated that the congressman might also want to run in a different part of the state in order to build up his name recognition for a future campaign, though he pointed out that Cawthorn is already pretty well-known. Quite so: Cawthorn made national headlines last year when he decisively won the GOP nomination in the old 11th District by defeating a Trump-backed candidate, and he’s only gained more attention since then for his eagerness to court violent groups in spreading the Big Lie.

● NH-02: Republican state Sen. Harold French told WMUR Wednesday that he “intend[s] to announce” a campaign against Democratic Rep. Annie Kuster in early December even though the proposed GOP gerrymander would move his hometown to the more competitive 1st District.

● VA-07: Republican Del. John McGuire filed paperwork last week for a potential second run for Congress, a move that came days after he won re-election to the lower chamber. McGuire campaigned against Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger last year but lost the GOP’s nominating convention 56-44 to fellow Del. Nick Freitas, who went on to fall to Spanberger 51-49. McGuire later attended the infamous Jan. 6 Trump rally that preceded that day’s attack on the Capitol.

Legislative

● Special Elections: A trio of all-party primaries will take place Saturday for open seats in the Louisiana legislature. Runoffs will occur Dec. 11 for any races where no candidate takes a majority of the vote:

LA SD-27: Two Republicans and one Democrat are competing to succeed Republican Ronnie Johns, who resigned in July after Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards appointed him chairman of the Louisiana State Gaming Control Board. This seat, which is located in the Lake Charles area, backed Donald Trump 55-41 in 2016.

The Republican contenders are Jeremy Stine, a former legislative aide who KPLC says “has a well-known family and family business,” and teacher Jake Shaheen, while Democrats are fielding certified financial planner Dustin Granger. The GOP enjoys a 26-12 supermajority in the Senate, with only this seat vacant.

LA HD-16: We have an all-Democratic three-way race to succeed Frederick Jones, a Democrat who stepped down after winning a judicial election. The contest consists of two candidates who lost to Jones in 2019: teacher Alicia Calvin, who earned third place with 15%, and Charles Bradford, a pastor who unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Bastrop in 2017 and later took fourth to Jones with 12%. The final candidate is businessman Adrian Fisher. This constituency in the Monroe area went for Hillary Clinton 65-33.

LA HD-102: Two Democrats are running for an 80-17 Clinton district that’s located in the New Orleans neighborhood of Algiers, which is the only part of the city that’s located on the West Bank of the Mississippi River. (Because of the numerous twists and turns in the river, many parts of the West Bank, including Algiers, are actually located to the east of the neighboring East Bank.)

The contest is a duel between real estate broker Delisha Boyd, a local and state party official who has Gov. John Bel Edwards, Rep. Troy Carter, and state Sen. Gary Carter in her corner; and Jordan Bridges, an activist who is campaigning as a political outsider. Republicans hold a 68-32 majority in a chamber that also includes three independents, with only this and the aforementioned HD-16 vacant.

The race for HD-102 will conclude the game of electoral musical chairs that began nearly a year ago when President Joe Biden appointed Rep. Cedric Richmond to a senior White House post. Then-state Sen. Troy Carter in April prevailed in a competitive race to succeed Richmond in Congress, and his nephew, state Rep. Gary Carter, won a promotion to replace him in the upper chamber of the legislature two months later. The winner of Saturday’s race will subsequently fill Gary Carter’s seat in the state House.

Mayors

● Oakland, CA Mayor: City Council Member Sheng Thao declared Wednesday that she was entering next November’s instant runoff contest to succeed termed-out Mayor Libby Schaaf. Thao, whose 2018 win made her the first Hmong woman to win a city council seat anywhere in California, joins colleague Loren Taylor in the race to lead this very blue city.

The San Francisco Chronicle‘s Sarah Ravani writes that Thao, who launched her campaign by touting “the effective record I have for progressive change,” is more liberal than Taylor. Thao also kicked off her bid with an endorsement from state Attorney General Rob Bonta as well as what Ravani characterized as “some of the city’s biggest unions representing firefighters and workers.”

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WaPo:

Appeals court temporarily bars release of Trump White House records to House Jan. 6 committee

Capping days of legal drama, the appeals court rocketed consideration of the case through federal courts in Washington. While granting an injunction pending further order, the court set a schedule that signaled it would act swiftly to decide whether to withhold records while an appeal is pending. If it declines, the documents would be released, effectively mooting the case in a victory for the House.

Trump could still appeal to the Supreme Court, and a ruling keeping records secret could work to his advantage if litigation is prolonged through the November 2022 midterm elections, when Republicans hope to take the majority in what is now a Democratic-led Congress.

The scheduling order was issued by Judges Patricia Millett, Robert Wilkins and Ketanji Brown Jackson, who also will hear the case. All three were nominated to the bench by Democratic presidents and Jackson is a recent nominee of President Biden.

Perry Bacon Jr/WaPo:

Have Democrats reached the limits of White appeasement politics?

The Democratic Party, to its credit, has remained committed to civil rights. It wants to be aligned with people of color. But Democrats also want to win elections in a White-majority country. So, party leaders for decades have informally adopted a strategy of White appeasement — by which I mean they have frequently taken actions, often subtle, to demonstrate to White Americans that they aren’t too tied to civil rights causes and people of color. Sometimes this means Democrats taking a stance on a racial issue to align with views of moderate and conservative White people; other times it is Democrats avoiding a stance on a racial issue for the same reason. The Democrats’ White appeasement is their countermove to the Republicans’ White grievance…

What might such an alternative look like? Democrats could embrace more non-White candidates like Obama and Warnock, in part because they are likely to be more knowledgeable about race-based issues such as critical race theory and therefore better able than White candidates to combat GOP grievance tactics. They could emphasize that lots of ideas that are often lumped in the “civil rights” or “Black” bucket, such as voting access, integrating schools by class and race, and reducing police killings, will benefit large numbers of White people, too, particularly those with lower incomes. They could become even more closely aligned with the labor movement, as there is evidence that union membership pushes White people to be more supportive of policies that benefit people of color. They could, instead of sidestepping issues such as critical race theory when Republicans bring them up, take them on directly.

This is a very good piece, with a detailed analysis of Virginia school issues.

Kyle Kondik/NY Times::

How Likely Is a Democratic Comeback Next Year?

Democrats hoped that this year would be an exception. By trying to focus the electorate on Donald Trump, they sought to rouse the Democratic base. This approach would also avoid making elections a referendum on President Biden and his approval ratings, which have sagged after months of struggles with the Afghanistan exit, Covid, gas prices, inflation and congressional Democrats.

In other words, Democrats hoped that the usual rules of political gravity would not apply. But we should not be surprised that the familiar force endured.

Jennifer Rubin/WaPo:

How Democrats can shake voters loose from the GOP coalition

The latest Pew Research Center poll divides the partisan electorate into eight subgroups, with four on the Republican side. While these groups on the right may not seem like particularly rich targets for Democratic outreach, Democrats would be foolish to write these voters off entirely…

Those last two groups — the Populist Right and the Ambivalent Right — warrant further attention from Democrats. Their huge margins of defeat in rural areas, most recently in Virginia, suggest the party should at least try to reduce antipathy among these voters. Even raising doubts about the GOP would be helpful in contests in which Republicans count on maximizing turnout among rural White voters.

Monmouth:

Biden’s Plans More Popular Than President

President Joe Biden’s big spending plans on infrastructure, support programs, and climate change remain broadly popular even though he personally does not. The latest Monmouth University Poll finds that many Americans feel that Biden has been unable to deliver on his promise to get Washington working and there has been an uptick in views that he is not helping either the middle class or the poor. Republicans and independents are more likely to blame the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in Congress for the foot-dragging on the Build Back Better plan. Among Democrats in the general public, though, which wing of the party is at fault depends on where on the ideological spectrum one sits. The poll also finds vast differences in public opinion on messaging around race curriculum depending on how the issue is framed.

Max Burns/The Hill:

The GOP’s moral postmodernism

The GOP’s crackdown on critical thinking is a problem, but that loyal policy comes with an even darker side. Embracing Trump and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) win-at-any-cost ethos, the Republicans will dutifully tolerate even the most appalling personal and professional conduct from “loyal” members. That’s bleak for the right, but it’s devastating for good government.

Des Moines Register:

USDA to invite Ottumwa JBS pork plant to speed up processing lines in ‘limited trial’

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Wednesday it will invite nine U.S. pork processing plants — including a JBS plant in Ottumwa — to increase line speeds in a trial to determine if they can boost production without risking worker and food safety.

Previously, the Biden administration had said it would not fight a March court ruling that struck down a Trump-era rule change allowing U.S. pork processing plants to speed up their production lines. The administration said the 2019 decision had failed to properly consider worker safety.

But on Wednesday, the Agriculture Department said it had decided to hold a “limited trial” to collect data to share with the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The trial, lasting up to a year, could guide future processing rules, Kate Waters, the department’s spokeswoman, said in a statement.

…

Zach Corrigan, a senior attorney at Food & Water Watch, a Los Angeles environmental group, denounced the move.

“With this decision, the Biden administration is caving to industry pressure … and puts industry profits over protecting the safety of our food supply,” Corrigan said.

COVID antiviral pills: what scientists still want to know

Drugs like molnupiravir and Paxlovid could change the course of the pandemic if clinical trial results hold up in the real world

But little is known about how well the drugs will work, and how easily they could be used in the places that need them most. Nature looks at five key factors that could determine how the new COVID-19 antivirals shape the course of the pandemic.

They are very promising but no substitute for vaccines… and require timely testing to be effective. You can’t use them early if you don’t know whether you have COVID.

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In the news today: Book burning and celebrations of violence against political enemies, both brought into the news by a Republican Party that is ticking down the checklist of fascism’s defining markers without bothering to put up much of a smokescreen while doing it. In Virginia, conservative school board members call explicitly for “burning” books they intend to confiscate from school libraries. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott continues his insufferably clumsy moves to latch on to every last far-right bugaboo of the moment, but only after others in the party have tested them out to see how they’ll sell.

The Kyle Rittenhouse trial continues, and the far-right continues to prop the young killer up as the sort of initiative-taking vigilante that will mete out the violence necessary to keep conservatism’s enemies in their place. And House Republicans remain silent, still, even as a member approvingly publicizes a “humorous” video premised on him hunting and killing Democratic officials.

Nobody’s trying to hide it anymore or soften it. The new Republican stance is that elections are optional, books are for burning, and violence can be both useful and worth celebrating if the targets are movement enemies. Here’s some of what you may have missed:

• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is all in on the Republican push to ban huge numbers of books

• Virginia school board members call for book-burning amid planned purge of ‘sexually explicit’ books

• Republican leaders’ silence on Gosar’s violent video shows where the party is headed

• In a sea of hostile witnesses, Mike Pence’s staff may give House committee an island of information

• Live updates: Kyle Rittenhouse’s murder trial continues

Trending from the community:

• Enrolling in Medicare & considering Medicare Advantage plans? Caveat Emptor

• Trump’s ex-ambassador to Iceland revealed as an unqualified, erratic, paranoid, lying sadist

• Caribbean Matters: What do you know about the Dutch- and Papiamento-speaking Caribbean?

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In a new excerpt from his upcoming book Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl notes that Donald Trump’s Spinal Tap-esque Tulsa rally marked “the worst day of his entire campaign.” Which is weird, because for me it was easily the best. In fact, its only serious competition was the fleeting moment during the first presidential debate when Joe Biden finally told Didgeridoo Donnie to STFU. That was pretty cool, too.

But in the event schadenfreude was bursting from your pores like Trumpian flop sweat on that fateful day in June 2020, the latest excerpt from Karl’s book, published Thursday in Vanity Fair, will have you spritzing like Rep. Matt Gaetz at an Orlando Hot Topic.

There are several takeaways from the excerpt. For one thing, it was a bigger disaster than it even appeared, and it appeared like the Hindenburg crashing into the Exxon Valdez. Secondly, it revealed even greater depths of Trumpian depravity and disregard for others—which, granted, seems impossible, but bear with me.

As Karl relates, in April 2020, with his poll numbers plunging and his daily coronavirus briefings going off the rails, Trump decided he needed to get back into the rally game. And what he said to former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at the time was telling:

“He was just beside himself,” former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a close advisor to Trump whom he called frequently throughout the campaign for advice, told me. “All he could think about was the campaign. He didn’t talk much about anything else. COVID would come into it, but really his focus was on the campaign.”

Really? Trump was focused entirely on keeping the job he wasn’t remotely interested in doing? That tracks.

In May, Karl writes, Trump insisted that his campaign manager, Brad Parscale, put together a road map for resuming the pseudo-president’s popular rallies, even though large events in the country had essentially been shut down for weeks.

After struggling to find a venue that could accommodate a light MAGA culling, the campaign eventually settled on Tulsa, Oklahoma, because the city had a Republican mayor and was located in a state with a GOP governor. In other words, it was a COVID-friendly space. (In another major faux pas, this one perhaps unintentional, the campaign originally scheduled the rally for Juneteenth—June 19, which commemorates the end of slavery in the U.S.—but changed the date after receiving significant blowback. Add holding it in Tulsa, the site of a white-on-black massacre in 1921, and you’re really cooking with gas.)

The expectations for the rally were high, with Parscale tweeting in the week before the event was set to launch, “Just passed 800,000 tickets. Biggest data haul and rally signup of all time by 10x. Saturday is going to be amazing!” What they didn’t know was that lots of those tickets—no doubt the vast majority—were reserved by pranksters who were eager to see Trump’s dangerous, self-aggrandizing return to the limelight fail, big-league. 

Karl notes that Trump was positively giddy in the days leading up to the rally, especially after Parscale notified him that they’d passed the 1 million ticket threshold. The dire warnings from Oklahoma’s public health officials that the rally would worsen the pandemic in their state naturally failed to penetrate Trump’s Macy’s parade balloon of an ego.

In fact, asked about the possibility that his rally could turn into a superspreader event, Trump had a characteristically sociopathic response: “As you probably have heard, and we’re getting exact numbers out, but we’re either close to or over one million people wanting to go. Nobody has ever heard of numbers like this. I think we’re going to have a great time.”

You know what happened next. On the way to the rally, Trump watched the news from Air Force One. But instead of footage of thronging crowds eager to see their fave disease vector, the teevee was talking about positive COVID-19 results among Trump’s campaign staff and the conspicuous lack of rally attendees.

“It it going to be full?” Trump eventually asked Parscale. “No, sir,” came the response. “It looks like Beirut in the eighties.”

Yes, and as with Beirut in the ‘80s, Americans would die. Oklahoma saw a major spike in COVID-19 cases three weeks after the rally, and former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, who attended the event without a mask, famously succumbed to the virus weeks later.

The event caused problems for the Secret Service, as dozens of agents needed to quarantine after two agents who worked at the Tulsa rally tested positive. The consequences were more dire for one prominent Trump supporter. Herman Cain, a former Republican presidential candidate who the president’s team flew out to attend the rally, tested positive for COVID-19 days after the event. Cain, who was 74, was photographed inside the arena without a mask, sitting jam-packed with a group of other well-known Trump supporters who were also not wearing masks. Days after testing positive, Cain was hospitalized. A month later, on July 30, Cain died from complications of the coronavirus. The news devastated Trump campaign staff. Many felt like they were to blame for his death. “We killed Herman Cain,” one senior staffer told [ABC News reporter Will] Steakin not long after Cain’s death.

The night before the rally, several of Trump’s campaign staffers tested positive for COVID-19, and the administration was trying to contain the political—not the public health—fallout. According to two senior campaign officials Karl interviewed, after the eighth person close to the campaign tested positive, “word came down from the campaign leadership: STOP TESTING.”

And the lack of care and compassion Trump showed for his own people didn’t end there. According to Karl, campaign staffers who’d tested positive were told to drive rental cars back to Washington, D.C., even though they should have self-isolated for 10 days. “There was a car of three staffers who had tested positive that drove all the way from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Washington, D.C.,” a senior adviser told Karl. “We called it a COVID-mobile.”

Oh, and in case you thought Trump couldn’t be any more of an insensate monster than he already is, take a gander at this anecdote:

There’s something else neither Trump nor his campaign ever disclosed. One of the campaign staffers who tested positive became severely ill. This employee of the Trump campaign, whose name I’ve been asked not to disclose, was unable to drive home like the others. Instead, this staffer was hospitalized in Tulsa for a week. This staffer had been worried about the dangers of working on the rally because of preexisting conditions that made the prospect of being infected especially dangerous, but the president had demanded an indoor rally despite the warnings of public health officials, and the staffer faithfully responded by helping to organize it. Now that the rally was over, the president was back in Washington complaining bitterly that more people had not shown up, while this campaign worker was stuck in Tulsa, lying in a hospital bed thinking his life was about to end.

Uh-huh. If that isn’t Trump in a nutshell, I don’t know what is. You sure wouldn’t want to be with Trump in a foxhole, now would you? Or any hole, for that matter.

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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One of the hardest things to do in life is to admit you’ve made a mistake. Admitting mistakes strikes directly at our notions of identity and self-worth; it’s why people double down when faced with irrefutable evidence that they’re wrong, and it’s why telling people they’re wrong will render futile most efforts to change their minds about something. It’s one of the reasons Donald Trump received so many votes in 2020 even after his dismal performance in office: Millions of people didn’t want to admit they’d made a mistake.

So when someone does acknowledge that they’ve made a grievous error, it ought to be something that’s commended, if not necessarily celebrated. Such a person should be held in regard because they’ve demonstrated what seems to be an increasingly rare attribute: the ability to grow and learn from a prior mistake, whether that error was due to misunderstanding or outright ignorance.

Consider a 54-year-old gentleman named Richard Soliz, who contracted the COVID-19 virus in August. Soliz had remained unvaccinated during the pendency of the pandemic. According to the reporting of Gina Harkins, writing for The Washington Post, Soliz, a graphic artist from the Seattle area, said “[h]e’d see one thing in the news … only to have it negated by something he saw on social media or heard in the grocery store checkout line.” In other words, his experience was a microcosm of what countless Americans have experienced to one degree or another during this unprecedented pandemic.

Upon entering Seattle’s Harborview Hospital, Mr. Soliz was provided with some stark news: He had multiple blood clots in his lungs, and doctors were afraid those clots might migrate to his heart or brain.

The 54-year-old was on a heart-rate monitor, oxygen tank and eventually a ventilator. After being admitted to the hospital in late August, he spent 28 days at Harborview Medical Center, including two stints in the intensive care unit. His life, Soliz told The Washington Post, was “literally hanging on a thread.”

Unlike many people placed on a ventilator after contracting COVID-19, Soliz was ultimately discharged in September. Afterward, he couldn’t stop thinking about the hospital workers who had kept him alive. 

“I knew in my heart, in my mind and my consciousness, that it all could’ve been avoided,” Soliz says. So in October, he did something rather extraordinary: He went back to the hospital and apologized to his doctors.

As originally reported by Noah Shiedlower and Christina Zdanowicz for CNN, Soliz’s experience in the hospital underscored the severity of what he was facing and put his initial doubts in a different light.

Soliz told CNN that he struggled to breathe and felt as though he could have died at any moment. But he wanted to say sorry to those who cared for him, thanking everyone he saw at the facility who played a role in saving his life.

“I was literally on my deathbed and hanging from a string, and [doctors and nurses] tended to me as perfect strangers,” Soliz said. He added, when “you’re in a position that I was in, it resonates differently, and I just had to say something.”

Dr. James Town is the pulmonologist at Harborview and the head of its ICU unit. He told CNN that “99 out of 100” patients admitted to the hospital with COVID-19 were unvaccinated. Speaking about Soliz’s expressed regrets to the hospital staff, he noted that this was something of an anomaly among COVID-19 patients; he said that “despite your hard work, the most vocal people are still telling you that you’re trying to harm them and their families.” Thus, Dr. Town says, what Soliz did was highly appreciated.

“I knew that the spirits in our hospital and our unit had been down because of how hard things have been lately and difficulty with staffing shortages and things like that,” Town said. “I just felt like that was the kind of message that our staff needed to hear that people really did appreciate them.”

Soliz, who is now fully vaccinated, is still living with the effects of the virus. His lungs are scarred, and he gets winded easily. His thoughts are sometimes foggy, a common effect of those who have had a severe bout of COVID-19. He calls it the “scariest and most vulnerable” experience of his lifetime, and his most fervent wish is that no one else should have to experience it.

The reporting done on this story strongly suggests that Soliz really did not know what he should do with regard to vaccination. While we can and may fault him for that, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the ultimate fault and blame must lie in the sources of disinformation that made those doubts tenable in his mind.

Let’s wish him well in his recovery.