January 6 Committee Hearing #8: "Preying on Their Patriotism."

 

Eighth Hearing:

THE PESTICIDE PRESIDENT

Trump planned all along to claim victory, no matter what.

 

If language is the soil of thought, as James Russell Lowell once said, then Donald Trump was the pesticide president. For seven years, and counting, he has doused the national landscape with toxic poisons. 

As expected, in the wake of the January 6 Committee’s eighth hearing, Pesticide Don started spraying carcinogens on everyone who had anything to do with the hearings. In alphabetical order, he howled, 

“Liz Cheney is a sanctimonious loser.” 

“Crooked Hillary Clinton, Stacey Abrams, and many others, contested their Elections – and for a far longer time than I.” 

(Someone find this man a calendar and show him how it works.)

 

Trump tagged former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as a “disloyal sleaze bag.” 

As for himself, he’s not to blame for failing to call out the National Guard during the riot. He was only president! “It’s Nancy Pelosi’s fault,” he whined, “she turned down the troops! Perhaps she was disengaged - maybe looking for her husband!” 

“Fake Tapper of CNN is so biased and pathetic.” 

Then, despite testimony (in previous hearings) by both former Attorney General Bill Barr, and former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, that there was no evidence of significant voter fraud, Trump complained, “I had an election Rigged and Stolen from me, and our Country. The USA is going to Hell. Am I supposed to be happy?” 

The House Republican Twitter geniuses also got into the act. In a tweet, they described Sarah Matthews, one of the two witnesses who showed up live for the eighth hearing – a lifelong, albeit young, Republican – this way. 

“Just another liar and pawn in Pelosi’s witch hunt.”

 

Apparently, you can’t be a Republican if you testify under oath anymore. Someone soon realized, however, that the tweet sounded stupid and petty, and unhinged, and it was taken down.

 

* 

An oath to tell the truth. 

Let’s start there. Matthews had been Assistant Press Secretary in the White House, where she worked from June 2020, until the day after the attack on Capitol Hill. The second witness to appear was Matt Pottinger, a former Marine, and at the time of the riot, Deputy National Security Advisor. (He served in that role from September 22, 2019, to January 7, 2021.) His testimony was no more favorable to the former president than Matthews’. And you could just as easily have attacked him – or Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He made it clear that on January 6, President Trump didn’t lift a digit to stem the violence. Like every single person interviewed by investigators, Gen. Milley took an oath to tell the truth. 

This would be opposed to Steve Bannon, previous winner of a coveted Trump pardon, who went to court to avoid testimony. On the day after the eighth hearing, he was quickly convicted of contempt of Congress, in a jury trial, because he refused to show up to talk about what he knew. Or plead the Fifth, as the case might be. Again, if you’re not following my excellent blog posts – and millions are not – we should remind you that three witnesses forced to testify have plead the fifth at least a hundred times. 

Each. 

Those three Trump loyalists would be: Gen. Michael T. Flynn (also previously pardoned), Professor John Eastman, and former Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark.

 

* 

“No call. Nothing. Zero.” 

Rep. Benny Thompson, chair of the Jan. 6 Committee, was not present for the eighth hearing, having contracted COVID. So Rep. Liz Cheney – who also understands the importance of an oath – led off the evening. “The dam,” she said, “has begun to break.” More witnesses are coming forward (not “Sloppy Steve” Bannon) and the Committee is piling up more evidence every day. Two veterans, Rep. Elaine Luria, of Virginia, a Democrat, and Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Illinois, led questioning for the night. Rep. Luria laid out the position of the Committee. On January 6, and in weeks leading up to that fateful day, she said, President Trump “betrayed his oath of office.” 

Rep. Kinzinger explained: “The mob was accomplishing Trump’s purpose…he chose not to act.” 

If enough chaos ensued – if, for example, Vice President Mike Pence could have been chased out of the Capitol – or the mob could have taken control of the building and held it for the next two or three days – then Trump would have a chance to stop the certification of the electoral votes. He might have cover to declare martial law. We do know this. He had one goal, from the moment Joe Biden was declared victor on November 7, 2020. He desperately wanted to cling to power, no matter the cost. 

As has been true in all the hearings, so far, Committee investigators were able to lay out a detailed timeline. The focus was on President Trump’s complete failure to act during the riot. 

1:10 p.m.: We know the president is wrapping up his speech to a large rally gathered near the Washington Monument. He and other speakers have worked to inflame the crowd. Now the tells the faithful: “We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol.” He promises that he’s coming along. 

The Secret Service refused to allow Trump to go to Capitol Hill, citing extreme danger. But from that moment, until 4:17 p.m., the president was able to watch on TV what all of us watched that terrible day. He did less than nothing to help. As crowd turned to mob, he worked to further stir them up. 

Gen. Milley was heard in recorded testimony. How did he describe Trump’s actions that day? “You’ve got an assault of the Capitol of the United States of America,” he said. “No call. Nothing. Zero.”

 

At 1:25 p.m., back at the White House, Trump headed for his private dining room. The TV was tuned to Fox News and stayed on, and he stayed there, transfixed. Watching. Watching. Nero watching Fox News. 

Evidence shows that something odd was transpiring. Official White House call logs show a last incoming call at 11:04 a.m., lasting two minutes. The first outgoing call logged does not come until 6:54 p.m. The official Presidential Diary is similarly blank. At 1:21: “The President met with his valet.” Then nothing, till 4:03 p.m.: “The President went to the Rose Garden.” The official White House photographer was admonished not to take any pictures that day. 

At 1:49 p.m. the D.C. Metropolitan Police, declared a riot. 

At exactly that same moment, President Trump issued a tweet. It provided a link to his incendiary speech. 

Pat Cipollone, on that day, the White House Chief Counsel, had testified under oath, both in private, and publicly in the seventh hearing. On video, he was shown explaining, “It was pretty clear then there had to be a strong, forceful” statement. He informed Mr. Trump there had to be an immediate call. 

Who else pressed the president to act? To call off his supporters that day? Cipollone was asked. He thought a moment, and listed several: Ivanka, Erich Herschmann and Pat Philbin, two other White House lawyers, and Mark Meadows, White House Chief of Staff. “Get Ivanka down here,” Meadows barked at one point, hoping the president’s daughter could talk sense to her dad. 

At 2:03 p.m., President Trump used someone’s phone to put in a call to Rudy Giuliani. That call lasted eight minutes.

 

* 

Calling to say “goodbye to families.” 

At 2:18 the National Security Council was advised that the mob had stormed the building. A warning from the Secret Service came in. A decision had to be made in the next two or three minutes. If Mr. Pence (and his wife and daughter) weren’t evacuated to a safer location, he might not be able to escape. An “Anonymous White House Security Official” added his thoughts. His voice was disguised to protect his identity and his picture was not shown. Members of the vice president’s security detail, he explained “were starting to fear for their lives. It was “very disturbing,” he said. 

Agents were calling to say “goodbye to their families.” 

Trump was unmoved – or, perhaps, you could say he was moved. He was moved by his fury. At 2:24 p.m., he decided to supercharge the mob. 

He tweeted: 

Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and 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!

 

Angry chants of, “Hang Mike Pence!” began rising from the mob. The Committee noted that while Trump was in the Presidential Dining Room he could have walked down to the Press Room in sixty seconds. TVs hookups are always ready, and he could have offered up calming words had he wished. Mr. Pottinger testified that at that moment, at 2:24 p.m., he knew he was going to resign. (His boss asked him to stay on for the day, to do what he could to help restore calm.) What, he was asked, did he think of the tweet. “My view of that was that it was outrageous,” he testified. 

Pottinger, left, Sarah Matthews, right, testifying under oath.

Pottinger testified that he had been called in to work at the White House as the attack began to unfold. He was there from 2:20 p.m. on. Matthews was there, in the West Wing, herself. The anonymous security official described the feeling inside the building. “We were all in shock…We knew that this would move from a normal, democratic, you know, public event, into something else.” 

General Keith Kellogg, National Security Advisor to Mr. Pence, was shown, testifying via video. Unlike the others, he did not believe the president should appear on camera at that point. “There wasn’t a single clean press conference we had had,” since Trump took office, he explained. 

Matthews sounded warning in the White House, too. So did Judd Deere, a deputy assistant White House aide. Matthews was blunt in testimony, when asked about the tweet. “It was obvious,” she said, “it was him [Trump] giving people the green light.” She had attended many of the president’s rallies before. “I’ve seen the impact his words have on his supporters,” she said. He wasn’t helping. He was stirring up the mob. Cassidy Hutchinson, another White House aide, was shown again, expressing her disgust. “We were watching the Capitol being defaced,” she had testified, “over a lie.” 

Language. 

The soil of thought. 

Every authoritarian leader in history has understood. Language can be used to order a beer at a bar. Or to stir anger and hate.

 

* 

By this time, Mr. Trump had been sitting in the Presidential Dining Room for just over an hour. Vice President Pence and his family were being moved inside the Capitol Building to a safer, undisclosed location. 

2:26 p.m.: Trump did make a call – again, not recorded on White House logs. He called Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, and urged him to help delay the counting of the electoral votes. The senator couldn’t talk long. He explained that he and his colleagues were being told it was time to evacuate. 

A short video clip from inside the Capitol was shown. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri was seen running through a hall, and then hurrying down an escalator to avoid the growing danger. Hawley, of course, had become notorious, for giving the angry mob gathering outside earlier in the day the clenched fist salute. 

Now, even he was dashing for safety.

 2:32 p.m.: Anyone watching TV can see the situation is deteriorating. Fox News host Laura Ingraham, an apologist for Trump for four years, sends Meadows, the White House Chief of Staff, this text: “Mark, the president needs to tell the people in the Capitol to go home.” 

2:38 p.m.: The president lifted a finger, but barely, and only to tweet: “Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!” 

The Committee played video and comments from Jessica Watkins, one of the since-indicted rioters, a member of the violent Oath Keepers. She was in communication with other members, dressed like she was going into battle in Afghanistan that day. She reported the president’s tweet. 

“There is no safe place anywhere in the U.S. for any of these motherfuckers right now,” a male voice replied. 

Another Oath Keeper laughed off the plea for peace, saying, Trump “didn’t say anything about congressman.” 

Jared Kushner explained what was happening around this time. He was in the shower at home when his phone rang. 

Turned the shower off. Saw it was Leader McCarthy, who I had a good relationship with. He told me it was getting really bad over at the Capitol and said “please anything you can do to help.” … I don’t recall specific asks, just anything you can do. I got the sense they were scared.

 

At 2:53, Donald Trump Jr. sent Meadows the following text, urging him to get his father to act: “He’s got to condemn this shit ASAP. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough.” 

2:58 p.m.: Five minutes later, Don Jr. sent Meadows a second plea. Get his father to act! “This is one you go to the mattress on. They will try to fuck his entire legacy on this if it gets worse.” 

(It got worse.)

 

Mr. Cipollone was questioned on this point. Was there anyone inside the White House, in any official capacity, that did not want the rioters to be called off? “No,” he said. He couldn’t think of anyone who couldn’t understand what was going on. Philbin, he said, Herschmann, Ivanka, “overall, Meadows,” Gen. Kellogg, Dan Scavino all wanted the mob to be told to go home.

 

* 

“You’re very special.” 

The pitched battle on Capitol Hill continued for another hour, and still the President of the United States refused to act. 

After a long delay, National Guard forces finally began arriving on Capitol Hill shortly after 4:00 p.m. Combined with D.C. Metropolitan police, Capitol Hill police, and assorted agents from the F.B.I., the Justice Department, and other federal agencies, they began clearing the halls inside the Capitol Building, and the areas surrounding. The rioters had served all the purpose they really could. 

The Committee interspersed live testimony, video testimony, and radio traffic from that deadly day. At 4:17 p.m., for example, police officers on the front lines sent out this call: “We’ve got another officer unconscious.” 

At that very moment, President Trump made his first TV appearance since the riot exploded. Speaking from the Rose Garden – 187 minutes too late – he proved unrepentant. 

“I know your hurt,” he began, speaking to his loyalists who had just stormed Capitol Hill. “I know your pain,” he said. “We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it, especially the other side, but you have to go home now,” he said. 

There’s never been a time like this, where such a thing happened, where they could take it away from all of us, from me, from you, from our country. This was a fraudulent election, but we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home, we love you. You’re very special. You’ve seen what happens. You see the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel. But go home and go home in peace.

 

Language. The soil of thought. Or in this case, the soil of no thought. Today, despite all evidence to the contrary, despite testimony in these eight hearings from many of the top members of the Trump administration, most Republican voters still believe the election was stolen. As late as June 1, 2022, only 25% of Republicans believed President Biden had fairly won the election. 

Trump had drenched the political landscape with toxin. Now all kinds of cancers had begun to spread. 

4:45 p.m.: A conference call to Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller takes place. (Video is provided by the Committee.) Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, and Sen. Chuck Schumer are on the line. 

They want to know how long Secretary Miller thinks it will be before the Capitol can be secured, searched, and the “people’s business” of counting the electoral votes can resume. A few hours, Miller says. 

Gen. Milley is shown testifying again. He says he took two or three calls from Vice President Pence during the riot. Mr. Pence’s requests were “unambiguous.” Get the National Guard down here. Get the military down here right now. 

Meadows called, as well, but with a craven request. “We have to kill the narrative that the vice president is making all the decisions,” he told the general. 

“I remember it distinctly,” Milley said. He refused. “I don’t do political narratives,” he explained. 

Again: He had not spoken to Trump all day. 

Matthews testified that she believed the president was “pushing the lie…that the election was stolen.” She knew her job as assistant press secretary would require her to defend Trump’s statements the following day. She considered his actions “indefensible,” and she resolved to resign.

 

* 

“Shouting into the largest microphone on the planet.” 

6:00 p.m.: The mayor of Washington D.C. puts the entire city under curfew. 

6:01 p.m.: Trump is still not chastened. He again vents in a tweet: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & peace. Remember this day forever!” 

Those surrounding the president testified that it was not a day for patriots to remember forever. Matthews called January 6 “one of the darkest days in our nation’s history.” Cipollone was blunt and to the point. He told investigators, “What happened at the Capitol cannot be justified.” 

7:02 p.m.: Trump’s closest allies have learned nothing as a result of the day’s tragic events. Rudy Giuliani calls Sen. Tuberville and still presses him to delay the counting of the electoral votes. 

On the big screen behind the members of the January 6 Committee, a clip of Mitch McConnell was shown. 

The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of this president and having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest microphone on the planet.

 

The next day, Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia sent the president a letter. He asked him to convene a full cabinet meeting – minus members who had resigned in protest. “I believe it is important to know that while President, you will no longer publicly question the election results – after Wednesday, no one can deny this is harmful.” 

(Not counting complete fools like Rep. Matt Gaetz and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.)

 

Scalia added that it was important for the president to limit “the role of certain private citizens, who, respectfully, have served you poorly” with their advice. 

Pottinger testified, further, that our enemies loved to watch the president deny his election defeat. It served their narrative – that U.S. democracy didn’t work. On the morning of Jan. 7, testimony showed, White House advisors had already crafted a conciliatory speech for the president to deliver. The day passed. Trump balked. At that point, Pottinger explained, “You’re not just challenging the election, you’re challenging the Constitution.” He made comparisons with the actions of Richard M. Nixon in 1960, when serious claims of voter fraud in Chicago were made, and Al Gore’s reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that stopped the 2020 recount in Florida. 

There, a margin of 537 votes separated Gore from victory, and gave Florida’s twenty-five electoral votes to George W. Bush instead. In that case, the fight over a recount in the state went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court – which declared on December 12, 2002, that no further recounts would be possible. The next day, Gore conceded, in what Pottinger described as “a pretty good model” to follow.

 

Trump, of course refused to concede, even in the face of sixty defeats in state and federal courts. He refused to concede in December. He refused when the U.S. Supreme Court twice turned back his legal challenges. Then he refused to concede in days leading up to the January 6 riot. 

He kept dumping toxic chemicals onto the soil of thought. 

We know the president finally gave a speech calling for calm on the evening of January 7. Even then, he had to do multiple takes, several of which the Committee now showed. Trump repeatedly pounded the podium in anger. Finally, he made it clear. He would not say “the election is over.” 

And he never did. 

And he never has. 

And he never will. 

Donald J. Trump will pollute the national discourse from now until the day he dies. And then his toadies will keep that myth alive for decades to come. Al Gore, later John Kerry, and, of course, Hillary Clinton in 2016, suffered bitter defeats – and all conceded long before January 6, the following year. 

To this blogger’s knowledge none of them has ever said since that the elections they lost were “rigged” or “stolen.”

 

* 

“You lose. I’m the winner. I’m the king.’” 

The Committee wrapped up for the evening. An exchange on social media between Tim Murtaugh, communications director for the 2020 Trump campaign, and Matthew Wolking, a campaign spokesman, appeared on screen. On January 9, Murtaugh commented on Trump’s refusal to concede. “Also shitty,” he added, “not to have even acknowledged the death of the Capitol Police officer.” 

Wolking replied: “That is enraging to me[.]” Then: “Everything he said about supporting law enforcement was a lie.” 

Murtaugh understood: 

You know what that is, of course. If he acknowledged the dead cop, he’d be implicitly faulting the mob. And he wouldn’t do that, because they’re his people. And he would also be close to acknowledging that what he lit at the rally got out of control. No way he acknowledges something that could ultimately be called his fault.

 

No way.

 

Rep. Kinzinger summed up the case. “Oaths matter,” he said, not “party tribalism.” As an Army veteran, he reminded the audience in the committee room, and those watching on TV, that a member of the U.S. military takes an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution. The oath does not require a soldier to swear an oath to the president. Rep. Luria, who served for two decades in the U.S. Navy, and rose to rank of Commander, spoke of keeping safe the rule of law, in “a nation we all love.” 

This blogger took the same oath that Kinzinger and Luria took, when he enlisted in the Marines in 1968. 

Rep. Cheney closed the hearing with these words. “We have much work yet to do,” she promised. New information was still coming in and new witnesses were expressing a willingness to testify. Trump, she said, had never been “looking for the right answer legally or factually.” 

Many of those who came to hear Trump speak on the morning of January 6, were in fact “patriots,” she said. But in firing them up, Cheney added, the president was “preying on their patriotism.” 

He sent them to attack – and all in service to a lie.

 

In fact, no less a sycophant than Steve Bannon had predicted as much, in days leading up to the 2020 election. In a newly-leaked call, just three days before the vote, part of which the Committee now showed, Bannon could be heard explain almost exactly what was going to happen. 

(Below, we provide more of the call than the Committee aired.) 

Ironically, most of his listeners were Chinese immigrants – and at least one recorded what Bannon said. The recording was recently turned over to reporters for the left-leaning magazine, Mother Jones.

FUN FACT – UNLESS YOU LIKE DEMOCRACY: Apparently, the former First Lady, Melania Trump, was feeling a little reflected heat from all the negative testimony. What had she been doing all that day, while the riot exploded? 

Did she ever try to talk to her wild-man husband? Did she speak to Mark Meadows, or anyone else? Did she urge calm? Did she even care if the rioters tore the Capitol Building down?

 

In a letter, issued under her name, she offered excuse. She and a crack crew of designers were focused on a White House rug. “Several months in advance, I organized a qualified team of photographers, archivists, and designers to work with me in the White House to ensure perfect execution,” she said. “As required, we scheduled January 6, 2021, to complete the work on behalf of our Nation.” 

This was “a very significant undertaking” and required “great care, attention to detail, and concentration – both in the planning and execution,” she added, according to Fox News. 

So, sure. How could she have known, all that afternoon, that a riot was exploding not far away? 

On June 28, Mrs. Trump’s former Chief of Staff, Stephanie Grisham had tweeted a screen shot of an alleged text message between her and the First Lady. 

“Do you want to tweet that peaceful protests are the right of every American, but there is no place for lawlessness & violence?” Grisham asked, according to the text message she posted. 

“No,” came the reply from a person labeled “MT” in the response.

 

Now – and sadly, like her husband – Mrs. Trump had a ready defense. That is: She blamed Grisham. 

“Ms. Grisham was not in the White House on January 6, and her behavior in her role as Chief of Staff ultimately amounts to dereliction of duty,” the First Lady said, adding that “traditionally, the First Lady’s Chief of Staff provides detailed briefings surrounding our Nation’s important issues.” 

Like about rugs??? 

“In fact, Ms. Grisham failed to provide insight and information into the events surrounding January 6 as she had abandoned her post in Washington, D.C.,” Mrs. Trump continued. “Shamefully, this behavior has only partially become public knowledge; yet was consistent for Ms. Grisham.” 

Yes. Grisham did it! 

She kept everyone in America who knew the First Lady from calling her or texting, and saying, “Look out the window! Holy shit, Melania! Rioters are threatening to hang Vice President Pence, and Donald isn’t doing a thing!!!”

 

And what a terrible worker Grisham had always been. That is why she had served as Melania’s press secretary from March 27, 2017, to June 30, 2019. Because she was consistently terrible, and stupid, and lazy, and no good. Then she was White House Press Secretary from July 1, 2019, until April 6, 2020. 

Then the First Lady had her return and keep consistently doing awful work, as her new chief of staff, from April 7, 2020, until January 6, 2021, when Grisham resigned, like many others who had watched the violent attack with disbelief. 

So. Sure. Blame Grisham. 

Grisham, right, John Bolton, center, with Trump.

The First Lady was focused on a rug.

“It is evident,” Mrs. Trump said in closing, “that Grisham’s recent betrayals are a last-ditch attempt to resuscitate her ruined career and reputation.” 

And who had judgment so terrible as to give her a job in the first place???