Part XIV: Poisoner-in-Chief

Poisoner-in-Chief. 

__________ 

“Trained parrots tell more truth than most.” 

Truman Capote

__________  

 

IF “language is the soil of thought,” as James Russell Lowell once said, then Donald Trump was the Poisoner-in-Chief. For more than a decade, starting with his “birther” lies, he doused the national landscape with pollutants. 

As expected, in the wake of the January 6 Committee’s eighth hearing, Toxic Don started spraying carcinogens on everyone who had anything to do with the hearings. In no particular 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.” 

(Mercy! Get that man a calendar and show him how to flip the pages.)

  

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

As for himself, he wasn’t to blame for failing to call out the National Guard on January 6. Or to do anything else constructive. 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!” 

(Only Trump would mock a wife

whose husband had been critically injured in a hammer attack.) 

 

Nothing fazed Mr. Trump. Despite testimony before Congress (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, he continued to howl. “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 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. 

We have been and will continue to quote dozens of people in this series of posts. Almost without exception, our witnesses are lifelong Republicans and/or worked closely with Trump during his four tumultuous White House years. These are Trump’s own people telling us what was happening behind the scenes.

Clip above shows rioters attacking Officer Fanone.

  

An oath to tell the truth. 

Let’s start here: 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 Matthew 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. In taped testimony, Gen. Milley 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 as opposed to Steve Bannon, previous winner of a coveted Golden Pardon, who went to court to avoid testifying. 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.) If you’re not following my excellent posts – and billions are not – we should remind you. Three witnesses forced to testify have invoked their Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate themselves at least a hundred times. 

Each. 

Those three Trump loyalists would be: 

Former Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark. 

Professor John Eastman. 

General Michael T. Flynn

  

Rep. Benny Thompson, chair of the Jan. 6 Committee, was not present for the eighth hearing, having contracted COVID. Rep. Liz Cheney – who also understood the import of an oath – led off the evening. “The dam,” she said, “has begun to break.” More witnesses were coming forward, she said, and the Committee was piling up fresh evidence every day. Two military 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,  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 from the Capitol – or the mob could have taken control of the building and held it for several days – then Trump would have had a chance to stop the certification of the electoral votes. He might have had the cover needed to declare martial law. 

President Trump had only one goal, from the moment Joe Biden was declared victor on November 7, 2020. 

He wanted to cling to power, regardless of cost. 

As had been true in all the hearings, Committee investigators were able to lay out a detailed timeline. The focus was on President Trump’s failure to act during the riot. In this post, we focus only on the 187-minute delay that day, the period during which the White House appeared paralyzed. 

This was the period during which the President of the United States believed the mob was working the kind of magic he desired. 

 

Timeline: January 6, 2021 

1:10 p.m.: 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 Trump tells the faithful: “We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol.” He promises that he’s coming along. 

 

“No call. Nothing. Zero.” 

The Secret Service refuses to allow Trump to go to Capitol Hill, citing extreme danger. But from that moment, until 4:17 p.m., the president is able to watch on TV what tens of millions of Americans are watching. He does less than nothing to help. As the crowd morphs into a mob, he only stirs the people up. 

The January 6 Committee plays Gen. Milley’s recorded testimony. He’s asked: How he would 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.” 

 

1:25 p.m.: Back at the White House, Trump heads for his private dining room. The TV is tuned to Fox News and stays on, and he stays there, transfixed. Watching. Watching. Nero watching Fox News. 

Evidence shows that something odd was transpiring. Official White House call logs on January 6, 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. 

Either Trump is making zero official calls – or someone is trying to cover up any calls he does make. 

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. Also weird.

Nero fiddled. Trump watched TV.

  

1:49 p.m.: The D.C. Metropolitan Police declare that a riot has begun. 

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

 

“Get Ivanka down here.” 

Pat Cipollone, White House Chief Counsel, had already 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, White House lawyer. Pat Philbin, White House lawyer. (And two other White House lawyers, whose names I failed to note. 

(I was taking notes as I watched the hearings.) 

 

At one point, Mark Meadows, White House Chief of Staff barked, “Get Ivanka down here,” hoping the president’s daughter could talk sense to her dad. 

 

2:03 p.m.: President Trump uses someone’s phone to put in a call to Rudy Giuliani. That call lasts eight minutes. 

 

2:18 p.m.: The National Security Council is advised that the mob has stormed the building. A warning from the Secret Service comes in. A decision has to be made in the next two or three minutes. If Mr. Pence (and his wife and daughter) are not evacuated to a safer location, they might not escape. 

In taped testimony, an “Anonymous White House Security Official” added his thoughts. His voice, for the congressional hearing, 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.” Agents were calling to say “goodbye to their families.” 

 

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

He tweets: 

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! 

 

“It was him giving people the green light.” 

Angry chants of, “Hang Mike Pence!” now inflame the mob. The Committee notes 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 own boss asked him to stay on for the day, to do what he could to help restore calm.) 

What, Pottinger was asked, did he think of the tweet? “My view of that was that it was outrageous,” he replied. 

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. Sarah 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.”

Accused rioter Gregory Yetman
allegedly seen spraying police with chemical irritants.

 

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. 

(Full disclosure: Gen. Kellogg has endorsed Trump for 2024.) 

 

Now, for a little full “full disclosure.” On January 6, Kellogg called Pence’s decision not to challenge the electoral vote a “great plan.” 

Matthews also sounded warning. She 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. 

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 fury and hate. 

Rachel Marie Powell "peacefully" entering the Capitol.

 

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 location. 

 

2:26 p.m.: Trump does make a call – again, not recorded in White House logs. He calls Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, and urges him to help delay the counting of the electoral votes. The senator can’t talk long. He explains that he and his colleagues are being told it’s time to evacuate. 

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

 

On January 6, any fool watching TV can see the situation is deteriorating. At 2:32 p.m. Fox News host Laura Ingraham, an apologist for Trump for (now) nine 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.” 

(She can see the truth; but she’ll lie later about what she saw.) 

 

2:38 p.m.: The president lifts 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!” 

Jessica Watkins - dressed to riot on January 6.

 

The Committee plays video and comments from Jessica Watkins, one of the since-indicted, since-convicted-and-sentenced rioters, a member of the violent Oath Keepers. She was in communication with other members, and dressed for the riot like she was going into battle in Afghanistan. She notified other Oath Keepers, regarding 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 congressmen.” 

In taped testimony, 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 [Kevin] 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. 

(Jared can see the truth.) 

 

At 2:53 p.m. Donald Trump Jr. sends 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.: Don Jr. sends 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 gets worse; and Don Jr. knows his dad could stop it.) 

 

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 see 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. 

Rioters battle police for control of a tunnel entrance.

 

“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. 

 

4:00 p.m.: After a long delay, National Guard forces begin arriving on Capitol Hill. 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 start clearing the halls inside the Capitol Building, and the area surrounding. 

 

4:17 p.m.: Police officers on the front lines send out this call: “We’ve got another officer unconscious.” 

At that very moment, Trump makes his first TV appearance since the riot exploded. Speaking from the Rose Garden – 187 minutes too late – he proves unrepentant. “I know your hurt,” he begins, speaking to his loyalists who have stormed Capitol Hill. “I know your pain,” he adds. “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 says. 

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. 

 

“I don’t do political narratives.” 

Language. The soil of thought. Or in this case, the soil of no thought. To this day, despite all evidence to the contrary, despite testimony in eight hearings from many of the top members of the Trump administration, most Republican voters still believe the election was stolen. As late as September 2023, only 28% of Republicans believed President Biden had fairly won the election. 

Trump had drenched the political landscape with poison. And all kinds of cancers had begun to grow. 

 

FUN WITH FACTS: During a campaign rally on March 8, 2024, Trump told his audience that he’s not the only one who believes he was robbed of victory in 2020. “Eighty-two percent of the country understands that it was a rigged election,” he told them. And they believed him! 

Can you believe that! 

This blogger can’t. A more realistic number, 30% of respondents, in a January 2024 poll, said Biden’s election was “probably not legitimate (14%) or “definitely not legitimate” (16%). So just short of 82%. 

 

Anyway, back to our January 6 timeline: 

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 may 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. 

(Or as Trump fans stubbornly insist: The riot was all Nancy Pelosi’s fault.) 

Trump apologists will later insist the rioters were "let in" by police.
Scene on January 6.

  

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 city under curfew. 

 

6:01 p.m.: Trump is hardly chastened. He vents again 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!” 

Yet those who had surrounded 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 again presses him to delay the counting of electoral votes. 

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

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. 

 

“You’re challenging the Constitution.” 

Pottinger testified further that our enemies loved to watch the president deny his election defeat. It served their narrative – that U.S. democracy doesn’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 recount in Florida in 2000. There, a margin of 537 votes separated Gore from victory, and gave Florida’s twenty-five electoral votes to George W. Bush. The fight over a recount in that one state went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court – which declared on December 12, 2000, 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 more than five dozen 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 the days leading up to the January 6 riot. 

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 showed. Trump repeatedly pounded the podium in anger. Finally, he made it clear. He would not say “the election is over.” 

And he never has. 

And he never will. 

 

“Preying on their patriotism.” 

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. 

(Once again, these are Trump’s people, telling the truth behind the scenes.) 

 

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 anyone 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. Added 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, Rep. Cheney added, the president was “preying on their patriotism.”

Sentiment expressed by one of the rioters before January 6.

 

 

On Thursday morning, even before the eighth hearing aired, The New York Times ran an editorial signed by seven four-star officers in the U.S. military. Gen. Peter Chiarelli had been critical of President Trump before. Now these seven top men, Admirals Steve Abbot, James Loy, John Nathman and William Owens, together with Generals John Jumper, Johnnie Wilson and Chiarelli warned that of the “many startling findings” presented during the first seven hearings, the most “alarming” was that Donald J. Trump failed to act to stop the violence. 

“The president and commander in chief, Donald Trump, abdicated his duty to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution,” they wrote. “When a mob attacked the Capitol, the commander in chief failed to act to restore order and even encouraged the rioters,” instead. 

Amen.

 

NOTE ON METHODOLOGY: In this post, the people whose names are in bold, understood who was to blame for stirring up the mob, and who had the power to calm the situation. Donald J. Trump was president for 24 hours that day, and proved less than useless at a time of grave crisis. 

As always, we avoid using Democrats to prove our case – and don’t bold their names, even in this matter. Just a few of the people who knew: Ivanka Trump, the seven four-star officers, and Pat Cipollone, White House Chief Counsel. You would think even a reasonable MAGA fan would finally get the picture. But no. Most truly believe the election was stolen.