America in the Post-Trump Zeitgeist

4 min readSep 26, 2023

Former White House Aide, Cassidy Hutchison, being sworn in at the House Committee to Investigate the Events of January 6. June, 2022. Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty, courtesy People Magazine

Former Attorney General Bill Barr walks; former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson hides.

The easy part was leaving; the hard part is surviving.

Special “Independent” Counsel Robert Mueller never got his “Alexander Butterfield Moment.”

Mueller’s investigative team’s findings regarding the illegality of Trump’s asking Ukraine President Vladimir Zelensky to find dirt on a political opponent didn’t get their day in court. Mueller’s investigation conclusions were blocked by AG William Barr.

America witnessed an abuse of the Office of the President followed by a blatant coverup by the Attorney General. Barr slapped down Mueller’s claim that Congress had the goods to take action to protect the country: typical Mafia-like conspiracy conducted by Trump and his attorney.

Recall that Alexander Butterfield was the Deputy Assistant to President Richard Nixon when Butterfield testified on July 16, 1973, before the Watergate investigation as to the presence of a “White House taping system,” used to store recorded Oval Office meetings.

“Everything was taped… as long as the President was in attendance. There was not so much as a hint that something should not be taped.” (1)

Butterfield’s biography/memoir, “The Last of the President’s Men,” (2), a page corner turned down bedside version of it, keeps night-time vigil over former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson. When she is not ruminating over where next to hide — what she describes as “moving for security reasons,” — she flips to another page of Butterfield’s survival story.

This helps her sleep.

In America when requested to testify under oath, one has the right to an attorney. Hutchinson, facing the J6 Congressional Investigation Panel, exercised this right: she switched attorneys, abandoning a Trump aligned coverup foot soldier for an independent pro bono attorney, who follows judicial conformity. By this deliberate act, Hutchinson became a survivor.

The rest we know: America’s penchant for democracy also survived.

America can only speculate if former AG Bill Barr sleeps. What America does know is that Bill Barr is not hiding, but very publicly walking and talking: a Fox News interview yesterday, a CNN sit-down tomorrow. For Barr, the ‘show must go on.’ Forever the spectator of his own malfeasance, Barr adeptly crosses the line between disclosure (“I was there”) and moralizing (‘I advised him not to do it.”) Barr knows the halls of cable news well; he sits comfortably around the glass tables, offering his “good side” to the cameras, providing a professorial air to his prognostications. Lost to public scrutiny is any hint of self-reckoning. A canny observer, Barr leaves his audience, like his Justice Department, in the dark.

It's safer there. There are no follow-up questions.

Contrast with Cassidy Hutchinson, ushered in and sworn in, cameras clicking, an audience of reporters in rapt attention. The spilt screen image is jarring. Bill Barr walks, Cassidy Hutchinson surrenders her security and peace of mind to share with America her trauma.

Now America can buy ‘her story’ on Amazon.

The week prior to her book’s release, Hutchinson was interviewed twice, her first and second “live” cable interviews. (3) It was as if the release of her book, “Enough,” were required for America to take notice and recall with this adoring Trump follower, her descent into survival. Hutchinson’s “Enough” is no West Wing tell-all by Omarosa Maginault-Newman. (4) No John Bolton ‘insider’ tale. (5)

This is the real deal about the real fake.

What can we learn?

America, exhausted by Trump and Barr’s obstruction, is ready to perk up at this young lady’s recall of the events of January 6, told to her by witnesses who refused to come forward — those still in hiding. And those who like her boss, White House Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, are still obstructing and withholding evidence. As Butterfield added flesh to John Dean’s ‘yeah, I think there were tapes somewhere,’ Cassidy Hutchinson has added flesh to Trump operatives trying to protect an obsessive and defiant President. Fifteen months ago, a truth-revealing symbiosis gripped the J6 Committee room: Hutchinson and the J6 Committee worked to piece together the events of January 6, and America was witness, in real time. Now the week of her book release reignites those moments.

America can experience with Ms. Hutchinson, the post-Trump zeitgeist, first disgust, then trepidation. Even loyalty when tested to the extreme is notably fickle.

The survival mode takes hold, slowly, then quickly.