Biased Until Proven Loyal
Opposition takeaways from release of the January 6 House Select Committee Report.
The 118th Congress Republicans comment on the J6 Committee Report.
“… a partisan charade… (1)
“… just another partisan and political stunt.” (2)
“…more games from a petulant and soon-to-be-kangaroo court.” (3)
The 118th Congressional Republicans have inherited the Report of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the Capitol.
Why smear the report?
Why not deal with its substance?
Why criticize its appearance — now — and squander an opportunity to call out its motivation? Is the best the opposition Republicans can do is label the report as a venture in partisan politics?
Is this all?
Consider the larger question, why stay in denial and defend denial by accusing the ‘reality bringer’ as being biased?
“I was becoming increasingly concerned that we were damaging his legacy,” Ms. Hicks said that she told the President.
Mr. Trump’s response? ‘Nobody would care about my legacy if I lose, so that won’t matter. The only thing that matters is winning,” she recalled him saying. (4)
As Hicks reported preemptively proposing January 4 and 5, a non-violent protest, originally scheduled for Inauguration Day, Congressional Republicans preemptively are proposing denial of and blindness to the ‘substance of the report.’ For them what lurks behind their coup coverup is Antifa. FBI false flag operation. The Steal.
These comments and McConnell ‘s late week prognosis for the Republican Party’s future (5) give one a window into what to expect from the opposition of the 118th Congress.
Manifested by the impending investigation of the investigators, the Report’s Republican opposition can be characterized as a Ponzi scheme of loyalty in which participants gin up assertive nonsense to display obeisance.
On Friday, Senate Minority leader, Mitch McConnell drew his loyalty lines during a MSNBC interview ‘exclusive:’ Trump, no; Republicans, yes.
Indeed. What Republicans were really responding to in their comments on the J6 Committee Report release is how loyal to ‘Trump-world’ will their remarks appear.
Would the 2024 Republican candidate for President pardon Trump of the federal crimes the J6 Committee is asking the DOJ to prosecute?
The Committee’s wisdom in presenting Hicks and Conway, as the ‘public hearings last word,’ prompts two takeaways.
First, Conway portrayed the failure of Trump’s lawyers to protect his coup attempt. In her J6 Committee testimony Conway inferred, ‘You guys just don’t know how to compartmentalize… (sigh).’
Second, Hicks attested that the ‘appearance of violence’ was not as inportant for Trump as winning. Her remarks lend credibility to the 187 minutes as a keystone of the Committee’s argument: if he (Trump) could stop it, why didn’t he?
And yet… a looming question of the Committee’s end game, and IMO under-reported by the media, is why end at criminal referrals?
The next steps outlined in the executive summary seem to reinforce institutional inertia, squandering the accountability quiver. (6)
This question or rather absence thereof, has triggered the following discussion.
You were supposed to explain to the people, what caused the attack on the Capitol — that’s the name of your committee — right?
Wrong.
The executive summary of the report reveals that the Committee had another audience in mind besides the American public — the Department of Justice. So Ari Melber of The Beat (MSNBC) suggested on Alex Wagner Tonight, December 22.
Why focus on referrals?, Melber asked.
What happened? What changed the Committee’s mind? As a public, as a nation, are we left lumbering along with more juries, more split decisions, closure some two years or more down the road? (Cite “Jury’s Out”)
America needs to take this document seriously for what it claims and for what the report leaves out, what the second impeachment trial was unable to resolve.
Beyond Trump, how was J6 allowed to happen?
Is America being asked to deny that there is ‘something’ beyond Trump?
“Those who can’t remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.“
-George Santayana
December 24
