What if we told you that Donald Trump was not at all bothered by his followers braying to “Hang Mike Pence?” Would you faint dead away to learn that he was pretty chill about threats to the safety of his vice president, and was even annoyed that the Secret Service might throw him in the car and drive away from the Capitol to save him from the mob?
No, you would not. Because you lived through the past five years of this waking nightmare, and you’re not a bloody idiot.
You were watching on that horrible day when Trump tweeted to his deranged supporters as they descended on Congress that “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!”
So you will not be FOR SHOCKED to learn that multiple witnesses told the House January 6 Select Committee that during the Capitol Riot, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows “left the dining room off the Oval Office, walked into his own office and told colleagues that President Donald J. Trump was complaining that the vice president was being whisked to safety.”
As the New York Times was first to report: “Mr. Meadows, according to an account provided to the House committee investigating Jan. 6, then told the colleagues that Mr. Trump had said something to the effect of, maybe Mr. Pence should be hung.”
The Washington Post matched the reporting and confirmed that Meadows’s aide Cassidy Hutchinson verified the account. Because, while Meadows may be willing to risk a contempt of Congress charge, his staffers were, by and large, not.
Hutchinson already testified that multiple members of Congress were on a phone call with Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows in December on which they discussed the plan to send goons from the permitted march on the Ellipse to a very much unpermitted descent on the Capitol — a conversation which could in no wise be characterized as executive or attorney client privileged for any of the participants. And Hutchinson was the source of at least one report that Meadows was warned about the potential for violence in advance of January 6.
It’s not clear who testified about one salacious detail, but both the Post and the Times got it. Apparently Meadows was in the habit of burning documents in the fireplace in his office. Which might well amount to a violation of the Presidential Records Act, so no doubt the Republicans will be calling to lock him up in email jail any second now.
HAHA.
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