"America never would have gotten into this mess if it weren't for me and my friends."

[kpete]

How (and why) 'normal' Republican staffers paved the road to Trump (On Point Jul14) — Tim Miller, The Bulwark's writer-at-large. …

There was no fraud. They all knew there was no fraud.

Nobody was vacillating on what they should do because they felt a need to weigh the possibility that Italian satellites were using Jewish space lasers to change votes from Trump to Biden. None of them thought a seizure of the voting machines might reveal illegal Chinese bamboo ballots. The set of normals who were made to think twice about the likelihood of voter fraud by Rudy Giuliani’s slurred rants delivered as pee-pee dribbled down his pants—yeah, it’s an empty set.

This was an open-and-shut case. As Richard Donoghue put it in his testimony yesterday, what Trump and his crew was pushing was “pure insanity” and “patently absurd.”

https://thetriad.thebulwark.com/p/jan-6th-and-why-we-did-it
https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2022/07/14/in-why-we-did-it-tim-miller-reflects-on-trumps-rise-and-politics-as-a-game

[Irish_Dem]

1. There is plenty of evidence that Trump and his inner circle committed horrific crimes.

The question is what will we do about it?

Currently there does not seem to be a great deal of political will to fight the GOP.

[Lovie777]

2. It's not over ....

shithole and his comrades and cult are planning a take over be it peaceful or hostile, it don't matter.

[agingdem]

3. and yet all those chickshit staffers

kept their mouths shut, indulged a depraved psychopath, and only sounded the alarm after the Capital was desecrated, officers were under attack, and gallows erected.

..and with subpoenas hanging over their heads and the real possibility of jail time did they come forward with their "victim/hero" account 18 months after January 6...

[UpInArms]

4. More from your link

"And after that debate, I saw Reince at a reception for RNC donors, and I pulled him aside. We went out in the hallway and I looked at him and I said, as a friend, I'm advising you to quit. Because Trump is going to ruin you and you don't know what what bad stuff he's going to do. But you know that he is corrupt. You know that he will say outrageous things. You know he'll say cruel things. And quit now, and you don't have to become a Never Trumper, but you can just say Trump deserves his own person here and you can quit to protect yourself.

"And he told me at the time, he said, No, we need to have a good guy in the room when this stuff happens. And if Trump ever goes over the line, I promise you I'll quit. And it's a shortened version of the conversation. But he made that promise to me very, very clearly. And obviously that was not a promise that he lived up to. He ended up becoming Trump's first chief of staff, and he gets fired by tweet sitting on the tarmac 3 minutes after Trump was on the phone with him. And told him that he should come out to play some golf so they can discuss what the next steps were. He never saw it coming."

Tim Miller: "In private, he was saying that he wished that he could have an exit strategy that would have allowed him to get out. He wanted to have a heart attack, but not a heart attack that was bad enough to have long term impacts. Because he had kids. But he was hoping for a heart attack that was just bad enough that would give him cover to quit, but not so bad that it would actually hurt his long term health.

"I mean ... I just think that was such a telling example of how these guys are grappling with all this. ... This is Reince admitting he knows he's wishing for a heart attack. Trump is so bad, he's wishing for a heart attack. So this is not a person that doesn't know who Trump is, but he still goes into the White House. He still gets drug along. He still sticks around after the Muslim ban. Why? And it was this desire. He just wanted to be in the mix so bad.

"He just wanted to be in the room where it happened so bad that he couldn't bring himself to quit. He was hoping for a medical intervention to help him do what inside he knew was right. And I just think that's such an important story. Because like Steve Bannon is not that interesting. He's a sociopathic extremist. He likes Trump. So those people aren't as interesting to me as the people who knew Trump was bad. They knew so much that they were wishing for a medical event, and yet they stuck with him anyway. And trying to understand why. Why? Because those are the people that allowed all of the horrors."

I just have to add … I hate the political operatives who are similar to remora eels …. just sucking the shit off the big fish

[rgbecker]

5. I heard Adolf Eichmann had wished for a heart attack too....

Very common for people when they realize they are idiots.

[hay rick]

8. Good excerpt. Thanks.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

9. Liars, thieves, sociopaths -- the whole gang of parasites.

[Swede]

6. WWG1WGA

As they like to tell everyone.

[deurbano]

7. Banality of evil. (Still evil.)