Well folks, it seems like some people just can’t get enough of the “Godfather Part II”-esque drama surrounding Donald Trump’s legal troubles. Early polling has revealed that some folks out there think that whole New York indictment thing is just politics as usual. And boy, oh boy, is Mr. Trump ever raising a ton of money and getting even more popular in the polls after all this hullabaloo.
But hey, as we all know, consensus and order are about as common as finding a unicorn in your backyard. Representative Lofgren can vouch for that after being on the Jan. 6 committee. I mean, did y’all see the unique presentation structure of that thing? You had to have everyone on the same page about the mission: find all the facts and report them. Miraculously, there wasn’t any political divide on that. Of course, that didn’t mean everyone was seeing eye to eye on everything all the time. They had to hash stuff out behind closed doors, but hey, that’s rare.
You know what’s even rarer? Agreeing on what actually happened and why things went wrong—even when you’re in a smaller group behind closed doors. That’s why folks are turning to societal weight to keep Trump in check. Society is all about adding a little more weight, a little more weight, and a little more weight to contain that guy. It’s like deterrence and truth all rolled into one mess of a plan. But hey, we’ve got to do something, right?
In the midst of all this chaos, there’s one thing that stands out. It’s a little story that represents all the frustrating parts of this whole debacle. In the materials released by the select committee over Christmas, a former White House deputy press secretary, Sarah Matthews, spoke about an argument between the press staff about who would benefit if Trump called off his insurrection and whether he should condemn the violence or not. Matthews wanted him to tell everyone to go home, but someone suggested that maybe antifa people were behind it all. Matthews argued that condemning the violence was a no-brainer, but someone else kept saying that would let the media “win” because Dems hadn’t condemned violence during the protests after George Floyd’s death in 2020. Matthews pointed at the TV and yelled, “Do you think we’re winning right now?” before storming out and resigning.
On the one hand, who cares? It’s just one little episode from the report of a committee that doesn’t even exist anymore. On the other hand, it highlights how much American politics have changed since 2016. When Matthews testified publicly last summer and worked for House Republicans, the House Republican Conference called her a liar and pawn on Twitter before deleting the post. Yikes.
Serious News: nytimes
