Jan. 6, 2021: Even Fox News’s Sean Hannity tried to stop the madness, in a text to Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany: “Hey now, no more crazy people, no more stolen election talk. Yes, impeachment and 25th amendment are real. Many people will quit.”
Trump’s ‘deep-state’ warrior
Trump has repeatedly blasted an alleged “Deep State” in the intelligence community, repeatedly accusing career officials of seeking to undermine his administration from the inside despite no evidence to back up his claims. In between his turns in government, Grenell had a public affairs consulting firm called Capitol Media Partners. One of the firm’s clients, according to the financial disclosure that Grenell filed when he became an ambassador, was Arthur J. Finkelstein, the late Republican political consultant whose international clients included Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary. Learn More
Newsmax founder Ruddy became a full-time Trump functionary, cashing in on the demand for pro-Trump news, building up his TV network, dining with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and watching his revenue rise. “He made his pact with the devil,” as Leamer put it. “He knew what Trump was.”
Newsmax went all in as Trump sought re-election (Ruddy made another former National Enquirer editor, David Perel, the editorial director) and Newsmax TV gave credence to every lie told by Trump up to and including speculation that Biden was “cognitively impaired” and that the election was stolen through chicanery involving Dominion Voting Systems.
While the January 6 Capitol riots were under way, Newsmax initially reported that it was only “6 to 10 people” breaching the building and speculated that they were antifa, later providing uncritical airtime to a Trump rioter who declared “this is our house, and we have the right to be here.” Learn More
Giuliani life lesson #1?
Blind loyalty to a demagogue never pays:
January 2021: Giuliani to insurrectionists at U.S. Capitol: "Over the next 10 days, we get to see the machines that are crooked, the ballots that are fraudulent. If we're wrong we will be made fools of, but if we're right a lot of them will go to jail. Let's have trial by combat".
July 2022: An Appeals Court Has Suspended Rudy Giuliani's Ability To Practice Law In D.C. July 2022: Trump Sails Away as Rudy Giuliani Drowns in Legal Bills July 2022: Giuliani subject to $1.3 billion suit by Dominion Voting Systems for “a viral disinformation campaign” July 2022: Alexander Vindman sues Trump Jr. and Giuliani, alleging retaliation over first Trump impeachment proceedings July 2022: Rudy Giuliani, oversaw fake electors plot in 7 states August 2022: Giuliani Is Told He Is a Target in Trump Election Inquiry in Georgia August 2023: Guiliani Becomes Co-Consiprator #1 August 2023: Enter Trump to Pay Loyal Rudy's Legal Fees Learn More
2020: Steve Bannon sought to overturn the certified results falsely alleging illegal voting, mail-in ballots and voting machines.
He and Peter Navarro authored a plan "to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to misuse his role as the person officially counting electoral ballots and instead reject them, delaying the certification of Biden’s victory and giving Republican-controlled state legislatures time to overturn the election."
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Eric Trump ”liked” a Tweet identifying QAnon “Shaman” Jacob Chansley and the assault on the U.S. Capitol as “a staged #Antifa attack”.
In response to such false accusations: Fox News' Jeanine Pirro Blasts Pro-Trump Capitol Rioters, Says Don't Blame Antifa: ‘You Did It’
Mr. Flynn was also present at the Trump International Hotel on Jan. 5 for a meeting that included about 15 people, where the discussion centered on “how to put pressure on more members of Congress to object to the Electoral College results,” according to one attendee, Charles Herbster, a Republican candidate for governor of Nebraska.
Among those in attendance, according to Mr. Herbster, were Mr. Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr.; Mr. Giuliani; Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama; the Trump advisers Peter Navarro, Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie; and Mike Lindell, the MyPillow executive and conspiracy theorist. (Boldface added) Learn More
It all comes home to roost for Sean Hannity.
Dec. 2, 2020: Hannity tears into mainstream media for 'totally, completely' ignoring election fraud claims: 'We will remain independent. We answer only to the truth,' the 'Hannity' host told his viewers.
August 25, 2022: Dominion’s legal complaint lays out how Fox repeatedly aired conspiracy theories about the company’s purported role in a plot to steal votes from former President Donald J. Trump, and argues that its business has suffered considerably as a result. Those falsehoods — including that Dominion was a pawn of the Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez and that its machines were designed with a feature that allowed votes to be flipped from one candidate to another — aired night after night as Fox hosts like Mr. Hannity and Mr. Dobbs allowed guests to make them on their shows, and in some cases vouched for them.
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November 2021: Jared Kushner advising Trump to 'pursue his legal remedies' to the election.
June 2022: Next was Mr. Kushner. In his video he was pressed by Representative Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chairwoman, about whether he was aware that the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, had been threatening to resign because Mr. Trump was making increasingly outlandish efforts to stay in power.
He added that he knew that Mr. Cipollone and “the team were always saying, ‘Oh we are going to resign, we are not going to be there if this happens, if that happens.’ So I kind of took it up to just be whining, to be honest with you.”
Ms. Cheney: “Whining,” she said. “There’s a reason why people serving in our government take an oath to the constitution. As our founding fathers recognized, democracy is fragile. The people in positions of public trust are duty bound to defend it, to step forward when action is required.
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On Tuesday, the committee announced 10 new subpoenas that seemed to expand the aperture of the inquiry even further, seeking information from top officials in Mr. Trump’s White House including Stephen Miller, his senior adviser . . . . In its order to Mr. Miller, the committee said that he had helped to spread false claims of voter fraud in the election, and to encourage state legislatures to appoint alternate slates of electors in an effort to invalidate Mr. Biden’s victory.
- Huckabee:“The president in no way, form or fashion has ever promoted or encouraged violence. If anything, quite the contrary.”
- Trump: “So if you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously. Just knock the hell .... I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise. I promise."
- Trump, inciting the insurrectionists: “And we fight. We fight like hell. And, if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
Poor Ted - unmanned, unprincipled, unliked, yet drowning in ambition:
"The call was just one step in a collaboration [between Trump and Cruz] that for two months turned the once-bitter political enemies into close allies in the effort to keep Trump in the White House based on the president’s false claims about a stolen election. By Cruz’s own account, he was “leading the charge” to prevent the certification of Joe Biden as president."
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On "The Beat" tonight, Ari Melber connected Trump Co-Conspirator John Eastman to Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX). Just before midnight on January 6, 2021, after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, Eastman wrote to Pence’s lawyer to beg him to get Pence to adjourn Congress “for 10 days to allow the legislatures to finish their investigations, as well as to allow a full forensic audit of the massive amount of illegal activity that has occurred here.” On the floor of the Senate at about the same time, Cruz, who voted against certification, used very similar language when he called for “a ten-day emergency audit.” Learn More