“You’re Fired!”: The Short Shelf Life of a Trump Enabler

“I am ashamed because I know what Mr. Trump is.  He is a racist.  He is a conman.  He is a cheat.”- Michael Cohen's House Testimony: The Complete Transcripts and Case DocumentsLearn More
  “You’ve got two camps right now of people who should speak out and haven’t. The first camp knows Trump is a dangerous and vindictive man but doesn’t want to upend their lives by provoking his ire. The second camp is more nakedly transactional." - Miles Taylor, former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security in the Trump administration McCarthy sided with Trump partisans in voting to toss out votes from swing state electoral votes of Arizona and Pennsylvania just hours after a mob forcibly invaded the Capitol.  In May 2021 McCarthy endorsed the Republican wave of state voter suppression laws because Republican voters lack “confidence in the electoral system".    McCarthy is not out to smooth out the Trumpiest elements of the GOP. And he’s rarely hinted that he finds the more bumptious members on his right flank to be real problems, including members of he Freedom Caucus, the hard-line group that is now less formally conservative than a vehicle for Trumpism,  and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), perhaps the most divisive member of his conference. “For somebody who has the picture of Ronald Reagan on his wall in his office in the Capitol, the notion that now Kevin McCarthy is going to make himself the leader of the pro-Putin wing of my party is just a stunning thing.”  — Liz Cheney, Meet the Press, October 23, 2022.Learn More
"Jones and [Roger] Stone amplified and intensified Trump’s incendiary and baseless claims that the 2020 election was illegitimate in the weeks leading up to the U.S. Capitol riot."     Learn More
In his failed bid to oversee Arizona elections as Arizona's Secretary of State, Finchem baselessly promoted former President Trump's Big Lie of election and voter fraud.
  • Finchem fervently supported the "Stop the Steal" movement, which falsely claimed that Donald Trump won the 2020 election nationally and in Arizona,
  • called for the Arizona legislature to appoint "presidential electors of its own choosing" (fake electors),
  • was a chief proponent of the discredited post-election ballot review in Arizona (fake audits), and 
  •  and naturally was enthusiastically  endorsed by Trump in his bid to oversee future elections in Arizona.
  • Election-denier Finchem characteristically has not yet conceded loss of his bid for Secretary of State of Arizona, premised on a promise to root out non-existent voter and election fraud.
   
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After Joe Biden won the state of Arizona, Hoffman, an Arizona state representative, declared himself a state elector and attempted to submit false documents to the National Archive asserting that Arizona had been won by Republican candidate Donald Trump.Learn More
For weeks, California’s two most powerful Republicans in Congress would not say whether they’d back President Donald Trump’s last-ditch effort to throw out electoral votes from swing states he lost in November. In the end, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee Rep. Devin Nunes sided with Trump partisans in voting to toss out votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania.Their vote to dismiss swing state electoral votes came just hours after a mob overwhelmed Capitol Police, forcibly invading the Capitol and forcing senators and representatives to evacuate the House and Senate chambers and shelter in place.     Learn More

Priebus on the Trump White House - wow

“When you put a snake and a rat and a falcon and a rabbit and a shark and a seal in a zoo without walls, things start getting nasty and bloody,” 

‘Fear': Bob Woodward Pulls Back the Curtain on President Trump’s Crazytown’,

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Podcaster Dobbs, staunchly anti-democracy propagandist: “If president Trump can win again, he would join Winston Churchill and Alexander the Great among the greatest leaders of world history,” Dobbs, quoting his own book, “The Trump Century” (2020).“And if he falls short, well, there is no point in considering the possibility. He’s a winner — the winner.”  After Trump’s loss, Dobbs took his propaganda-like praise of then President Trump to a higher level, asking “. . . why not just say we’re not going to accept the results of this election? It’s outrageous.”     Learn More
  • Liddell on Twitter claimed Trump won by historic landslide and blamed loss on “one of the biggest foreign attacks in our country ever!” 
  • MyPillow CEO sticks by Trump, baselessly blames Antifa for Capitol violence. Business Journal” bizjournals.com, Jan. 8 2021
  • Dominion Voting Systems has brought a defamation action against Lindell for false claims that the company’s voting machines were manipulated to swing the election to Biden. washingtonpost.com, Feb. 22, 2021 
  • Mr. Lindell 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; Mr. Flynn, Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama; the Trump advisers Peter Navarro, Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie
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It only takes one honest lawyer.

Mr. Cipollone was a witness to some of the most significant moments in Mr. Trump’s push to overturn the election results, including discussions about seizing voting machines, meddling in the Justice Department and sending false letters to state officials about election fraud.

“That’s a terrible idea for the country,” he said of suggestions that the Trump administration seize voting machines, adding, “That’s not how we do things in the United States.”

Mr. Cipollone was also in direct contact with Mr. Trump on Jan. 6 as rioters stormed the Capitol and told the House committee he believed more should have been done to call off the mob.

“I think I was pretty clear there needed to be an immediate and forceful response, statement, public statement, that people need to leave the Capitol now,” Mr. Cipollone testified.

 

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Rush Limbaugh's election lies about Dominion Voting Systems reached millions of listeners. He repeatedly promoted debunked conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems as part of his broader campaign to undermine the credibility of the 2020 presidential election.Learn More

Mulvaney: No conscience

2016: Mulvaney, just days before Trump was elected: 

“I’m supporting Donald Trump…he is a “terrible human being.” 

As director of OMB, Mulvaney okayed the withholding of almost $400 million Congress had appropriated for Ukraine’s protection against Russia. In May 2019, he set up “the three amigos,” Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, special envoy Kurt Volker, and Energy Secretary Rick Perry, to pressure Zelensky.

When the story came out, Mulvaney told the press that Trump had indeed withheld the money to pressure Zelensky to help him cheat in the 2020 election. “I have news for everybody,” he said. “Get over it. There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy.” He immediately walked the story back, but there it was.

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Sept. 29, 2019
Pirro imagines barbarians storming the White House gates:
 “The White House stands alone like an ancient walled city with barbarians storming the gates, looking to annihilate the man the American people put in that house in 2016.”
Jan. 6, 2021
Pirro sees barbarians storming the U.S. Capitol gates:
“I want to be clear.  The actions at the United States Capitol three days ago were deplorable, reprehensible, outright criminal."   Learn More
Mo Finally Comes Clean: Mo Brooks, on losing his Senator seat, having refuting Trump's claim of election fraud: "As a lawyer, I’ve repeatedly advised President Trump that January 6 was the final election contest verdict and neither the U.S. Constitution nor the U.S. Code permit what President Trump asks. Period.” “I’ve told President Trump the truth knowing full well that it might cause President Trump to rescind his endorsement.”  Learn More
“President Trump is wrong,” Mr. Pence said at the time. “I had no right to overturn the election.”  Learn More
Louisiana Republican U.S. Sen. John Kennedy joined an effort to refuse certifying electors from six states, in hopes of denying the presidency to the election's winner, Joe Biden. Trump won those states in 2016, but voters there backed Biden in 2020. Undisputed Senate king of the waffle, Oxford, England-educated Sen. Kennedy then characteristically waffled: “You will never find where I ever said, anywhere, that the election was stolen or not stolen,” Kennedy told WWL-TV in his first extended interview about his votes Jan. 6 and the Capitol riot that attempted to derail the peaceful transfer of power.
“Now, having said that, I have never seen demonstrated evidence proven in a court of law that it made a difference. I'm not saying it did. I'm not saying that it didn't. I'm not sure anybody knows,” he said.
Kennedy acknowledged that “some people” say there were no significant voting irregularities at all, but said even if that were true, “people perceived that there were. And that's undermining our election integrity.”
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  • Barr told lawmakers that since Mueller had declined to reach a conclusion on obstruction of justice, he and his deputy made their own determination that the evidence was lacking. When Mueller’s full report was released weeks later, Mueller's  office said there was “substantial evidence” of obstruction. He also wrote a letter to Barr saying the attorney general had mischaracterized his team’s work.
  • Immediately after the [Roger Stone] sentencing recommendation, Trump tweeted that it was “horrible and unfair” and a “miscarriage of justice.” The Justice Department, operating under Attorney General William Barr, then reversed itself.  In response, all four of the federal prosecutors responsible for Roger Stone’s case withdrew. The administration also abruptly pulled the nomination of the former U.S. attorney who oversaw the Stone prosecution for a top position in the Treasury Department. Trump tweeted: “Congratulations to Attorney General Bill Barr for taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have even been brought. Evidence now clearly shows that the Mueller Scam was improperly brought & tainted.”
  • By repeating false and misleading statements about the potential for voter fraud and post-election violence, Attorney General Barr stepped out of his role as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer and marred the 2020 elections.
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Mitch McConnell - "no worries" about voter suppression or Trump's continuing threats to American democracy - really? Senate minority leader McConnell, who blasted Trump in January for his false allegations of election fraud, views federal legislation that would invalidate voter suppression laws inspired by Trump's Big Lie as "a problem in search of a solution . . . " Asked about Americans ranking threats to democracy higher than other issues, including the cost of living, McConnell told reporters, “I do think it’s an important issue. There were those who were trying to prevent the orderly transfer of power for the first time in American history,” after the 2020 presidential election, “and that was not good.” But the top Senate Republican does not believe that American democracy is facing immediate danger, citing efforts to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power between the election on Nov. 3 and the inauguration on Jan. 20, 2021, that were “thwarted.” “I guess that’s had some impact on the poll. … But look, I think we have a very solid democracy,” McConnell continued. “I don’t think of the things that we need to worry about, I wouldn’t be worried about that one.” ----- “You’ve got two camps right now of people who should speak out and haven’t. The first camp knows Trump is a dangerous and vindictive man but doesn’t want to upend their lives by provoking his ire. The second camp is more nakedly transactional." - Miles Taylor, former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security in the Trump administrationLearn More

“If the American system of government fails this year, it will not be because the institutions established by the Founders failed. It will not be because of new technologies or flaws in the Constitution. No system of government can protect against a determined tyrant. Only the people can. This year we will learn if they will.”

— Robert Kagan