Yesterday, after watching the Thursday broadcast of the latest Congressional Hearings into the attack on the U.S. Capitol, I sat down to write a reaction, but the words just didn't mesh the way I wanted, and I abandoned the effort. Fortunately, that work was done for me by Washington Post contributing editor Matt Bai in Friday's paper. It's spot on, in my view. If you can access the Post, have a look for "These January 6 Witnesses are Doing the Right Thing Now. But They're Not Heroes."
If you can't access the Post, I offer here a few tortured phrases of my own:
Cipollone, Pottinger, Matthews, and others who testified that night are all White House staffers, confessed stalwart Republicans, several with military experience, all of whom took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. Pottinger and Matthews resigned after January 6 because of what they saw and heard that day. The question that arose in my mind was "Why so late?" They could not have been blind to all the illegal shenanigans Trump had been up to for months before, attempting to deny his election loss and engineer a steal.
I was especially puzzled by how cool and detached these witnesses remained, even when reviewing Trump's televised message to the nation on January 7, the one in which, far from condemning the insurgency he sparked, he yet again implied that the election had been stolen. Outrageous, unpatriotic, and just plain crazy to boot. But asked their views of that statement, Cipollone, Matthews, Pottinger, and others tiptoed. Some ventured that Trump's statement was "unhelpful," others intoned that it was "not what we needed." Weren't they appalled that the gutless wimp they worked for was repeating an insidious, self-justifying lie? Was it only on January 6 or 7 that they recognized that the president was unhinged and the entire White House (themselves included) had been covering up for him for months?
Sorry, but circumstances suggest they "came clean" for Congress (and we can be grateful that they did) but only because the end was in sight, and they hoped to salvage their reputations in hopes of an appointment in the next Republican administration. No heroes here, folks.
I, too, wonder how any sane person could have continued to work for a man as obviously unhinged as Trump -- just as I wonder how millions of voters can support and vote for him.
As for publicly testifying against him ... I think I'd be afraid he'd send a hitman after me. (Yes, I can believe he'd stoop to that.)
Posted by: PiedType | July 24, 2022 at 01:20 PM