HAVE THE DEMOCRATS ANY CHANCE IN THE MIDTERMS?

Conventional wisdom has the Democrats going down the tubes in the November midterms. Five Thirty Eight the number one independent political forecasters rate the Democrats’ chances of hanging onto the House at thirteen percent and Senate at forty - seven percent. The reasons given by most pundits for this doomsday scenario are multiple.They include the high inflation numbers, the rising interest rates and gas prices as well as Biden’s low approval numbers. Adding to the Democratic woes are, the traditional mid term poor performance of the party that occupies the White House, the gerrymandering of constituencies and voter suppression enacted by the Republicans. To add insult to injury certain sections of the Democratic Party, who don’t understand how it all works, have their hands in the air screaming that Biden should do more about gun control and abortion rights. Also Senator Joe Manchin’s refusal to provide the fiftieth vote needed on to push forward on axing the filibuster and help codify abortion rights into Federal Law, has produced frustration towards the whole party.

THE DIVIDED AGENDAS OF THE “REPUBLICANS” AND THE PROBLEMS THEY COULD FACE

But Jay H. Ell is not so sure that the situation is hopeless as there are number of factors, with five months to go, which could mitigate the situation. First and foremost the “Republicans" are divided on what  their message should be. Mitch McConnell would like their policy to be simply making the Biden Presidency “disaster” front and central, offering no “Republican” agenda.  He is a lone but influential voice in the latter regard with even his own senatorial head of the midterm election thrust, Tim Scott, having laid out a detailed GOP manifesto. Others want to run simply on the economy. Nearly forty percent are committed to the Big Lie and the others just want to avoid answering questions about Trump. While yet another groups want to run a culture war against the "woke" radical left agenda.

 The economic situation is complicated while the impact of the Supreme Court’s ruling on abortion and the issue of gun rights ostensibly having no influence on the voters cannot be valid when the polling numbers indicate that over seventy percent of the population are in favor of abortion rights and want stricter gun control legislation. Also the belief that the January 6 testimony will have no influence on voters has to be nonsense. No “Republican” candidate is making a thing of attacking it nor is Fox full blast twenty four seven blasting it off the face of the earth or challenging any evidence routinely. 

It is necessary to look at these variables that really don’t jive with a wholesale slaughter of the Democrats this November.

TRUMP VERSUS BIDEN

This line up is becoming more and more inevitable. Trump will frighten several "Republican" candidates away by announcing early but will there be enough in the field to allow him to win the nomination with less than fifty percent as he did in 2016? Trump is leaning on announcing soon on the assumption that the Justice Departments then won't indict him. The reason that this is relevant now is that Trump in order to keep his narrative going has to run on that he is still President. He will hog the lime light and suck all the oxygen out of the atmosphere. Biden beat him last time sitting in his basement while Trump held his madcap rallies and spat out out hundreds of tweets. So he is at no new disadvantage with Trump hogging the media.

Already the generic ballot which the Republicans led on is evening out. Some polls even have the Democrats ahead. The fascinating statistic is that of those that disapprove of Biden, sixty percent, a sizable amount are still prepared to vote Democrat. This is a departure from previous midterms but is not really unexpected as Biden is no charismatic leader but at the end of the day he represents stability. 

The Democrats claim their internal polling sees them ahead in all the Senate seats that they hold as well as two that were formerly Republican - Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. They have even argued that Ohio and North Carolina are trending their way. Put another way is it really comprehensible that the swing voters in all the states on the Senate ballot who gave Biden his victory in 2020 are going to vote for candidates who either support Trump’s Big Lie or just duck the question? As Five Thirty Eight has researched, thirty six percent of “Republican” candidates for Congress, Governorships or Secretary of States have backed the Big Lie. This is what the Republican Party is running on whether McConnell likes it or not. Trumpism is so entrenched that Kevin McCarthy the candidate who has an eighty - seven percent chance of being the next Speaker of the House of Representatives has indicated that he is going to have an investigation into the January 6 Committee, impeach Biden and investigate all Trump’s claptrap. 

But the pundits claim the voting will boil down to the economy.

“IT’S THE ECONOMY - STUPID”

James Carville’s iconic statement that ushered Bill Clinton to two terms to the White House, “It’s the economy - stupid” is trotted out as a article of faith only second to the dictum that in the midterms the Party that has the Presidency gets, in President Obama’s phraseology, “a shellacking”. The perception is that the economy sucks. The main parameter for this belief is the record high inflation figures and the high price of gas. With regard to the latter it has come down fifty cents in the past few weeks and is at least half the price of anywhere else in the world. Rationally it comes at the cost of supporting the Ukrainians who have bipartisan support, notwithstanding that the Bannon/Trump clique back Putin - “a genius”. Recession is on everyone’s lips. The latter defined as two quarters of negative GDP and always a retrospective diagnosis made when the economy is recovering.

The facts on the economic ground don’t paint such a bleak picture. Unemployment rate at three point six percent is at its historic low and wages have increased dramatically. The minimum wage is fifteen dollars forty cents in twenty states. There are job vacancies, two available for every individual who might be available for employment. In every commercial window there are notices, “We are hiring”, offering bonuses in some instances up to thousand dollars for minimum wage employment. Yet the doom and gloom persists.

Admittedly Apple and other major companies have slowed down employment but this relates to engineers and doesn’t impact the average worker. The Federal Reserve has increased interest rates to a basic three point eighty - five percent. Thirty year mortgages are at five point three percent. This modest increase has brought down house prices and the price of commodities all round have come tumbling down. However, if this was the central issue in the election it would obviously favor the "Republicans".

Interestingly enough, to Mitch McConnell, the "Republican" Minority Leader in the Senate’s, dismay the “Republicans” are not running on what is perceived to be their strong point namely Biden’s “dismal” performance”. Besides The Big Lie they are campaigning against the left wing “woke” agenda. Rick DeSantis, the Governor of Florida who is considered Trump’s main opposition, is running his gubernatorial campaign against the left wing “woke” agendas.  

The Heritage Foundation is a key “Republican” think tank that often lays down the line, They are instituting a massive campaign against the Environmental, Social And Governance Movement, ESG, which produces reports on investing in those who fulfill their criteria of meeting societal needs. The Heritage Action Committee, claims, “The Latest and most dangerous attempt to undermine our market and force a woke agenda on America is called the ESG - Left - wing activists". 

This awakening of business practices and investing and even governmental assessment of projects has been brought into the pubic consciousness coinciding with the midterms and has to be new to anyone other than those in the “Republican” inner circle. It coincides with business allying more and more against the nihilistic and cruel policies supported by the “Republicans” and the Supreme Court. For example every major company has offered to cover out of state abortion costs for their employees. The Foundation have to be aware that one of the major catalysts that sent apartheid packing was big business. 

On the face of it is not only the Democrats who want the midterms to be more about, “Who we are as a people”.

ABORTION AS A CAMPAIGN ISSUE

 

This issue is only beginning to show the sad outcome of the ideological activist ignorant decision of the Supreme Court which was the predictable result as the Trump Court delivered what he said they would. According to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Political Action Groups spent nearly six hundred million dollars in advertising and caucusing for the election of Justices, Gorsich, Kavanaugh and Barrett. Most of this anonymously donated, the largest contribution being seventeen million dollars. This could be legally undertaken as a result of a Supreme Court decision where the Court interpreted money as the equivalent to free speech.

The aftermath of the Court's ruling on abortion has been greeted with glee and action by the “Republicans” who have interpreted the ruling to enact, in the States they control, more and more draconian laws with severe penalties to the doctors that perform them. 

First allow Jay H. Ell to give a short explanation on what the term abortion encompasses.

One out of four normal pregnancies end in an abortion or a miscarriage. Several of those need no treatment as the foetal material is absorbed. However a large number develop what are called incomplete abortions or miscarriages. Often they only expel a portion of the fetal parts and they need medical intervention to prevent serious complications such as hemorrhaging, infection, infection in the blood stream, sepsis, infertility and even death. Then twenty of a thousand pregnancies in the United States are ectopic pregnancies. They are a leading cause of mortality  in women in the first trimester. So much for the complications and risks to more than one quarter of the women who are being treated by law like the rest.

At the outset no one but no one is happy about a miscarriage or a planned abortion.

Planned or elective abortions fall into two groups - those that even the most rabid of “pro life” advocates should acknowledge, namely rape violent or statutory, pregnancy in anyone under the age of consent, incest, and to prevent serious complications including death to the mother. There are those that are elective which decision is made for a host of reasons including health, financial or social. Planned or induced pregnancies as a group have decreased dramatically over the past decades and the latest figures from 2019 indicate there were approximately six hundred and fifty thousand as compared to the 1990’s were there were a million and a half. This pales into insignificance as to the one in four that follow a normal pregnancy.

 However several “Republican" States are not making any distinction between a miscarriage and planned termination. They are banning all abortion care throwing the medical world into chaos. Doctors are threatened with legal action and in America they are licensed by the state. Some are not only not making any exceptions for generally accepted criteria, they are not differentiating between miscarriages and planned abortions because the laws do not. To reinforce the point conventional miscarriages far exceed the number of planned abortions many of which are performed for medical reasons any way.

Since the Supreme Court ruling a few weeks the media has been plastered with incidents where morbidity and death of women have been at risk for common complications of a miscarriage, as doctors and pharmacists withhold treatment. The feeble response of the apologists was that these stories are anecdotal. The  argument has been flattened by the new President of the American Medical Association, Dr. Jack Resnick, who states that he has had multiple reports from all around the country of clinical situations where doctors have refused to give routine treatment risking complications. In fact severe life threatening complications have been reported as doctors literally waited for women  with miscarriages to get sick enough to treat

Just to quote one response from the Texas Attorney General who maintained that there could not be a legal basis for the differentiation between miscarriages or “illegally” started abortions, as the ER would become a walk in abortion clinic. He is right because women will be unable to go to their regular doctors and they will go to the ER which hopefully has the back up of a corporation. 

The pathetic story of the ten year old child from Ohio who was raped and then counseld that she could carry the child to term was considered “unfortunate”. She then crossed state lines to have a medical abortion. Murdoch’s Fox snd Wall Street Journal in tandem with Republican Congresspeople  challenged the story, claiming it was made up. When the rapist was arrested and confessed there was no contrition but just a meh. To exacerbate the vindictiveness and cruelty in this relentless campaign the Indiana attorney general stated the doctor’s actions were illegal and he was investigating her. When his accusation proved patently false he like the apologists did not let up and the doctor has demanded a retraction or she will sue.

It is hard to believe that the suburban women who voted against Trump in 2020 and women in general are not going to go ballistic as this crisis crescendos each day. The polling figures show, depending how the question is put, up to eighty percent of voters want Roe to be retained. It has really helped the Democrats who were behind in the generic vote and have now caught up. Sadly as the days go by the situation will become chaotic and as sure as there are going to be mass shootings there are going to be maternal mortalities.

GUNS AND THE SECOND AMENDMENT.

Jay H. Ell has blogged on the unbelievable legalization of weapons of war available to eighteen year olds. The “Republicans” are so beholden to the morally and financially bankrupt National Rifle Association that they wouldn’t even limit purchase to those over twenty one years of age, On June 29, 2022 Jay H. Ell blogged, “Guns, Culture, Politics, Money, The Supreme Court and Tiny Coffins”. (To easily find it go to the opening page of the site and look at archives on the right. Click on June and then the click on the article). Since Uvalde there have been literally dozens of mass shootings including one that shook the nation in affluent Highland Park just North of Chicago. The sleepy hollow whose main street is out of a film set of the fifties was the scene of slaughter at the July 4 annual parade attended by the whole community. Seven people were killed and forty injured. Those who believe that “It could never happen here” were subject to the rude awakening that so many other communities have experienced. Highland Park last experienced a homicide in 1994.

As the Mayor of  Highland Park testified that there were scores of good people with guns on the scene and they could do nothing, echoing the scenario at Uvalde where there were three hundred and seventy five such men. Yet this narrative is still the rationale of the protagonists. Like with abortion deniers there are “Conservative” NGO’s backing and supporting the Supreme Court’s embrace of creating a nation armed to the teeth.

Again at least two thirds of American voters polled want more gun restrictive laws. How this is not going to impact voters in 2022 is a mystery.

JANUARY 6 HEARINGS AND THEIR SEQUALAE

Jay H. Ell’s most recent blog covered this subject - “The Fairy Tale Story of Cassidy Hutchinson and the Wicked President”. (It is recoverable by clicking on the archives as outlined above). Cassidy's historic intervention was followed by the devastating expose of Trump’s behavior in the one hundred eighty seven minutes where he pored oil on the flames of a domestic terror insurrection. Needless to say Murdoch’s Fox News was the only news channel that did not cover the earth shattering hearing live. Then there is the recent revelations of the Secret Service with Trump’s handpicked head James Murray. The irrireristible inference is that Trump’s detail colluded in a cover up of  criminal activity. In case it is forgotten Pence refused get into a car because it was being driven by a detail that was not his. 

The Democrats believe that anyone who backs The Big Lie or has been endorsed by the former President is at an electoral disadvantage and they represent thirty - six percent of the “Republican” candidates for key State and Congressional elections.. So much does their internal polling figures reflect this they have backed these candidates in the “Republican” Primaries with adverts on the assumption that they will be easier to beat in the midterms.

.The “Republicans” also believe that Trump will be a liability. Frank Luntz the famed "Republican" focus group organizer claimed there was a frustration towards Trump by "Republicans" while Sarah Longwill claims that her focus hearings have resulted that everyone in her focus groups want another "GOP" candidate. These confirm polls that have noted diminishing support for Trump as the nominee.

 Vice President Pence, who is almost certain to run, was a guest speaker at the influential GOP Congress Study group where most of those voted not to accept the 2020 election results reportedly encouraged Pence to run. Trump and Pence are hosting competing rallies in Arizona as they are backing different candidates in the “Republican” Primary for governor. Pence is hardly featured on the charts but he is what is left of the Conservative establishment's choice. Even if he became the candidate one wonders how he could win backing a national abortion. Rick DeSantis the Florida Governor has all but announced his candidature and in some states he is in a statistical tie with Trump.

So Trump will not frighten all off if he announces his candidacy early. And who knows whether he will escape indictment?

AT THE END OF THE DAY

There is a long way to go before the midterms. However there is every indication that Trump not Biden will be the central figure in the 2022 election and in 2024, whether he gets the nomination or not. Jay H. Ell projects that he would run as an Independent in the unlikely event that he is not the nominee.

As indicated the future is not what it used to be as far as the Democrats are concerned especially in the Senate. The House has to be a reach. Only two administrations holding the White House in the past sixty years have not lost seats in the midterms. 

Bannon's guilty finding will bolster the January 6 credibility.

The leaking of Trump's America First plan, if re elected, which would not only gut the Environment Protection Agency and Internal Revenue departments but reach into the Secret Service, Pentagon and the State Departments is bound to become the next center of the news cycle. All part of Bannon's dream.

THE FAIRY TALE OF CASSIDY HUTCHINSON AND THE WICKED PRESIDENT

 

This is a story of a young lady who came from a small town to the WhiteHouse to serve her country. She bravely revealed the machinations of a wicked old man who was the President thereby helping to save democracy - A fairy tale story.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, in the United States of America, in the age of very powerful men who controlled vast armies and large sums of money, some were extremely evil. One in particular, once the most powerful man in the world, former President Donald J Trump, had cast a spell on a whole political party just like the Emperor who wore no clothes did. The “Republican Party” believed or were too scared to argue against what had been labelled “The Big Lie”, that he, Trump had won an election which he had lost. Trump had used every strategy imaginable to, by hook or by crook, have the result changed but a few good men and women had bravely stopped him all the way. Among those who thought his attempt at a coup was “disgusting” was a charming patriotic young woman, who history will relate, exploded the myth that he was the “Messiah”.

THE POWERFUL EVIL MAN’S SPELL

Thus, although, many who had not been overcome by the spell believed he should be punished somehow they were shut up by those who said that the “G-d like man” was untouchable. He had survived three bankruptcies, withheld money from a European ally because he wanted a political favor in return, believed Putin over his own Intelligence agencies that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election, had his Charitable Foundations shut down for donating other people’s money to himself, (charity begins at home) and paid out twenty - five million to students that he had enrolled in his fake university. And so much more. So understandably, his cult following believed that he walked on water. 

Most of his power derived from a fundamentalist “G-d” fearing group, the Evangelicals, who hailed the thrice married man credibly accused and even admitting sexual abuse, claiming that he was a reformed sinner even though he carried on sinning and that he was messiah like. To forgive was a religious act especially if the recipient can deliver what you desire. He also was the champion of those that believed AR 14s and the like were a “G-D” given right in the Constitution which was handed down on Mount Rushmore to Jefferson Davis. Then the other Jefferson, (Thomas) plagiarized the story and gave the right only to the militias.

 Proof of his qualities were signaled  by the fact that he promised and delivered no less than three Supreme Court judges who took away the right for women, even those raped or victims of incest, to have an abortion. The same Judges gave permission for anyone to carry a gun anywhere and as a bonus to the energy donors a big break by axing Biden’s environmental efforts. 

Trump held rallies where he railed against the enemies of the people, especially the press, which he affectionately called “fake news”. He claimed that “….only I alone can save  the country...” and cautioned that within the bureaucratic government there was the “dark state” that was out to get him and all “his people”. He also was very unforgiving and vindictive unless it suited him. (This should have frightened the innocent Cassidy Hutchinson). Many succumbed to his wrath even after years of loyal devotion but one disagreement was enough. Another behavior was that he demanded loyalty which unhappily was a one way process. You cannot expect loyalty from “The Leader” who has a responsibility to keep himself whole. 

With all this and a whole lot else he instigated a violent coup against the American Government of which he was no longer to be the head of. This culminated in an attack on the very seat of Government, The Capitol.

AFTER THE ATTACK ON THE CAPITOL

The respective “Republican” leaders of the House and Senate, Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell were understandably furious that their fearless leader had set a mob against them especially as they were hell bent on murdering Vice President Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi and anyone else who got in their way. In spite of this, power being the most important value apparently among “Republican” politicians, most voted immediately  afterwards for “The Big Lie” instead of just ratifying the results. The overwhelming pathetic lot didn’t vote to impeach him either thereby giving him the go ahead to stand again, for what he would consider his third term, in 2024, 

January 6 was too important to just go away and it just had to be investigated. McConnell kiboshed a bipartisan non parliamentary commission and Kevin McCarthy pulled all his members out of the House Investigation Committee when Nancy Pelosi the Democratic Speaker of the House objected to two of his picks Jim Jordan and Jim Banks both of whom had voted against the ratification of the 2020 electoral results and the establishment of the very Committee. (Jordan's consciousness of guilt was reflected subsequently when he asked Trump to pardon them for his January 6 involvement in the coup attempt). Yet McCarthy was nominating them to sit on the House Investigating Committee presumably to obstruct their proceedings and report the inner workings to the co conspirators.

Speaker Pelosi then saw to it that “The Republicans” had two Representatives. They were nominated by Ms Pelosi in an effort to make the probe bipartisan. However Fox News who really don’t know what to do decided just to ignore Trump and blame the Democrats that the Committee was partisan. This in the light of the fact that McCarthy, to Trump's dismay, withdrew his other nominations. Every “Republican” Trump supporter, given the chance to put forward exculpatory evidence either pled the fifth amendment not to prejudice their own culpability or failed to show up.

The January 6 Committee may have been chosen by Democrats but all their witnesses showing Trump’s perfidy were “Republicans” all of whom had voted for Trump. They elaborated that the ever inventive Trump had several plans to overturn the fraudulent election. He had sixty “frivolous” law suits - some of the lawyers being referred for disciplinary action and his chief lawyer, Rudy Giuliani disbarred. He tried to convince election agents, Secretaries of State, Governors, State Attorneys General and the Department of Justice to the extent of firing his acolyte William Barr and then attempted to replace him with a nonentity. Had he carried through with the latter he faced resignations from the whole Justice Department. He culminated with a pressure campaign on his Vice President Pence insisting that one man could overturn eighty one million votes. Once this was not going to fly he sent a mob to delay the counting of the electoral vote then to do” G-d” knows what to retain power. 

Jefferson’s (Thomas that is). Republic had been saved by a number of brave civil servants and elected officials all who had voted for Trump. 

With all this the question still remained - what was the state of what is charitably called his mind? Did he really believe that he had won? His culpability became evident when the young lady from the country stepped up to the plate and produced the evidence that Jamie Raskin had promised would “blow the roof off". Even Fox’s mad Murdoch could not ignore what Cassidy Hutchinson added to the debate. So he generally ignored her in the news section and let his propaganda night team smear her off the face of the earth.

ENTER THE FAIRY QUEEN CASSIDY HUTCHINSON

Like an angel from heaven as in any Fairy Tale entered Cassidy Hutchinson. So Cassidy Hutchinson emerged from nowhere - well almost nowhere because it had been run in some media that a WhiteHouse aide had given twenty hours of closed door depositions and had important testimony. What followed could not have been scripted anywhere on earth. Firstly, who in heavens name was Cassidy Hutchinson who turned out to be a highly influential WhiteHouse employee who was in the inner sanctum literally within spitting distance of the Oval Office. As watchers rushed to Google they found very little. The famed Wikipedia initially was unsure whether she was twenty - five of twenty - six years old. There was one photo of her and Press Officer McCanee doing the YMCA behind the stage at a Trump rally. In addition she had a LinkedIn membership...

Cassidy was born and attended school in a tiny town in New Jersey and thereafter entered a little known College, Christopher Newport University. Yes, she too was a Trumpian oriented “Republican”. She had to have exhibited remarkable promise coming from "G-d" knows where studying at a tiny College in Virginia which had about four thousand students.  She had had successive internships with the number two House “Republican” Scalise, Senator Ted Cruz and then the Whitehouse.  In March 2020 Mark Meadows was appointed Trump’s fourth Chief of Staff and he immediately recruited  Ms.Hutchinson as an aide. In no time she was his “executive assistant” accompanying him everywhere. A fairy tale come true, a metaphor for a rags to riches story. 

Within ten minutes of Ms. Hutchinson’s public televised deposition it became obvious why she had risen to be a crucial player in the most powerful portal of American politics. Her intellect, command of the facts, honesty, credibility, courage, authority, poise, respect of her questioners and dignity radiated throughout the Cannon House Office Building and through the screen to the world. 

WHAT CASSIDY SAID AND WHAT IT MEANT

The role of Ms. Hutchinson could not have been scripted in Hollywood. Anyone who had come up with a screenplay or TV Series of “Cassidy Hutchinson Goes to the Whitehouse” would have been laughed out of sight. Not even The Disney Channel would have been remotely interested. Here was a young lady in her early twenties as a key player in the inner sanctum of the WhiteHouse who put beyond any doubt that Trump knew exactly what he was doing and was at the center of the coup conspiracy. Furthermore he was nothing but a bad mannered pig and at best a spoilt brat. She also closed the loop on the conspiracy. It was a Fairy Tale.  

Let just one statement sink in, the Chief WhiteHouse Council Pat Cipollone pleadingly instructs twenty - five year old her, on her way to be backstage with Trump and family at the Eclipse prior to Trump’s seditious exhortation to his mob, not to let the President march to the Capitol with them!  She claims Cipollone stated, “We need to make sure that this doesn’t happen… we have serious legal concerns if we go up to the Capitol”. Prior discussions with Cipollone  detailed the crimes that may be committed should the latter occur, 

The young executive assistant to Meadows overheard discussions with Giuliani and Trump where the Oath Keepers and The Proud Boys were mentioned. The first she heard of January 6 was when Giuliani mentioned to her, excitedly, that January 6 was going to be a great day and they were all going down to the Capitol. When she confronted Meadows on the subject, he countered that, “Things might get real real bad on January 6”. She was witness to Trump instructing Meadows to call Roger Stone on January 5. Stone’s bodyguards on January 6 were the Oath Keepers. Meadows wanted to go to the Willard Hotel where the key “Stop The Steal” conspirators, including Bannon and Stone, were. They were coordinating the January 6 insurrection. Meadows accepted Cassidy's admonition that it was not appropriate for Trump’s Chief of Staff to be there. So Meadows dialed in. She also highlighted the importance of Congressman Jim Jordan, McCarthys’ nominee to the Investigating Committee. Jordan was the only one who was allowed to interrupt his and Cipollone’s attempt to get Trump to call the mob off. So Cassidy connected all the dots of Whitehouse involvement in the conspiracy.- the January 6 insurrection was not a protest that got out of hand. It was preplanned with WhiteHouse involvement and was part of a vast conspiracy. 

Then there was the hundred and eighty seven minutes insurrection that Trump had to watch because his security detail refused to take the "f…ing" President to the Capitol where there was a recruited mob that he knew had weapons.  Meadows confirmed to Cipollone that Trump saw nothing wrong with the violent desecration of the Capitol and the threat to Pence’s life.  

REACTION TO CASSIDY’S TESTIMONY 

The smear machine was at a distinct disadvantage since the Trumpists had no foreknowledge of her appearance and testimony which was shrouded in secrecy. The Trump loyalists had done everything to hinder her including witness tampering, plying her with mafia like warnings to be loyal to Trump World  She had to change counsel before she publicly testified replacing the Trump paid lawyers, who had advised against a public hearing. What must have stuck in Trump’s craw is that her new lawyers were those of Jeff Sessions his first Attorney General  whom he discharged because he wouldn’t stop the Mueller investigation. 

Trump, as always, led the charge on his new medium, “Truth Social ”. “I hardly knew who this person, Cassidy Hutchinson is, other than I heard very negative things about her ....a total phony and a leaker and when she requested to go ….to Florida… I personally turned her request down. Why did she want to go with us if we were so terrible. I understand that she was upset and angry….. She is such bad news…a third rate social climber…a total phony.  The former leader of the free world nevertheless seemed to know enough to smear her in detail. This is the  Fantasy land that Trump lives in.

The forty fifth President denied certain statements that he supported the cry to “Hang Mike Pence”. The full weight of his and so many others criticism focussed on her detailing of what she alleged was told to her by the Deputy Chief of Staff as to the happenings in his SUV on the way back to the West Wing.  Trump, however, never denied that he wanted to go down to the Capitol. He answered the warning that the police reported that the crowd was armed, that the only gun in the Capitol killed “poor Ashley Babbit”, the insurrectionist who breeched the Capitol. 

Fox News was its current ambivalent self with Brett Baier claiming her testimony was “stunning and under oath while Trump was on "Truth Social”. For the rest the three Fox nightly propagandists pulled her to pieces. Most disturbing were the disgusting comments that she was doing this for money and a job with MSNBC or CNN, One sick commentator claimed that she would “Never have to pay for a drink in Washington again”. 

The bottom line to her bombshell revelations is that Pat Cipollone negotiated an appearance before the January 6 committee and the latter has received a host of new evidence from witnesses speared on by Ms Hutchinson. Mick Mulvaney Trump's third Chief Of Staff now believed Trump was guilty. More telling is that other than Trump and his echo chamber the “Republicans” shut up in embarrassment. Cassidy had broken the spell.

CASSIDY HUTCHINSON GETS THE LAST WORD

The Special - Assistant to the President verbalized the response all Americans should have, “As an American I was disgusted. It was unpatriotic. It was un- American. We were watching the Capitol building defaced over a lie. And it was something that was really hard, in that moment, to digest, knowing what I’d been hearing down the hall, and the conversations that were happening”. 

AT THE END OF THE DAY

As the sleepy Attorney General’s Office mulls over whether to charge Trump they need not get bowled over Trump’s obvious ploy to announce his candidacy for 2024 and claim fowl if he is then indicted. 

As important as everything else is in Garland's decision the validation of the courageous “Republicans” who have put their careers and lives on the line, has to be a persuasive consideration. 

So far can’t be sure that the goodies will live happily after but there has to be some hope. This is an ongoing tale. 

Next week will be a blockbuster with two open sessions, one in prime time. Then the key witness the WhiteHouse Chief Counsel Pat Cipollone is having a closed door deposition......