Republicans Being Very Reasonable About Tonight's January 6 Hearing. Or Actually Not That At All.
Hit dog will holler.
Would you be FOR SHOCKED to discover that Kevin McCarthy is lying his ass off about this evening's House January 6 Select Committee presentation of the evidence they've amassed in their 11-month investigation into the events leading up to the Capitol Riot?
Well, you may want to sit down for this one, Wonkers.
"I've never said I wouldn't participate," the House Minority Leader huffed this morning, claiming that he'd been "denied the right to participate in the investigation" by evil Democrats seeking to drag Donald Trump's good name through the mud.
Which is just precious , since the committee asked him to come in and tell them about his phone call with Trump on January 6 demanding that Trump call off the maniacs who were ransacking the Capitol and screaming to "hang Mike Pence," and McCarthy told the committee to go pound sand five months ago.
"As a representative and the leader of the minority party, it is with neither regret nor satisfaction that I have concluded to not participate with this select committee’s abuse of power that stains this institution today and will harm it going forward,” he said on January 12 of this year.
It's okay, though, because the New York Times 's Alex Burns and Jonathan Martin — and presumably the committee as well — got the tapes .
“McCarthy on Tape describing his phone call with Trump”
— Acyn (@Acyn) 1654729705
"When they started breaking into my office, myself and the staff got removed from the office," McCarthy told his conference on January 11, 2021. "In doing so, I made a phone call to the president telling him what was going on, asking him to tell these people to stop, to make a video and go out. And I was intense and very loud about it."
Because back then, this asshole knew exactly who was responsible for the mayhem.
“We cannot just sweep this under the rug. We need to know why it happened, who did it, and people need to be held accountable for it,” he said in a clip aired on CNN and reported by Mediaite .
In fact, Our Kev knew then that it was crucial to get to the bottom of what had happened on that horrible day.
We need to know and have the facts exactly what happened and when. This needs to be done in a targeted way that doesn’t need to distract from keeping the Capitol safe over the coming weeks. But what we learned is, that people can get in. We learned that people planned. We need to have all the facts, especially for all of us. We should do it in a bipartisan manner.
What a difference 17 months makes! Today McCarthy called the January 6 Select Committee "the most political and least legitimate committee in congressional history.” Which is bloody rich from the guy who literally admitted that the entire purpose of eleventy-million hours of Benghazi hearings was to tank Hillary Clinton's poll numbers.
And McCarthy's not the only one changing his tune. In another audio clip obtained by Burns and Martin, on January 5, the day before the riot, Arizona Rep. Debbie Lesko worried that Trump supporters were going to "go nuts" when the promised Trump coup did not materialize.
"I also ask leadership to come up with a safety plan for members," she said at the time. "I'm actually very concerned about this, because we have who knows how many hundreds of thousands of people coming here. We have Antifa. We also have, quite honestly, Trump supporters who actually believe that we are going to overturn the election. And when that doesn't happen — most likely will not happen — they are going to go nuts."
These people knew damn well that their own supporters were being incited with lies and were about to descend on the Capitol with blood in their eyes, expecting to overturn the election. They knew that they were endangering themselves by whipping up the mob.
But they didn't care. Or they cared, but only insofar as they wanted to ensure their own safety.
In fact, Republicans knew that some of their own colleagues were tacitly or openly in support of the mob and its goals to physically endanger Democrats.
"Is it true that you were live tweeting from the floor our location to people on the outside as we were being attacked, Lauren?" demanded Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler of Rep. Lauren Boebert at the January 11, 2021, closed-door caucus meeting, referring to multiple tweets during the attack disclosing the location of both members of Congress and Speaker Pelosi.
“The Speaker has been removed from the chambers.”
— Lauren Boebert (@Lauren Boebert) 1609960657
"Umm, yes. Those tweets did go out and that was something that was live and public information. It was broadcast live," Boebert stammered.
"So don’t ask us about security if you’re telling the attackers where we’re at. I yield back," Herrera Beutler retorted.
It's all so, so fucked up. And God only knows what disgraceful bullshit Rep. Elise Stefanik is going to unleash tonight after Trump, who is somehow under the impression that people like that horrible woman , tapped her to lead the ministry of "counter-programming" for the committee hearings.
See you tonight for the liveblog at 8 p.m. ET. Don't be late!
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I think Trey Gowdy should moderate these live hearings.
Couldn't happen to a nixer bunch of folks.