A very revealing quote from an interview with Republican Congressman Peter Meijer:
And then one of the saddest things is I had colleagues who, when it came time to recognize reality and vote to certify Arizona and Pennsylvania in the Electoral College, they knew in their heart of hearts that they should've voted to certify, but some had legitimate concerns about the safety of their families. They felt that that vote would put their families in danger.
Meanwhile, in response to the Beer Belly Putsch and politicians like Lindsey Graham being confronted by shrieking Trumpy mobs in airports, security for travelling politicians is being beefed up:
After videos went viral showing supporters of President Donald Trump accosting Senators in airports to yell at them and accuse them of being traitors to the president — not to mention the troubling scenes of the riots at the Capitol — members of Congress will be getting increased security at airports, at least for the near future.
CNN’s Manu Raju reported that the U.S. Capitol Police and Sergeant at Arms’ office sent a notice to members of Congress on Saturday, outlining plans to coordinate with the U.S. Marshals Service and other law enforcement agencies around the country to ensure their safety as they travel between Washington, D.C. and their home districts.
Capitol Police officers will also be stationed at all three major D.C. area airports through Inauguration Day, January 20: Reagan National Airport (DCA), Baltimore-Washington International Airport (BWI), and Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD).
[…]
[Rep. Abigail] Spanberger described how many of her congressional colleagues “speak so positively” of their interactions and “human moments” with their constituents as they travel, “but the recent tensions are just at a fever pitch that are absolutely dangerous.”
Even after the storming of the Capitol, most of the Republican House caucus and a few GOP Senators continued with their futile challenge of the Electoral College results. Some, like Georgia’s QAnon Queen and the one who wants to open carry in the House of Representatives, are undoubtedly true believers. But I’d say Meijer is right about most of them.
Of course, the third option is that they’re just really, really, really stupid:
Senator Roy Blunt (R- MO) said on Face the Nation Sunday he thinks President Donald Trump should be “very careful” after the violent mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol.
CBS’ Margaret Brennan asked Blunt if he agrees with the two Republican senators saying the president should resign.
Blunt signaled he’s not supportive of that idea, saying Trump should just “finish the last 10 days of his presidency.”
[…]
He added, “The president should be very careful over the next 10 days that his behavior is what you’d expect from the leader of the greatest country in the world. Now, my personal view is that the president touched the hot stove on Wednesday and is unlikely to touch it again.”
Nuke this party from orbit and then launch another nuke to make the ashes dance.
Frank Meeink, the former neo-Nazi whose life story inspired the incredible movie American History X, tells SpyTalk that something even worse than the Beer Gut Putsch might be coming:
“There are Timothy McVeighs everywhere,” Meeink said in a Tuesday phone interview about the Proud Boys and other rightwing extremists descending on Washington, D.C.—with the president’s encouragement—to protest the congressional vote sealing his electoral defeat. “Every hour that this madness goes on, we are waking up more and more Timothy McVeighs.”
McVeigh, a Gulf War army veteran and white-power aficionado, used a powerful homemade truck bomb to attack the Alfred P. Murrah federal office building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people and wounding more than 680 others. He was quickly apprehended and executed in 2001.
Meeink says his own years as a white power, neo-Nazi skinhead leader in the early 1990s gives him insight into the thinking of anti-government radicals today.
“I would be planning stuff right now,” he told SpyTalk. “I mean, that's what I did. I kidnapped people, that's what I did in the movement…”
Meeink, now 45, says he’s not worried about the extremist protesters in Washington so much as the under-the-radar loners nursing their hatreds, building bombs or readying their stocks of automatic weapons to assassinate or kidnap government officials—all in the service of igniting a civil war.
Thousands of people descended on the Capitol last week, and five people were killed. McVeigh had some help, most notably from Terry Nichols, but he was able to claim far many more lives mostly by himself.
I’m sure I’ll have more to say about this past weekend’s biggest story - Donald Trump being barred from Twitter and Facebook, and Parler getting blackballed by the major tech companies - as the week goes on. But they’re cracking down in no small part because the MAGA mob is promising to return to Capitol Hill before Biden is inaugurated, and they’ve been using these platforms to organize in plain sight:
The desire to prevent a repeat of Wednesday’s attack helped drive Twitter’s decision to suspend Trump’s account after years in which he challenged the company’s policies against hate speech and inciting violence. The two tweets the company cited in its announcement Friday night were tamer than many during his candidacy or his presidency, but Twitter said it was particularly concerned about contributing to a possible “secondary attack” on the U.S. Capitol and state government facilities the weekend of Jan. 16-17.
Concerns about more violent incidents appear to be well-founded. Calls for widespread protests on the days leading up to the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden have been rampant online for weeks. These demonstrations are scheduled to culminate with what organizers have dubbed a “Million Militia March” on Jan. 20 as Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris are to be sworn in on the same Capitol grounds that rioters overran on Wednesday.
“We all knew that tens of thousands of extremists would converge on D.C. Wednesday, so there’s no excuse for the resourcing failure,” said Brian Harrell, a former Trump administration Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary for infrastructure protection, who is now chief security officer for Avangrid, an energy company. “Law enforcement was ill-prepared for an event the entire country knew was coming, and one that [the president] has been signaling for weeks. ... It’s shocking.”
The renewed calls to action in recent days have bristled with violent talk and vows to bring guns to Washington in defiance of the city’s strict weapons laws. A new analysis of such posts by Alethea Group, an organization combating disinformation that draws its name from the Greek word for “truth,” found abundant evidence of threatening plans on a range of platforms large and small.
The aggressive and often hateful chatter has appeared on both mainstream sites such as Twitter and Facebook and niche conservative sites such as TheDonald.win and Parler. The specified locations include the U.S. Capitol and the Mall in Washington, the Utah Capitol in Salt Lake City, and locations in Pittsburgh and Columbus, Ohio. Some events, including an “Armed March on All State Capitals,” include localized events in all 50 states.
“REFUSE TO BE SILENCED,” said one online post cited by Alethea Group, calling for an “ARMED MARCH ON CAPITOL HILL & ALL STATE CAPITOLS” for Jan. 17, the last Sunday of Trump’s polarizing presidency. Another post called for action at “DC & All State Capitols” and was signed by “common folk who are tired of being tread upon” declares: “We were warned!”
We’ll be lucky if there’s only one budding McVeigh out there.
It is not at all a defence of Trump and his supporters to say this shit ain’t helping, Nancy:
“…there are people in our country, led by this President, for the moment, who have chosen their whiteness over democracy. That’s what this is about.”
This is clearly going to get (potentially much) worse before it gets better. I certainly hope that there are better security plans for Biden and Harris’ inauguration than what the Capitol had last week. This is shaping up to be far more dangerous than a President and Vice President’s job under any normal circumstances. It should not have gotten this far, and it wouldn’t have if Trump’s statements and actions had not been dismissed as inconsequential when he was saying and doing things for which any other president would have been removed from office.