Dear Leader Trump has ordered the GOP to scrap even any hints of bipartisan support for a January 6th commission to hold hearing on what happened during the most dangerous terrorist attack on the US government in years, and the GOP will follow.
Former President Trump called for an immediate end to the debate over a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol riot the night before the House is expected to approve the plan.
“Republicans in the House and Senate should not approve the Democrat trap of the January 6 Commission. It is just more partisan unfairness and unless the murders, riots, and fire bombings in Portland, Minneapolis, Seattle, Chicago, and New York are also going to be studied, this discussion should be ended immediately,” Trump said in a statement Tuesday night.
“Republicans must get much tougher and much smarter, and stop being used by the Radical Left. Hopefully, Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy are listening!” he added.
Trump's statement came shortly after the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus endorsed the creation of a panel, despite opposition from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.).
McCarthy and McConnell have their orders from high command, and they are now scrambling to kill any cooperation. In the House, McCarthy is now actively whipping against the commission vote.
Kevin McCarthy thought his House Republican conference would almost entirely stand behind him in efforts to derail an investigation into the events of Jan. 6.
Now, a last-minute surge of GOP interest is dashing hopes for near-perfect opposition to the independent commission and putting Republican divisions back on full display.
Dozens of Republicans are privately considering voting for the Jan. 6 commission — which McCarthy himself said he opposed earlier Tuesday, even after he deputized one of his allies, Rep. John Katko of New York, to strike a bipartisan agreement on the proposal. In a sign of momentum, the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus, of which Katko is a member, formally voted to endorse the legislation Tuesday evening.
Just days after GOP leaders decided they wouldn’t force their members’ hands either way, McCarthy and his leadership team issued an informal “leadership recommendation” ahead of the Wednesday vote, urging a “no” vote to help contain defections in their party. Former President Donald Trump also sought to shut down the commission on the eve of the floor vote, calling it a "Democrat trap" and urging Republicans to get "much tougher and much smarter."
"This discussion should be ended immediately," he said in a statement, which could help push wavering GOP lawmakers into the "no" camp.
Regardless of how many Republicans buck Trump on this issue, though, the bill is expected to pass the House. It's fate in the 50-50 Senate is less clear.
That last part is a lie. The commission's fate in the Senate is 100% clear: it is DOA. In the Senate, Mitch is making sure the commission can't move forward at all without becoming a circus to blame Black Lives Matter and Antifa.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told his fellow Republicans during a closed-door caucus lunch Tuesday he can't support a Jan. 6 commission in its current form, two sources familiar with his remarks tell Axios.
Why it matters: Senate Republicans are bracing for a House vote Wednesday. Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) opposes the commission but several Republicans are expected to buck leadership — making it more difficult for Senate Republicans to dismiss it.
What we're hearing: McConnell made comments to his colleagues along the lines of, "There’s 41 of us who could change this, and I think we should,” according to one of the sources. A second source confirmed the nature of the comments. When McConnell finished, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) — who's retiring in 2023 — also stood up and questioned aspects of the deal.
The senators did not indicate the deal is DOA in the Senate, the sources said, but made clear they would want to see substantive changes. Such changes being discussed more broadly among some Republicans include ensuring the panel is truly bipartisan. Rep. John Katko (R-N.Y.), who struck the deal with Democrats in the House, voted to impeach Trump — raising concerns among his fellow Republicans.
McConnell spoke publicly following the lunch and said he is "pushing the pause button" on the legislation, adding the GOP conference is “undecided."
And of course, the "Republican concerns" will never be addressed to Mitch's liking, so the commission will never happen. Of course, there's a reason as to why it can't happen, a reason so obvious that even CNN's Chris Cillizza gets it on the first try.
McCarthy doesn't want to testify under oath about his phone conversation with former President Donald Trump on January 6. As CNN reported, Trump told McCarthy on that call that the rioters "are more upset about the election than you are" and the GOP leader responded by insisting that the people overrunning the Capitol were backers of the President and that he needed to tell them to stand down.
A week after the riot, here's what McCarthy said on the House floor about Trump and the riot:
"The President bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters. He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding. These facts require immediate action of President Trump."
But, as it became increasingly clear that even Trump's role inciting these rioters would not turn the GOP base away from him, McCarthy changed his tune. In late April, in an interview on "Fox News Sunday," McCarthy said this about his January 6 call with Trump:
"What I talked to President Trump about, I was the first person to contact him when the riots was going on. He didn't see it. What he ended the call was saying -- telling me, he'll put something out to make sure to stop this. And that's what he did, he put a video out later."
That is, of course, fundamentally inaccurate. Trump waited hours before releasing any sort of statement about the riot. And, when he did call on the rioters to go home, he reiterated the Big Lie about the 2020 election. "We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it," Trump said in a video released by the White House that day. "Especially the other side. But you have to go home now. We have to have peace."
The broader point here is that McCarthy has been VERY cagey about that January 6 phone call -- and there continues to be questions about whether Trump and McCarthy have spoken about the call since January 6.
"Leader McCarthy has spoken to a number of people in -- in large groups and small groups since the sixth about his exchanges with the President," said Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney (R) on "Fox News Sunday." "I think it's very important that, you know, he clearly has facts about that day, that an investigation into what happened, into the president's actions, ought to get to the bottom of. And I think that he has important information that needs to be part of any investigation, whether it's the FBI, the Department of Justice, or this commission that I -- I hope will be set up."
Neither McCarthy nor Trump can allow the commission to go forward, and once again it's Mitch's job to kill it. He will deliver. Anyone who thinks this is going to happen is making a sucker's bet, full stop. I am in total agreement with Steve M on this.
Republicans will block this. And if they can't block it, they'll sabotage it. They'll load up the committee with rhetorical bomb-throwers. They'll use the hearings primarily for anti-Democratic catchphrases and memes. Even if they don't succeed in broadening the scope of the investigation to include violence and property damage in anti-racism demonstrations, they'll find ways to hang all that around the necks of Democrats. They'll say any law enforcement failures were all Nancy Pelosi's fault. They'll never concede that this was a brutal threat to democracy by their party's voters on behalf of a president from their party. And whatever they say will be believed by nearly half the country.
After two Trump impeachments and the early stages of this process, I've had enough. I think Democrats should simply give up on the notion that "accountability" is possible for Republicans. It's not just that they resist it. They pay no price for resisting it. Resisting it endears them to their voters.
Nothing Democrats do and nothing they reveal will lead to second thoughts among Republican voters. We know this because nothing revealed in either of Trump's impeachments disillusioned them. Quite the opposite: It unified them in opposition to the accountability seekers.
When Democrats beg Republicans to put country over party, they reinforce the mistaken notion that the GOP might someday actually do that. That sends a signal that if Democrats can't come to terms with Republicans, then it must be the Democrats' fault -- after all, the Democrats say it's possible to reason with the GOP.
Enough. Better for Democrats to just accept that accountability is impossible, and to tell the public that a real reckoning can't happen because Republicans will always prevent it from happening. The only way to get to the truth is to vote Republicans out.
The Big Lie makes this clear. There is nothing that Democrats can do to "win" Republicans over anymore. Bipartisanship is dead as a whole. The GOP doesn't see Democratic politicians and voters as human, let alone Americans with rights in a competing marketplace of ideas. They're ready for authoritarian dictatorship now, if not full-on fascism, where they are the full "citizens" and the rest of us serve them.
They're close to getting it, too, closer than they've been in a century or two.
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