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Monday, June 20, 2022
On Our "Virtual Route 66" This Week: On the Week That Was
It was quite a week in our World. On the US Political Scene, the January 6 hearings continued and former President Trump used his TruthSocial Platform to launch attacks and to use a speech in Nashville to undermine the credibility of the committee.
Beyond the shores of the United States, we have elections in Colombia in Latin America where two anti-establishment candidates are vying to potentially transform. Further, we have also been assessing the ongoing elections in France. As we went to press, President Macron's Coalition had given ground to both the far left and the far right in France which can have profound consequences for Europe. There is also the ongoing war in Ukraine which continues at a ferocious pace. This was also a week that saw the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, The Swiss Central Bank and others launch action to curtail Inflation.
We present a snapshot of the week that was courtesy the Financial Times, The Bulwark, the Washington Examiner , USAFacts and other leading publications in the World:
Fears rise that illegal logging will meet demand as protections are loosened and sanctions curb Russian exports
JUNE 19, 2022by Madeleine Speed in London
Mike Pence looking at a Trump tweet on January 6, 2021. (Via January 6 Committee)
“That declaration of Donald Trump as the next president would have plunged America into what I believe would’ve been tantamount to a revolution within a constitutional crisis in America, which in my view, and I am only one man, would’ve been the first constitutional crisis since the founding of the Republic.” — Judge Michael Luttig
Take a moment consider this. This is not the hair-on-fire, over-wrought, frantic hyperbole of Resistance Twitter.
The warning about “a revolution within a constitutional crisis,” didn’t come from Rachel Maddow, the guys who run Pod Save America, the NYT’s editorial page, or the usual prophets of Armageddon.
This was Michael Luttig, a conservative’s conservative; a former federal appeals court judge, who was on George Bush’s short-list for the Supreme Court.
Unfortunately, because we are all doomed to spend eternity in middle school, much of the buzz yesterday focused on how slowly Luttig spoke. But, my colleague Will Saletan provided a sober counterpoint:
Try this mental exercise: Imagine that we were learning all of this now for the first time.
Here is Liz Cheney:
On the morning of January 6, President Donald Trump’s intention was to remain President of the United States despite the lawful outcome of the 2020 election and in violation of his constitutional obligation to relinquish power. Over multiple months, Donald Trump oversaw and coordinated a sophisticated plan to overturn the presidential election and prevent the transfer of presidential power.
What if…
Instead of having the story come out in dribs and drabs and disconnected details over the last year and half, imagine that this was fresh — and that it was bursting onto the front pages just now:
The depth and scope of the president’s attempts to overturn the election; the bat-shit crazy conspiracy theories; the threats and violence used to intimidate Congress and the vice president; the plot involving fake electors; the danger of extremist groups like the Oath Keepers who mobilized to keep the president in power; the plot to use the electoral count to erase the results of the 2020 election and keep the president in power.
Try to imagine if we were just now hearing secret tapes for the first time exposing the campaign to pressure state elections officials to “find” votes, and state legislators to overturn the popular vote, while the wife of a Supreme Court justice pressured state legislators and others to reject the peaceful transfer of power.
Imagine: What if we were just now seeing videos of the president’s own aides telling him that he was detached from reality; and that his plot was illegal and unconstitutional. What if we just now realized that the Commander in Chief thought about using the military to seize voting machines, and came within inches of subverting the Department of Justice to push fraudulent election claims.
And try to imagine if we were just learning that all of this was launched by a drunken demagogue on election night and a president who surrounded himself with demented loons, grifters, and seditionists.
What if we just now were learning of the criminal conspiracy by a president who had sworn to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." What if the testimony of his closest aides made it clear that the man in the Oval Office was either lying or delusional in his desperate bid to hang onto power?
And bear with me for a moment here:
What if we woke up this morning to the news that he had “specifically targeted his vice president with tweeted words of condemnation,” and turned a violent mob against him. What if we were just learning that confidential informants had told the feds that Trump-supporting members of the Proud Boys “would have killed” Pence during the Insurrection “if given a chance.”
And what if we were just learning today that when the mob began chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” the president said that he “deserved it.”
**
Three thoughts:
(1) If we had learned all of this at once, it would have been — and this is not hyperbole— a political cataclysm, beyond the powers of even most determined turd-polishers to ignore. There would not be the slightest doubt about the gravity of the crisis or the desperate need for accountability.
(2) Millions of Americans are, in fact, learning all of this for the first time.
(3) I have no idea whether this will make a difference.
(1) TNB last night was very good. I was in the chat dropping bombs and you can’t recreate that magic. But you can watch the rewind here or listen to the podcast version here. You’ll probably want to watch, because Tim looked like a damn movie star last night.
(2) I’m going to be AWOL for the next week. Big Life Change stuff so no newsletters or podcasts from me. And I won’t be responding to emails. Catch you on the flip side from Dirty Jersey.
(Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)
1. Collateral Damage
Lost in the January 6 Committee news yesterday was a ruling in a Delaware court that the Dominion Voting Systems defamation case against Newsmax could proceed.
Dominion is seeking $1.6 billion in damages and Newsmax’s first line of defense was something like How could we have possibly known that the stuff we said about Dominion was false!
The judge wasn’t buying it. You can read the whole decision here if you want. It is hot fire.
But it’s also 64 pages long and I don’t expect you to read the whole thing. So I did it for you.
Defamation cases are very hard to prove. But this Dominion suit looks strong.
The first leg of the stool is Dominion proving that Newsmax was peddling false claims. That’s the easy part:
Shortly after Fox called the election for President Biden, to stem the tide and try to recover lost viewers and former President Trump, Fox changed its narrative and began reporting that former President Trump lost because of massive election fraud. On November 8, Fox invited Ms. Powell on the Sunday Morning Futures show and began connecting Dominion with the narrative of election fraud. Ms. Powell declared that there was “a massive and coordinated effort to steal this election from We the People of the United States of America, to delegitimize and destroy votes for Donald Trump, to manufacture votes for Joe Biden,” and that “the Dominion software” was to blame. According to Ms. Powell: “That is where the fraud took place, where they were flipping votes in the computer system or adding votes that did not exist.” . . .
Newsmax promoted a false origin story that Dominion was created in Venezuela by Hugo Chavez for the purpose of rigging elections. This connection was based on the verifiably false claim that Dominion is owned by Smartmatic. Smartmatic is actually a Dominion’s competitor and the two entities are not otherwise affiliated.
On November 10, 2020, Ms. Robinson retweeted the false claim that Smartmatic was synonymous with fraud for most Venezuelans and that Smartmatic is a subsidiary of Dominion. Ms. Robinson’s tweet claimed that “All crooked roads lead to Dominion Voting Systems.” Newsmax and its on-air talent sold to the American public the story “that Dominion rigged the 2020 election and stole it from Trump just like it stole elections in Venezuela for Chavez.”
The next step is proving that Newsmax knew (or should have known) that the claims it was making were false:
[On November 12, 2000] a joint statement from federal, state, and local authorities was published by CISA confirming that there was “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.” Newsmax knew about the announcement and “Newsmax’s White House Correspondent, Emerald Robinson, had been responding to and reposting then-CISA Director Christopher Krebs’ ‘Rumor Control Update’ posts debunking election fraud claims on Twitter since November 6.” . . .
Dominion began circulating an email titled “SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT: FACTS & RUMORS” with links to independent sources disproving claims made about Dominion.150 Dominion maintained a page on its public website with this information from November 11, 2020, onwards.
On November 17, 2020, at 3:10 PM EST, Dominion sent its first “SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT” email to Newsmax’s booking producer, Alicia Hesse. Ms. Hesse is involved with soliciting guests to speak on Newsmax TV, including Mr. Kelly’s show. Newsmax believes that Ms. Hesse shared the contents of the emails she received from Dominion with the hosts and other producers for the shows she books. Dominion did not receive a reply from Newsmax to this email. . . .
On November 17, after Dominion sent the first “SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT” email, Mr. Kelly hosted Ms. Powell on Greg Kelly Reports.156 Ms. Powell claimed to have “evidence” of “the guy who founded” Dominion admitting “he can change a million votes, no problem at all” and continued to falsely link Dominion with election rigging.157 Ms. Powell did not have any such evidence.
NASHVILLE, Tennessee — Former President Donald Trump used his microphone at a top conservative conference to bash the House Jan. 6 select committee repeatedly — and noted how even CNN has stopped using the term the "big lie."
Hello from London where I interviewed Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the FT’s Global Boardroom conference on Tuesday. The Ukrainian president, who appeared exhausted but as determined as ever, told me over video link that a stalemate in the war with Russia was “not an option” and appealed again to the west for more military support.
The war has entered an attritional phase in the last month. Fighting is now focused in the eastern Donbas region, where Russia is using its superior artillery forces to grind down Ukrainian troops and make territorial gains. During our conversation, Zelenskyy hit out at what he saw as attempts by some western allies to explore the terms of a ceasefire without involving Kyiv. “There cannot be talks behind Ukraine’s back anytime,” he said.
I asked the president how he would define victory in this war. He said if his forces could push Russian forces back to positions they occupied before the invasion, this would be a “serious temporary victory”. But he was clear that winning back sovereignty over all Ukrainian territory was his ultimate goal.
2. Apple has launched a buy now, pay later product, challenging companies such as Klarna and Affirm that allow consumers to delay or split the cost of purchases without interest. Our fintech team explain what this means for a sector already facing the threat of a recession.
3. Xi Jinping’s ambitions and the modernisation of China’s military are prompting growing fears that Beijing could try to annex Taiwan in the next few years. In this excellent Big Read, our correspondents explain how the country is preparing for a potential invasion. (Free to read)
4. “There are people leaving every week, it is like a game — every Monday we ask who has been fired, who has quit.” In this investigation, technology correspondent Cristina Criddle reveals the “toxic” working practices at TikTok’s ecommerce office in London.
5. According to Nasa, the space around our planet is littered with roughly 9,000 metric tonnes of debris. Is space junk a threat to us? In our latest visual journalism project, we map the 5,000 satellites currently in orbit around Earth. (Free to read)
6. Technology was supposed to cut down our working hours. But people say they are working harder, to tighter deadlines and under greater levels of tension than ever. Sarah O’Connor askswhy are we all working so hard?
An annual report for the nation
To find solutions to issues affecting the United States, everyone, from regular citizens to top policymakers, needs data to understand how the government serves the American people. And one of the best ways to see how the nation is faring on top issues is the America in Facts report. It provides metrics and measurements from federal, state, and county records, plus the context behind that data.
America in Facts 2022 has some of the widest breadth of nonpartisan numbers available, and it's now live at USAFacts.org.
Here are just some of what USAFacts analysts found in the data:
The US standard of living
Total wealth among the American middle class — meaning the middle 20% of income earners — grew from an inflation-adjusted $5.4 trillion in 1990 to $10.2 trillion in 2021. However, their share of US wealth fell from 12% to 7%.
Many people lost jobs and income at the start of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020. The poverty rate increased for the first time since 2014.
Government spending
More than 50% of the federal spending increase from 2019 to 2021 was for assistance to individuals. That spending tripled to $1.1 trillion in 2020 and increased by another $300 billion in 2021.
The economy
The unemployment rate fell and the labor force participation rate rose in 2021 and early 2022, moving closer to their pre-pandemic levels. There were 224,000 more unemployed people and 537,000 fewer Americans in the labor force in April 2022 compared to February 2020.
Regarding educational attainment, April labor force participation was closest to pre-pandemic levels among people with at least a bachelor's degree.
Crime in America
Overall crime rates have declined since the 1990s. Property crime continued to decline in 2020, but violent crime rose by 5.6%. The number of active shooter incidents has also increased, reaching 61 in 2021, higher than the previous record of 40 in 2020.
Health
Coronavirus has quickly joined heart disease and cancer as a top cause of death for people in the US. In other health news, Americans smoke less, but an increasing proportion has obesity.
Click here for highlights from all 12 sections and download a copy of America in Facts for your quick reference.
One last fact
Arizona's Maricopa County gained 753,898 residents between 2010 and 2020, the most of any state. How did the population grow in the other top four states? Explore Our Changing Population to get the data details.
Shall we we even bother to count the many ways the punditocracy got the 1/6 Committee hearings wrong? Probably don’t have enough space to do so but we can rehearse the highlights.
“Nobody is gonna watch this.” No, just 20 million viewers. Twice the TV audience of the World Series. “It’s all old news.” Except for the revelations that are new: the way the Proud Boys assembled before the Trump rally at the Capitol. The Georgia congressman giving recon tours. Ginni Thomas splashing around in the soup again. This time working with Coup Master John Eastman and egging on legislators to break the law. And most importantly, the high pressure campaign run by Trump against Pence and how Trump ordered him to block certification of Biden. “It’s not gonna have any impact.” A survey of leading regional newspapers this week showed extensive front page coverage of the hearings in every part of the country. “The average American voter is more interested in kitchen table issues.” As if Andrea Mitchell or Gloria Borger or Chuck Todd would as much as recognize an average American voter if one fell on them in the bathtub. What those voters are going to do or not going to do in November or any other time is something these clowns have no idea about and will learn about only after the fact.
The hearings have exceeded my expectations at just about every level. We don’t have to sit through the horrid perorations of the Gentleman from There or the Gentle Lady from over here. Nor have the hearings been over-produced by that Hollywood guy they brought in, and as many pundits mistakenly predicted.
They are successfully laying out for the country to marvel at the entire gangrenous half-baked conspiracy at the highest levels of the government to block the legitimate election of Joe Biden and to keep Donald Trump in power illegally. Hey, and they are ALL involved. All three branches of our democratic oasis. We’ve got several GOP congress-members up to their eyeballs in the plotting, execution and support of the proposed coup. We’ve got operatives from the White House, the Pentagon and DOJ lending their hands, and even the judicial branch got its licks in via the participation of Mrs. Clarence Thomas in the exercises.
On full display is an administration run exactly like a New York mafia cell with a half-mad, narcissistic, money-sick bully boss at the top and surrounded by a motley crew of incompetents, zealots, cast outs and hucksters.
Perhaps, most importantly, it is difficult for me, almost impossible, to see how Merrick Garland cannot prosecute these guys after so much of their criminality has been put out there and shoved right under his nose. I think the only question is whether DOJ indictments will come before or after the mid-terms. It’s a target-rich environment: Mark Meadows. John Eastman. Jeffrey Clark. These guys are going down.
And Trump? Well, contrary to popular opinion, he is neither immortal nor untouchable. He’s got a lot of incoming and to me it is a question of the law of probabilities as to whether he gets tagged. The Committee is putting a lot of emphasis on him having raised, in bad faith, $250 million to stop a steal he knew was not real. Nor did the money go to where it was supposed to. Out in the real world, this is known as interstate wire fraud a felony that can carry up to 20 yrs. In the clink. Trump is prima fascia guilty of this crime, just as he clearly broke the law in asking the Georgia Secretary of State to find 11,000 votes for him.
The most striking takeaway I got from the hearings was a sense of bewilderment. How could a country, for that matter, how could even 45% of the electorate give their vote and their support to such a miserable, broken and dishonest crook like Trump. It’s all so transparent and yet…and yet… you know the rest.
We can speculate over the coming months over those bigger questions raised by the pundits before the hearings happened, Precisely, just what difference these hearings will make. Well, history is made up by a lot more than electoral jockeying and it is obvious that history is well-served by the 1/6 committee. They are providing a needed antidote to the false narrative pushed by the Trumplicans. Just as we can speculate over what the future course of the DOJ will be and will Trump get his ticket punched.
To me, the bigger question is just how do the rest of us, how does American civil society assimilate this collection of rather astounding and frightening facts. What are we going to do about it? Are we going to leave the defense of basic democratic rights solely in the hands of Democratic Party electeds? Is there local organization we should be taking up in defense of democracy? What would a national movement look like that counters the fascists and the authoritarians? It certainly isn’t ANTIFA, but aberrations like ANTIFA can only exist when a vacuum is left by more serious and effective currents and organizers.
The next move in this saga is not Merrick Garland’s. The next move should be ours.
Will Saletan @saletan
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