The Mark Meadows Texts Show There Was Zero Dispute on January 6 About What Was Happening

Maybe it's Tuesday morning quarterbacking, but the second impeachment charges against Donald J. Trump should have just focused on his betrayal of his oath of office. When he was sworn in on January 20, 2017, he said the following: "I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." On January 6, 2020, he manifestly failed to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution to the best of his ability. The evidence is there that he chose not to defend the Constitution for hours when it came under attack by a mob attempting to stop the peaceful transfer of power to a duly elected representative of the people. Clearly, Trump incited the attack, but it's easier to prove he failed to respond to it in any acceptable fashion, thereby betraying his oath of office and warranting his removal.

We got more of that picture on Monday night, as the House prepared to vote on whether to hold his White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, in contempt of Congress. While Meadows had reached an agreement to testify before the House committee examining the events of January 6, he has since reneged on that agreement. The vice chair of the committee, Republican Liz Cheney of Wyoming, delivered an argument in favor of the contempt resolution in which she sought to illustrate that, while Meadows' (and Trump's) claims of executive privilege are spurious and have been swatted by the courts, there's also plenty of evidence Meadows has already provided that's just completely outside even the most intergalactically expansive privilege claims. Like, say, the texts Meadows got on the day from various Fox News personalities and Donald Trump, Jr.

Let's just get these for the record:

Of course, Trump dragged his feet on all of this for hours, all while the National Guard was delayed in deploying to support the Capitol Police. Curious!

The straightforward thing to focus on here is that these Fox stars knew full well the gravity of what was happening on January 6—and that it was clearly perpetrated by supporters of the president, not antifa or Deep State crisis actors or whatever—and thus were urging Trump to stop it. You could argue their pleas focused more on image maintenance than the attack on the Constitution. Bad politics over national disgrace. You could also take a moment to giggle that Junior has to text Daddy's chief of staff in an attempt to get him a message. The new season of Succession isn't over!

But the main takeaway is that the president's staunchest allies knew exactly what was going on that day. The president had summoned his fans to Washington, sent them to the Capitol to disrupt the certification, and did nothing to halt the carnage when they started breaking down doors and windows, hunting the vice president and members of the Legislative Branch. This has not exactly been reflected in Fox programming, including from these stars, in the time since. (Just hours after she sent that text, Ingraham was on air spinning conspiracies about antifa.) But they knew something fundamental: Trump was watching this unfold on TV and doing nothing to stop it. The Capitol of the United States was under attack, and the president didn't lift a finger.

That alone was a betrayal of his oath of office, and should have resulted in his impeachment and removal. Instead, he is eligible to run again, at which point all of these people will help him try to win, knowing full well that he will reject any outcome of the democratic process that does not suit his immediate needs and desires. They know he will even turn to force, or at the very least look away as some section of his supporters turn that way. That is, they know he is an autocrat who wipes his ass with the United States Constitution and they will support him anyway, all the while calling themselves American patriots.

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