And Laura Ingraham: “Mark, the president needs to tell everyone on the Capitol to go home. This is hurting us all. He’s destroying his legacy.”
And Brian Kilmeade: “Please, put him on TV. Destroy everything you’ve accomplished.”
There is no doubt that at this point Trump’s followers – from his eldest son to those who support him on Fox News – know not only what is happening on the US Capitol, but also is pressuring Meadows (and presumably Trump) to do something about it.
As you may remember, Trump, for some hours – even when the Capitol was ransacked – did nothing. When he ended up releasing a video message in response to the riot, it was, um, something powerless.
Trump’s failure to respond quickly and convincingly was made worse by the apparent urgency of the warnings he received from those around him. The Meadows texts also offer bitter criticism of the attempt to rewrite that day — not just by Trump, but by his Republican supporters in Congress.
Remember that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has spent much of this year downplaying what Trump knows and when he knows it.
“Talking to the President from inside the besieged Capitol, McCarthy pressed Trump to name his supporters and engage in a heated disagreement over who included the crowd. Trump’s comments on insurgents more concerned with election results than McCarthy did was first mentioned by Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler, a Republican from Washington state, in a town hall earlier this week. , and was confirmed to CNN by Herrera Beutler and other Republicans of the conversation.”
The point here is simple: Those closest to Donald Trump spent January 6 trying to make it clear to him that what is happening at the US Capitol needs to stop – and he is the one. Only one can make it happen. He spent hours refusing to do anything and when he finally released a video calling for his supporters to disperse, it was littered with rumors about the elections. “cheating” and as a result “was stolen from us.”
What’s really remarkable is that it’s not even the worst that these texts reveal. The worst is this: Even knowing what they told Trump on January 6 about the gravity of what’s happening, many of these people have spent the past year doing their worst to downplay it all – assuming the whole thing was overblown. by the media and Democratic supporters.
That, for me, is the truly horrifying part of all of this. To know the right thing – and even urge Trump, in this moment, to do the right thing – and then spend the next 11 months pretending publicly like you didn’t? Total.
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