Dear Commons Community,

Maureen Dowd had a heartfelt column in the New York Times yesterday and evoked the memory of her father who was a plainclothes detective in charge of U.S. Senate security.  She and her family had deep respect and love for the Capitol and despises how it was desecrated during Wednesday’s insurrection.  She places the blame squarely on President Trump.  Here are her concluding comments.

“In New York, Donald Trump was a corrupt Joker who took cudgels to the historic friezes on Bonwit Teller. In Washington, he became something evil. He took cudgels to history itself, to our institutions, decency and democracy.

He draped his autocratic behavior in the American flag. Surrounded by Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, F.D.R., M.L.K. and monuments to our war dead, this coward whipped up a horde of conspiracists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis and gullible acolytes to try to steal an election for him. He said he would march to the Capitol with them, but he didn’t, of course. He watched his insurrection on TV, like the bum that he is.

Donald Trump is ruined, along with his repellent family. Even Twitter had finally had enough, suspending its leading arsonist after allowing him to fan the flames for years. The House might well impeach him, and he deserves it, though the Senate might not have the time or inclination to toss him out.

Josh Hawley’s political future evaporated in a cloud of tear gas, and Ted Cruz reinforced why everyone hates him.

Only two days after the Trump mob followed orders to engage in seditious “trial by combat,” as the execrable Rudy Giuliani put it, the White House put out a statement: “As President Trump said yesterday, this is a time for healing and unity as one Nation.”

We will heal, once the rough beast in the White House slouches off. Something wicked this way goes.”

Trump is  a rough beast and an evil coward who is responsible for the insurrection on Wednesday and the lives lost.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll,  57% percent of Americans want President Donald Trump to be immediately removed from office after he encouraged a protest on Wednesday that escalated into a an insurrection inside the U.S. Capitol during which five people died.

Most of those asking for his removal were Democrats, however, with Republicans apparently much more supportive of Trump serving out the final days of his term, which ends on Jan. 20. 

As reported by Reuters:

“The national public opinion survey, conducted Thursday and Friday, also showed that seven out of 10 of those who voted for Trump in November opposed the action of the hardcore supporters who broke into the Capitol while lawmakers were meeting to certify the election victory of Democrat Joe Biden.

Nearly 70% of Americans surveyed also said they disapprove of Trump’s actions in the run-up to Wednesday’s assault. At a rally earlier in the day, Trump had exhorted thousands of his followers to march to the Capitol.

The chaos on Capitol Hill, in which a police officer and four others died, has been widely condemned by both Democrats and Republicans.

Democrats in the House of Representatives plan to introduce misconduct charges on Monday that could lead to a second impeachment of Trump, two sources familiar with the matter said.

“If the President does not leave office imminently and willingly, the Congress will proceed with our action,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement.

The public’s reaction is divided by political party, as it has been on almost every major issue in the Trump era. While almost everyone condemned the violent confrontation, calls for Trump’s ouster came mostly from Democrats.

Altogether, the majority of Americans who said they want Trump to leave office before his term ends includes about nine out of every ten Democrats polled but just two in ten Republicans.

Some 30% said the president should be removed using provisions in the 25th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which allows the vice president and Cabinet to remove the president if he is unable to discharge his official duties.

Another 14% said Congress should impeach and remove Trump from office, and 13% said Trump should simply resign.

Trump, who lost the Nov. 3 election by about seven million votes, called on his supporters on Wednesday to march on Congress, telling them at a rally that “you will never take back our country with weakness.”

A small minority of the American public — 12% — said they supported the actions of those people who took part in the riot.

Seventy-nine percent of adults, including two-thirds of Republicans and Trump voters, described the participants as either “criminals” or “fools.” Nine percent saw them as “concerned citizens” and 5% called them “patriots.”

The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online, in English, throughout the United States. It gathered responses from 1,005 American adults, including 339 who said they voted for Trump. The results have a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of 4 percentage points.

Tony

Senator Lisa Murkowski

Dear Commons Community,

Republican senator Lisa Murkowski called on President Donald Trump to resign yesterday following his encouragement of violence ahead of the riot at the U.S. Capitol building.

“I want him to resign. I want him out. He has caused enough damage,” the Alaska senator told Anchorage Daily News.

Hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building on Wednesday after the president falsely reiterated that the election had been stolen from him. He encouraged his supporters to head to the Capitol and make their feelings known to congressional lawmakers.

Murkowski said she fully blames Trump and his rhetoric for the riot in Washington, D.C. She later criticized the president for his decision to not appear at President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration and for giving little focus to the current COVID-19 pandemic.

“He’s either been golfing or he’s been inside the Oval Office fuming and throwing every single person who has been loyal and faithful to him under the bus, starting with the vice president,” she said. “He doesn’t want to stay there. He only wants to stay there for the title. He only wants to stay there for his ego.”

As hundreds of rioters violently clashed with Capitol police, Trump did little to discourage the violence. After a few hours, he posted a video to Twitter asking his supporters to be peaceful only to reiterate minutes later that Democrats had fraudulently stolen the election. 

Murkowski added later that she’s unsure if she will remain a Republican or become an independent after the Trump administration and many of her Republican colleagues have become so extreme. 

“There’s a lot of people who actually thought that I did that in 2010, think that I became an independent,” the senator said. “I didn’t have any reason to leave my party in 2010. I was a Republican who ran a write-in campaign and I was successful. But I will tell you, if the Republican Party has become nothing more than the party of Trump, I sincerely question whether this is the party for me,” she said.”

Murkowski isn’t the only Republican calling for Trump to be removed from office, only two weeks before his presidency ends. Two GOP governors ― Phil Scott (Vt.) and Larry Hogan (Md.) ― have called for Trump to step down, asking Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment, a law that allows the vice president to take over presidential duties when the president is incapacitated in some way.

Other Republicans, including Reps. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) and Steve Stivers (Ohio), have urged Pence to invoke the 25th.

“When pressed to move and denounce the violence he barely did so, while of course victimizing himself and seeming to give a wink and a nod to those doing it,” Kinzinger said in a Thursday statement. “All are indications are that the president has become unmoored, not just from his duty, but from reality itself.”

Dozens of  Democrats have also called on Trump to be removed from office ― through either invoking the 25th Amendment or impeachment. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) have both called on Trump to step down. 

It’s highly unlikely that Pence will use the 25th Amendment since the vice president has already signaled he does not want to invoke the law and Trump is hemorrhaging Cabinet members to their own resignations. House Democrats have already announced that they plan to introduce articles of impeachment following the president’s irrational behavior possibly as early as this Monday.

We need a few more Republicans to follow Murkowski’s and Kinzinger’s leads!

Tony 

Dear Commons Community,

Twitter permanently suspended President Donald Trump’s account yesterday, citing “the risk of further incitement of violence.”

The president’s account, with 88 million followers, was initially banned for 12 hours on Wednesday due to “severe violations of our Civic Integrity policy,” after he used the platform to condemn Vice President Mike Pence as his supporters stormed the Capitol.  As reported by NBC News (Ben Collins, Brandy Zadrozny, Kristen Welker Reporting).

“After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” the company said in a tweet.

Almost immediately, the account that Trump had used for years to convey his every thought, to denounce his enemies and praise his friends, to convey uncountable false statements and official White House announcements, simply disappeared. It was suddenly impossible to see his previous tweets, or even to see his reaction to Twitter’s decision. Instead, his empty account had been marked: “Account suspended.”

Trump’s attempts to tweet from associated accounts also were blocked. At one point, he was tweeting from his campaign account, but that was promptly suspended.

In a blog post, Twitter detailed the reasoning behind the decision.

“In the context of horrific events this week, we made it clear on Wednesday that additional violations of the Twitter Rules would potentially result in this very course of action,” Twitter wrote. “Our public interest framework exists to enable the public to hear from elected officials and world leaders directly. It is built on a principle that the people have a right to hold power to account in the open.”

“However, we made it clear going back years that these accounts are not above our rules and cannot use Twitter to incite violence,” the post continued. “We will continue to be transparent around our policies and their enforcement.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Twitter banned the president’s account after years of public pressure and several attempts to limit the reach of his account in recent days. Hundreds of Twitter employees recently signed a letter urging Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to ban the president for using the platform to incite violence in the wake of the Capitol siege. An employee at Twitter who has been pushing for the company to delete the president’s account this week told NBC News that “leadership took a beating” at a meeting Friday morning with employees, many of whom pleaded with executives to delete his account.

“A lot of us are so happy, and so proud to work for a company that did the right thing,” the employee said.

This was the second time in a week Twitter had taken action against the president’s account. Twitter removed three tweets that promoted conspiracy theories about the election and locked Trump’s account on Wednesday, citing “a risk of violence,” after a violent riot at the Capitol. Trump’s official @POTUS account is still active, but if the company determines he’s using it to evade the ban, it will take action to limit its use, a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement.

About two hours after his ban, Trump did turn to the official @POTUS account, railing against Twitter, Democrats, and “the Radical Left,” in a series of tweets that were quickly deleted. A Twitter spokesperson said, “As we’ve said, using another account to try to evade a suspension is against our rules. We have taken steps to enforce this with regard to recent Tweets from the @POTUS.”

In the blog post, Twitter cited Trump’s two most recent tweets as an explanation for the permanent suspension.

In the first one, Trump wrote: “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”

In the next, he tweeted, “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”

Taken together, the company determined, they were “likely to inspire others to replicate the violent acts that took place on January 6, 2021, and that there are multiple indicators that they are being received and understood as encouragement to do so.”

The suspension drew immediate praise from Democratic politicians.

“Thank you @twitter for taking this action,” Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., tweeted. “We must come together as a country to heal and find a common path forward.”

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., tweeted: “An overdue step. But it’s important to remember, this is much bigger than one person. It’s about an entire ecosystem that allows misinformation and hate to spread and fester unchecked.”

Republican politicians and Trump loyalists pushed back on the decision.

“Disgusting. Big Tech wants to cancel all 75M @realDonaldTrump supporters,” tweeted Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Trump’s 2020 campaign.

Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations, tweeted: “Silencing people, not to mention the President of the US, is what happens in China not our country. #Unbelievable”

Trump was an early adopter of Twitter, joining the platform in 2009. He has long favored Twitter as a means of communicating his policies, opinions and grievances directly to supporters while circumventing the traditional media.

But after his election in 2016, Trump told “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl that as president he would use the platform differently.

“I’m going to do very restrained, if I use it at all, I’m going to do very restrained,” Trump said. “I find it tremendous. It’s a modern form of communication.”

Trump was not restrained, using his account to make ad hominem attacks against political opponents and announce public firings, posts that were widely criticized as unpresidential but allowed by Twitter.

In 2020, as the pandemic raged and the president used his account to spread misinformation about Covid-19 and the coming election, Twitter — under fire from public health experts and lawmakers — began to enforce new policies on Trump’s account.

Twitter first took action against Trump’s account last May, adding a warning label to a pair of tweets that claimed mail-in ballots were fraudulent. The label said the tweet contained “potentially misleading information about voting processes.”

In the months that followed, the company played whack-a-mole, adding labels to tweets for violating nearly all of the company’s rules, including abusive behavior, misinformation, glorifying violence and manipulated media.

On election night, Twitter took the unprecedented step of hiding behind warnings tweets from the president that claimed his votes had “started to magically disappear.” Since then, Twitter has labeled Trump’s tweets disputing the free and fair election — sometimes daily.

Some individuals especially in the news media commented that Twitter’s suspension of Trump borders on infringement of free speech.  However, there is the classic analogy that one cannot cry fire in a crowded theater where there is no fire to prevent someone getting hurt in a possible stampede out the exits.  Trump’s actions this past week are comparable.  Five people died as a result of his inciting an insurrection at the Capital on Wednesday.

Tony

Senator Josh Hawley Fist Pumps Rioters at the Insurrection at the U.S. Capital on Wednesday!

Dear Commons Community,

Jack Danforth, the political mentor of Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.) said yesterday that backing the freshman Republican’s bids for office was “the worst mistake I ever made in my life,” calling Hawley’s attempts to undermine confidence in the election of President-elect Joe Biden “dangerous.”   Hawley was photographed (above) celebrating the rioters at the U.S. Capital on Wednesday.  Five people have died because of the insurrection.

Danforth, a former senator and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations who is considered the dean of Missouri Republican politics, played a key role in elevating Hawley in the  race against Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill in 2018. 

“Supporting Josh and trying so hard to get him elected to the Senate was the worst mistake I ever made in my life,” Danforth told St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Tony Messenger. “Yesterday was the physical culmination of the long attempt (by Hawley and others) to foment a lack of public confidence in our democratic system. It is very dangerous to America to continue pushing this idea that government doesn’t work and that voting was fraudulent.”

Danforth’s comments starkly display the gap between many retired Republican officials and a new generation of Republicans who grew of political age during the Trump era and are far more willing to indulge constituents who believe in conspiracy theories. 

Danforth helped Hawley, a University of Missouri law professor who had just become the state’s attorney general, clear the field of major competition during the Republican primary ahead of his successful bid against McCaskill. 

Other Republicans in the Senate, including Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, have criticized Hawley’s objections to counting electoral votes cast for Biden, arguing the effort was doomed from the start, encouraged Wednesday’s violence and set a dangerous precedent.

Danforth, who was considered a moderate during his time in the Senate, agreed.

“This guy is doing real harm,” he said. “What he’s doing to his party is one thing. What he’s doing to the country is much worse.”

I agree!  Trump would not be the disgrace that he is without enablers like Hawley!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

U.S. Secretary of Education Education Betsy DeVos will resign following Wednesday’s riot in the U.S. Capitol.  She joins other White House appointees such as Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, the wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who also said she will resign following the insurrection.

In her resignation letter (see above), DeVos called President Donald Trump’s recent rhetoric fanning the flames of his supporters an “inflection point” and laid blame directly at the president’s feet for sparking the unprecedented assault on the halls of Congress.

“We should be highlighting and celebrating your Administration’s many accomplishments on behalf of the American people,” DeVos wrote in her letter to the president. “Instead, we are left to clean up the mess caused by violent protestors overrunning the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to undermine the people’s business.”

“That behavior was unconscionable for our country,” she added. “There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me.”

DeVos went on to say children were watching the footage from the Capitol and that she believed “we each have a moral obligation to exercise good judgment and model the behavior we hope they would emulate.”

“Holding this position has been the honor of a lifetime, and I will be forever grateful for the opportunity to serve America and her students,” she concluded.

DeVos was one of Trump’s longest-serving Cabinet secretaries after barely eking out a confirmation in February 2017.  After two Republican senators voted against her, Vice President Mike Pence had to provide an unprecedented tie-breaking vote to help her get the job.

Still, despite becoming one of the administration’s most universally loathed members, the billionairess weathered previous waves of resignations and firings, standing by Trump through impeachment and acting as a loyal foot soldier.

DeVos, who spent her career fighting for school choice, first supported former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and then Sen. Marco Rubio during the 2016 Republican presidential primary. She spent her tenure as education secretary pushing her signature issue: to expand voucher programs, which help provide scholarships for children to attend private schools.

Her critics often painted her as a villain hellbent on privatizing public education. Announcing plans to “fire” her became popular tropes for Democrats on the presidential campaign trail.

Despite repeated efforts, DeVos failed to create a federal private school choice program and made little meaningful progress in helping to expand such efforts on a nationwide level. Even throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, DeVos advocating for sending federal dollars directly to families rather than to public schools. She also pushed for the immediate reopening of in-person classrooms while abdicating responsibility for some of the efforts that might help schools do so safely. In October, DeVos said it was not her department’s job to collect data on coronavirus infection rates in school, though education leaders had been asking for that.

Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers, who upon hearing of DeVos’ resignation, sent out a two-line sentence   “Good riddance!”   I would add that DeVos and the other White House appointees jumping ship are not showing any courage, they are simply trying to distance themselves from the stench of Trump’s legacy.  Sorry but you are too late.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

On Tuesday evening, our country saw and celebrated the election of the first African-American senator from the state of Georgia.  Raphael Warnock, a man of the cloth, won a resounding victory over David Perdue in a run-off election.  As pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, he followed in the footsteps of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. who was also a pastor in the same church. Warnock campaigned on a message of hope, peace and understanding. Listen to his speech (video above)  on Tuesday night where he speaks of his humble beginnings as one of eleven children growing up poor and whose mother picked cotton.  It was a night that represented all that is good in this country.

Yesterday afternoon at about 1:00 P.M, an angry mob (see video below) stormed the U.S. Capital while the Congress and Senate had convened to certify the election of Joe Biden as President of the United States.  The mob was incited earlier by President Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and Donald Trump, Jr.  The president yelling to the crowd that “I will be there with you”.  Trump, Jr.  shouting to the Congress “we are coming for you.”  And Giuliani saying it was time for “trial by combat.”  During the insurrection by the mob, the Capital was thrashed, our representatives ran for cover, and one woman was shot and killed.  The responsibility lies squarely at the feet of Donald Trump, who will go down in history as an worst president of our country, who fomented hate, violence and ugliness.

Tony

 

Dear Commons Community,

On May 3, 2016, during the height of the Republican nomination for president, Senator Lindsey Graham (Rep. South Carolina) tweeted:

“If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed…….and we will deserve it.”

He was absolutely right on both counts.  Unfortunately, the country has had to suffer four long years under the shame of a Trump presidency.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

CNN projected  that Rev. Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, was elected yesterday as the first Black senator from Georgia.

The control of the US Senate now comes down to Republican David Perdue, who is running to keep his seat against Democrat Jon Ossoff who leads in a race that is to close to call.

Warnock is the first Georgia Democrat elected to the Senate in 20 years, and his election is the culmination of years of voter registration drives conducted by former state House Democratic leader Stacey Abrams and other activists. President-elect Joe Biden also won Georgia, the first time for a Democratic presidential candidate since the 1990s.

After no Georgia Senate candidate received 50% of the vote in November, the races turned to two runoffs. While Ossoff and Warnock ran on a unity ticket, Trump refused to concede his own loss, sparking a fight within the Republican Party and disenchanting some of his supporters, who believed his false claims that the vote was rigged.

Trump’s ongoing onslaught against the Republican officials in charge of the elections pressured the two GOP senators to make a choice: Join the President in seeking to overturn the democratic outcome or risk losing Trump supporters, some of whom have become disenchanted with the electoral process. Trump recently appeared to pressure Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on a private call, urging him to “find” enough votes to reverse the results. Raffensperger refused.

But despite three recounts and no evidence of widespread fraud, Loeffler and Perdue decided to join the President in objecting to Congress’ certification of the Electoral College’s results in a final, deluded display of devotion to Trump supporters.

“The American people deserve a platform in Congress, permitted under the Constitution, to have election issues presented so that they can be addressed,” said Loeffler in a statement on Monday.

While Georgia is a rapidly diversifying state, the Republican candidates came into the Senate runoff elections with an advantage.

In November, Perdue received over 88,000 more votes than Ossoff, while Loeffler and the other Republican candidates received more votes than Warnock and the other Democratic candidates in the special election.

Republicans hoped their message that Georgia should be a check on Washington would prove successful, noting that if Warnock and Ossoff win, Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer will be in charge.

“We’re talking about the future of the country, and we can’t just turn it all over to one party,” said Eric Tanenblatt, who served as chief of staff to former Republican Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, before Election Day. “That could be wishful thinking on my part. But I do think that that’s going to be a big motivator.”

But Republicans are worried that Trump’s unwillingness to concede jeopardizes the party’s hold on the Senate, even though the state has not elected a Democrat to the chamber since 2000.

Heath Garrett, a campaign manager for former Georgia Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson, told CNN that Trump’s attacks on Gov. Brian Kemp and Raffensperger were “counterproductive for trying to motivate grassroots, base Republicans to go vote,” and said they’ve threw Perdue and Loeffler “off message” in the final days of the campaign.

“Senator Perdue and Senator Loeffler are being whipsawed by the President on one side and by the Democratic money on the other side,” he said.

They were whipsawed and will lose the election because of it.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

After today’s certification of the Joe Biden’s win in the presidential election coupled with the likely wins of  Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in Georgia’s U.S. Senate runoff elections,  it is likely we will see a lot of Trump enablers in the Republican Party start to jump off “the crazy train” as depicted in the New York Daily News cover this morning.  

It should have happened years ago.

Tony