Jan. 6 committee makes the case clear for Merrick Garland

[Nevilledog]

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Amanda Marcotte
@AmandaMarcotte
Okay, I know the headlining and art makes it seem like this piece is about Merrick Garland. It mostly isn't. It's about how the January 6 committee's argument today was that Donald Trump views his followers as a bunch of marks.

salon.com
Jan. 6 committee makes the case clear for Merrick Garland
The Big Lie was a fraud perpetuated on Trump supporters, but will they admit their leader is exploiting them?
12:11 PM · Jun 13, 2022

https://www.salon.com/2022/06/13/jan-6-committee-makes-the-case-clear-for-merrick-garland-failure-to-prosecute-is-political/

Donald Trump thinks you're an idiot.

That's the message that the Jan. 6 committee sent to Republican voters during Monday's hearing, the second of what could be as many as eight hearings through June. As Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., had promised, the hearing covered the first part of Trump's seven-part plan to steal the election, which was "a massive effort to spread false and fraudulent information to the American public claiming the 2020 election was stolen from him." Straight from the beginning, Trump voters were portrayed as the primary victims of his Big Lie. Cheney kicked things off by painting the people who sacked the Capitol on Jan. 6 as Trump's dupes, people who acted on Trump's lies and now are paying for it by going to prison. Quoting the Wall Street Journal, Cheney said, "Mr. Trump betrayed his supporters by conning them on January 6th. And he is still doing it."

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., followed this up by highlighting how Trump has repeatedly sent out emails fundraising off the Big Lie, taking in money that he can redirect into his personal coffers quite easily. "The big lie was also a big ripoff," she declared.

Tellingly, pretty much all the evidence that Trump deliberately lied to defraud his own supporters came from other Republicans, both in taped depositions and live witnesses. As Heather "Digby" Parton argued in her preview Monday morning, for "at least a few GOP voters it must be a little bit difficult to buy that all of these Republicans are liars." The all-Republican witness list gave the hearing the air of a cult deprogramming effort, repeatedly confronting Republican voters with truths coming from people they simply can't write off as Democrats playing politics.

It's a strategy with some obvious pitfalls, however.

The case that Trump did all this very much on purpose is, as the committee showed, a slam dunk.
Few Republican voters will even allow themselves to take in this information. Instead, they will turn to propaganda outlets like Fox News to be told comforting lies. But the problem may be even bigger than that. Waking Republican voters up with the truth only works if "truth" is something Republican voters care about. Unfortunately, there's little reason to believe it is.

*snip*

[dem4decades]

1. Unless Garland does something we're all idiots. Then for thinking Trump was legit.

And us for thinking Garland was legit.

Maybe we're all sheep to the monied interests.

[SoonerPride]

2. So did Mueller.

Yet here we are.

[CentralMass]

4. Barr wiped his arse with the Mueller Report.

[SoonerPride]

5. And yet Garland still could have used Mueller to prosecute trump.

Instead he let the statue of limitations expire.



Because reasons.





I guess.