I thought I’d been following this closely but the desire to get Pence moved so that Grassley could intervene really closes the loop for me. Unbelievable. Just when you thought that you couldn’t be more shocked.
As an Iowan voter I would like to hear more about Grassley. Why and where did he say Pence would not be presiding over the electoral certification and he would be instead?
I link to the source of his comment, which is an account in Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper. Grassley's staff walked back the comment and issued a statement denying that anyone who wanted the certification of the election sent back to the states had contacted his office.(The denial, curiously, did not explicitly say Grassley himself had no conversations about such a plan). My best guess is that Grassley was not in on any coup plot --he was in the middle of a fight over a super-close House race in Iowa that he wanted certified--but he might have been convinced to delay the congressional proceeding in light of the assault on the Capitol. Why do I think that? On Day Eight, we saw video of McConnell and Schumer talking amid the insurrection to Acting Secretary of Defense Miller about how soon the Capitol can re-open. Before Miller's conditional answer (a few hours, which turned out to be the case), Schumer says they have been told it could be several days. Imagine if Pence had obeyed the Secret Service and fled the Capitol, and Grassley was in the chair. Trump wouldn't have escalated his attack on Pence in the 2:24 pm tweet ("He didn't have the courage") if he didn't think the elderly Grassley would be easier to push around. An argument that the Capitol had to be closed for a while might have given Republicans the excuse they needed to delay certification.
All your analyses are a must-read thread - thanks, Jon.
What then can we make of this mini-series saga? The vast American TV audience now understands that Trump is a reptilian sociopath, a certifiable waste of human protoplasm. There will be consequences, to be sure. He cannot avoid swift prosecution now, nor can he ever become "47". He'll probably find a runway on a dark night and slip away to a non-extradition haven such as Abu Dhabi, Qatar, or the U.A.E.
I thought I’d been following this closely but the desire to get Pence moved so that Grassley could intervene really closes the loop for me. Unbelievable. Just when you thought that you couldn’t be more shocked.
Grassley ? What !!
As an Iowan voter I would like to hear more about Grassley. Why and where did he say Pence would not be presiding over the electoral certification and he would be instead?
I link to the source of his comment, which is an account in Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper. Grassley's staff walked back the comment and issued a statement denying that anyone who wanted the certification of the election sent back to the states had contacted his office.(The denial, curiously, did not explicitly say Grassley himself had no conversations about such a plan). My best guess is that Grassley was not in on any coup plot --he was in the middle of a fight over a super-close House race in Iowa that he wanted certified--but he might have been convinced to delay the congressional proceeding in light of the assault on the Capitol. Why do I think that? On Day Eight, we saw video of McConnell and Schumer talking amid the insurrection to Acting Secretary of Defense Miller about how soon the Capitol can re-open. Before Miller's conditional answer (a few hours, which turned out to be the case), Schumer says they have been told it could be several days. Imagine if Pence had obeyed the Secret Service and fled the Capitol, and Grassley was in the chair. Trump wouldn't have escalated his attack on Pence in the 2:24 pm tweet ("He didn't have the courage") if he didn't think the elderly Grassley would be easier to push around. An argument that the Capitol had to be closed for a while might have given Republicans the excuse they needed to delay certification.
All your analyses are a must-read thread - thanks, Jon.
What then can we make of this mini-series saga? The vast American TV audience now understands that Trump is a reptilian sociopath, a certifiable waste of human protoplasm. There will be consequences, to be sure. He cannot avoid swift prosecution now, nor can he ever become "47". He'll probably find a runway on a dark night and slip away to a non-extradition haven such as Abu Dhabi, Qatar, or the U.A.E.
another brilliant analysis.