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Thursday open thread: Things got out of hand


Donald Trump's last chief of staff, Mark Meadows, had been cooperating with the January 6th Commission. How much had he been cooperating? Well: 
And then:
Mr. Meadows, who has turned over thousands of pages of documents to the committee, informed the panel on Tuesday that he was no longer willing to sit for a deposition that had been scheduled for Wednesday, reversing a deal he had reached with the panel just last week to be interviewed by its investigators. The leaders of the committee immediately threatened to charge Mr. Meadows, a former congressman from North Carolina, with contempt of Congress if he did not appear.

Mr. Thompson said Mr. Meadows had provided some useful information to the committee, including a November email that discussed appointing an alternate slate of electors to keep Mr. Trump in power and a Jan. 5 message about putting the National Guard on standby.

Mr. Meadows also turned over to the committee his text messages with a member of Congress in which the lawmaker acknowledged that a plan to object to Mr. Biden’s victory would be “highly controversial,” to which Mr. Meadows responded, “I love it.”
Let's step back, shall we, and look at the timeline of Meadows' demise.

First, he agreed to cooperate with the commission. Why? He probably didn't want to get indicted like Steve Bannon. In this phase of his mishegas, he turned over the details of a criminal conspiracy to overturn the elections.

But now, he's reneging on his deal with the commission. Why? Well, it's simple. It's his book. 

Meadows wrote a book which he somehow thought would exonerate Trump. Instead, it detailed how Trump had tested positive for COVID, and rather than isolate, went to the debate with Joe Biden. How he thought this would please Trump is unfathomable. But then, Trump "wrote" a foreword to the book, speaking of it in glowing terms, without, obviously, having read it. Because when the excerpts began to appear, Trump went ballistic.

So, in order to get back into the Orange Palpatine's good graces again, he blew up his cooperation agreement with the commission. But, here's the thing: He already handed over plenty of material. Obviously, plenty of damning information. And there is no legal concept of "takesies backsies." He screwed over Trump, then screwed himself by going back on the deal with the commission. He did this while getting nothing for himself. 

These are not evil geniuses. Evil, yes. Geniuses? My Hounds of Love have more political nous than these guys.

And no, January 6th wasn't a dry run for 2024. They won't get any smarter in the intervening years. The courts are being packed by Biden appointments. The situation in the country is improving to such a point that the midterms, while being hard fought, won't be a shellacking for the Democrats. A year is not an eternity in politics; it's a unit of time of which our feeble human minds cannot conceive. 

The travails of Mark Meadows show that no one had any plan. And no plan can really succeed in such a decentralized country as the US, with devolved centers of power. Trump and his followers see themselves as glorious revolutionaries, just waiting until they can seize power. But it doesn't work that way. These are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Epilogue


Oh my God. He is trying the "takesies backsies" defense.
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