We’ll get to the latest on the Jan. 6th committee hearings soon, but you’re going to want to read the latest from our co-founder Reed Galen for context. Have you pitched in to help us tell Americans the truth about what happened and burst the Fox News media bubble yet?

Friend,

As the Committee hearings continue, I want to take you back a minute and lay out a narrative for you. Here’s how some of the testimony has shed new light – and made it that much more clear what Trump and the Trumpists are trying to do.

On the night of Tuesday, November 3rd, 2020 everyone in the White House knew that Donald Trump was going to lose his reelection bid. With Fox News calling Arizona for Joe Biden, the “red mirage” taking full shape, the 45th president was destined for early retirement. His campaign team knew it. His lawyers knew it. Trump, somewhere in that maelstrom he calls a mind, knew it, too.

Some people, like campaign manager Bill Stepien, senior advisor Jason Miller and the cadre of actual political professionals Trump had cobbled together, can read election returns. They understand the trends. Some of the smarter ones knew the vote counts needed down to the precinct level. For them, it was just math.

The numbers were not, and would not, be there for Trump to pull it off. As former Fox News Election Desk chief Chris Stirewalt said before the Select Committee on January 6th, you’d be better off buying a Powerball ticket than overcoming the margins Trump was facing.

(By the way, this is why Trump’s pushing hard for ultra-MAGA candidates like Mastriano in Pennsylvania – he knows if Mastriano’s elected, he’ll hand him the state in 2024. Want to know what we’re doing to stop him?)

Stepien, in his recorded testimony, told Trump he was going to lose. Then, as the days passed and Trump’s rhetoric (and that of his MAGA allies) increased, Stepien claims to have ‘stepped away.’ But he didn’t really, and none of the rest of them did, either.

First, let’s define what stepping away means. At first blush, we could be forgiven for thinking Stepien and his ilk were quitting. Getting the hell out of dodge and looking to start the next chapter of their lives and put Trump in the rearview mirror.

In Trumplandia, though, stepping away means making oneself scarce. Stepien did it. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump did it. But they wouldn’t cut the tie that binds, and in Trump’s world, it’s all about the money.

The January 6th Committee, in its closing minutes on Tuesday, noted that in the aftermath of the November campaign, Trump’s “Election Defense Fund” raised $250 million. His own digital director admitted there was no separate account. It was in fact a marketing campaign.

It is probable, if not likely, that it was Stepien himself who was approving Trump’s email solicitations before they went out the door. Once he and the rest of the Grift Olympians that make up Trump’s world saw the daily incoming, they were happy to keep their mouths shut, their eyes closed and their ears covered.

For this, for wealth – reputational and financial, the “normal” people around Donald Trump were willing to sell out American democracy and the peaceful transfer of power. They took their boss neither seriously nor literally, and they didn’t really care. Like so much else of Trump’s behavior, they ignored the antics for their own benefit. They’d watch hundreds of thousands of Americans get sick and die, largely because of Trump’s bungling, lying and mismanagement, and they stuck around.

They saw him tweet “When the looting starts, the shooting starts…” and they didn’t quit.

They were backstage at the first presidential debate in 2020 when Trump told his Proud Boy allies to ‘stand back and stand by,” and they cashed his checks.

They knew Trump’s behavior was un-presidential, un-democratic, and un-American. They, like Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy and so many other ‘leaders’ chose to let the insanity play out, assuming it would come to nothing.

Then January 6th happened, and Trump’s lunatic behavior wasn’t a joke anymore. Blood was spilled, lives were lost, and the country teetered on the brink. Some people, staffers, and cabinet secretaries quit in the wake of the insurrection, worried more about their reputations and career prospects than any concern about the attack itself.

Others, like Stepien and Kushner, disappeared deeper into the shadows but wouldn’t leave. Only when compelled to speak by a Congressional subpoena did they speak. Only when faced with the idea of perjury and its attendant consequences, did they choose to share what they knew.

Now, what difference does it make, really? It matters because these people were at the highest levels of the American Republic and were prepared to watch it fall rather than give up their seats at the slot machine. It matters because if any of them were to return to a position of significant authority, they now know there is little-to-no consequence of sanction awaiting them. It matters because they’ve learned how brittle our democratic guardrails are. They were instrumental in weakening them. It matters because even after all this, not one of them has expressed an iota of regret, remorse, or reflection about what they were party to.

It matters because when it mattered, they sold out their country for their own benefit. If returned to power, how long do you think it will take them to sell you out?

We’re fighting these autocratic traitors every day at The Lincoln Project. Will you help keep us in the fight?

Thank you for all that you do,

Reed
@ReedGalen on Twitter