As RedState reported, Liz Cheney was scheduled to do an interview with ABC News yesterday in order to discuss January 6th. Because what else would she be discussing?
Imagine being from Wyoming, having voted to elect Cheney to actually govern only to watch her hobnob with Nancy Pelosi and spin conspiracy theories about insurrection-that-wasn’t her whole term. Do you think maybe there’s some buyer’s remorse going on in the Cowboy State?
But that’s where we are, and Cheney did not disappoint once the interview aired. In what may be her dumbest “bombshell” to date, overtaking her release of the texts of several Fox News hosts, Cheney let it be known that Trump watched the breach of the Capitol Building on TV. And you may want to sit down for this, but apparently, someone testified that Ivanka Trump went into the room and asked him to “stop” the violence twice.
Truly, this is Gitmo-worthy stuff.
January 6th fanatics will take this just as they took every random Robert Mueller “bombshell,” package it with their pre-determined narrative, and proclaim the walls are closing in. The rest of us will sit back and ask exactly what Cheney thinks she’s proving here.
Let’s game this out. First, is it really a surprise that Trump was monitoring what was going on? Second, even if Ivanka Trump asked him to intervene, it’s quite obvious that he did not have the ability to do so. For example, let’s imagine that I walked into the basement and asked Joe Biden to stop all the murders in Chicago. Yet, if he has no power to do so, me asking him that doesn’t then prove he’s responsible for all the murders in Chicago, right? I’m sure Ivanka Trump, seeing what was unfolding, wanted her father to do something, but reality dictated that there was essentially nothing he could do except wait for the authorities to get things under control.
That reality is also not really under dispute. We know that Trump asked the crowd at his speech, a fraction of which splintered off to the Capitol, to peacefully protest. We also know that Trump, within minutes of the breach, sent out a tweet asking people to respect the Capitol Police. In neither case did any of the January 6th participants listen to him. But we are supposed to believe he had a magic switch that would have stopped the unrest had he just used it? That some further Twitter message would have ceased all hostilities? That’s really Cheney’s argument here?
Further, her accusations are wildly inconsistent.
So which is it? Was January 6th a pre-planned attack under the direct control of Donald Trump, to the point where he actually could have waved his hand and stopped it? Or was it a spontaneous action driven by Trump’s public proclamations about voter fraud, which would dictate that he otherwise had no direct ability to stop it? Because it can’t be both. Either Trump was in direct control, which means the attack would have happened regardless of his public rhetoric, or his public rhetoric was the cause and people were acting of their own volition after being indirectly incited.
Just a suggestion, but perhaps Cheney should try making up her mind? Because this entire thing feels like she and her cohorts are throwing everything against the wall and just hoping something sticks. The more the January 6th committee trudges forward, the more obvious it becomes that they have nothing of value and that this whole thing is a political play.
Where’s the proof of a coordinated insurrection we were promised? Instead, the narrative has been reduced to an improbable insinuation that Trump didn’t order people he had no control over to do something fast enough. It’s weak, and a colossal waste of time when the country is facing a slew of real, impactful issues. It’s also going to backfire, not just on Cheney, but on the Democrat Party as well.