Inside Trump’s “Unhinged” Bunker
As I wrote in The Devil's Chessboard, democracy is as fragile as an "eggshell" in the tumult of history. This has been glaringly evident throughout the riveting January 6 hearings, especially during yesterday's session when the Congressional committee displayed testimony about the "unhinged" White House meeting, where for more than six hours the "crazies" -- like convicted General Michael Flynn and attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell -- ranted at cooler-headed White House staff and nearly convinced our stable genius of a president to order a military coup. (Trump finally opted instead to inflame a mob of armed followers to overrun the Capitol.)
Listen to former White House counsel Pat Cipollone's chilling testimony about the meeting.(He's pictured below.) His recollections of the frenzy in the bunker rank up there with Cassidy Hutchinson's. Here's a piece:
“I opened the door and I walked in. I saw General Flynn,” he said in a videotaped interview the committee played at the hearing on Tuesday. “I saw Sidney Powell sitting there. I was not happy to see the people who were in the Oval Office.”
Asked to explain why, Mr. Cipollone said, “First of all, the Overstock person, I’ve never met, I never knew who this guy was.” The first thing he did, Mr. Cipollone said, was say to Mr. Byrne, “Who are you?” “And he told me,” Mr. Cipollone said. “I don’t think any of these people were providing the president with good advice.”
Then things got really weird...
The U.S. has a dismal record of holding high criminals accountable. Yes, as we keep getting reminded this Watergate anniversary season, Nixon fell. But no high official responsible for the bloody debacle of Vietnam was ever found guilty. The assassinations of the 1960s? No. Bush-Cheney's illegal and disastrous invasion of Iraq? Ditto. The CIA's post-9/11 reign of torture and drone mayhem? Are you kidding?
The U.S. has such a strong aversion to ever being held accountable for its murderous actions that our government defies the war crimes and human rights tribunals that it set up! And we keep people like Julian Assange in black holes for the temerity of exposing the truth about our war crimes.
But this shouldn't prevent you from watching the January 6 hearings, where smart, progressive legislators like Jamie Raskin -- and, yes, Republican Liz Cheney, the loving daughter of a war criminal -- have distinguished themselves. In the end, Trump and his co-conspirators who tried to overthrow democracy will probably remain free. That's sadly the American Way. But we still must bear witness. And most of us can still vote in November.
