Mainly about impeachment – A typical rioter – The bravery of Eugene Goodman – Trump’s dwindling income – Evening statistics
It is now official: Donald Trump is the only President in history to be impeached twice.
The vote to approve the motion to impeach him ran 232-197, with ten Republicans voting their concurrence. They included House Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney, of Wyoming, the No. 3 Republican leader and the highest-ranking GOP woman in Congress. Reps. Jim Jordan (Ohio) and Andy Biggs (Ariz.), dedicated Trumpsters that they are, immediately called on Cheney to resign from leadership and are currently attempting to engineer to oust her from power, but so far she has held firm. “I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “This is a vote of conscience. It’s one where there are different views in our conference. But our nation is facing an unprecedented — since the Civil War — constitutional crisis. That’s what we need to be focused on. That’s where our efforts and attention need to be.”
It is unclear what the outcome in the Senate will be. If all Democratic Senators vote for impeachment (and even that is not certain), it will still require votes from 17 Republican Senators to obtain a conviction – something of a long shot, admittedly. Still, it may be possible. The tide against Trump is turning rapidly, and he will have no official status in just a week from now. So perhaps a sufficient number of them will summon up the courage to assail this stricken boar once the Biden administration begins.
A case that is pending against one of the rioters may be said to be a typical example of how Trump has doled out false coin to his supporters. Adam Newbold, a Navy SEAL, boasted on Facebook immediately after the siege that he was proud to have participated in it and that no vandalism occurred – a claim that is demonstrably false, as numerous photos of broken windows, shattered doors, floors and carpets strewn with urine and feces, and various defaced objects can all attest. This show of bravado was deleted soon afterwards, but not before ABC News obtained a copy of it. He is now being investigated by the FBI and is now professing repentance. He claims that reality kicked in for him when he heard about the death of one rioter and the death of a Capitol Police officer. “It accomplished nothing,” he told ABC News. “What the hell was it all for?” His only reward for his efforts is widespread condemnation from his fellow-SEALs and an assortment of felony charges looming over him. Many other rioters are now in a similar situation, losing their jobs and facing FBI investigations as their identity becomes known – a relatively simple matter, for they themselves posted numerous photos and videos showing them in their course of destruction. It is very doubtful that they would have been much better off even if they had succeeded in restoring Trump to power. “Those sharp tools with which great people cut out their enterprises are generally broken in the using; nor did I ever hear that their employers had much regard for them in their ruin” (from William Thackeray’s Barry Lyndon, Ch. XII).
Footage of the assault on the Capitol continues to emerge. One particularly disturbing sequence shows the rioters seeking out the Senate chamber before its members could be led to safety. They were diverted by the rapid thinking of Eugene Goodman, a Capitol Police officer who in effect offered himself up as bait to distract their attention, leading them to another area of the Capitol where more police were present and thereby giving the Senators time to obtain safe refuge. This act was all the more courageous because he not only was a policeman facing hostile rioters but a black man facing a crowd of white supremacists who would have had no compunction in lynching him. Happily he managed to reach his colleagues before his pursuers could lay hands on him.
Even if the move to impeach Trump founders in the Senate, it will have one beneficial effect at the very least: it will damage him financially. Already major corporations are signaling their reluctance to have anything to do with his brand name. The organizers of the PGA Championship, for example, have canceled plans to hold the event at Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey golf club in 2022 – which is a blow to his ego as well as a financial one; for as we have already seen, golf is the sole object that awakens any kind of emotional involvement in him. His wives and children are merely trophies in his eyes. Other businesses shying away from him include R&A, the group that oversees golf in the U.K., which now says that it has no plans to return its flagship British Open to Trump’s course in Turnberry, Scotland; Shopify, which hosted the Trump Organization’s online store, generating roughly $900,000 in income for his company in 2019, and which has now removed all Trump-related accounts; PayPal, which has similarly removed accounts for raising funds for his supporters; Stripe, which has halted Trump’s campaign account; and the real estate brokerage firm JLL, which said Friday it will no longer represent the Trump Organization in its attempt to sell the president’s Washington hotel. This last-named firm is perhaps making no great sacrifice as a result of this decision; the hotel has consistently run half-empty during its four years of existence.
And I am happy to add that the 147 lawmakers who persisted in encouraging the rioters by voting to overturn the election results even after the invasion of the Capitol took place are also paying for the decision to pander to Trump’s mobsters. Several corporations have announced that they will halt donations to all of them. The list of corporations taking action include Marriott, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, Dow Chemical, Hallmark, Verizon, Airbnb, Amazon, American Express, AT&T, Best Buy, Cisco Systems, Commerce Bank, Comcast, General Electric, Intel, MasterCard, and Morgan Stanley. Dow Chemical is the most aggressive of the lot: its ban “will remain in place for a period of one election cycle (two years for House members; up to six years for Senators), which specifically includes contributions to the candidate’s reelection committee and their affiliated PACs.”
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 92,746,220; # of deaths worldwide: 1,985,392; # of cases U.S.: 23,614,679; # of deaths; U.S.: 393,915. The moderating trend noted earlier this week has been reversed. Both today and yesterday more than 4,000 people died from the virus.