Another day, another insight from a MAGA insider into the macabre madhouse that was the Oval Office during the Trump years and particularly on January 6, 2021, when the Capitol Riot broke out. ABC broke a story early Sunday morning describing how Donald Trump’s golf caddy cum communications chief, Dan Scavino, who has been with him since he was a teenager, informed Jack Smith’s investigators what really happened that day.
Scavino described a petulant Trump, “arms folded across his chest, eyes locked on the TV,” watching the progression of the rioters as they stormed down the street towards the Capitol. When the Capitol had actually been breached, and images of shattered glass, tear gas and Capitol Police having difficulty holding the perimeter flashed across the screen, everybody at the White House was alarmed — except Trump. He was too busy blaming the day’s events on Mike Pence.
After unsuccessfully trying for up to 20 minutes to persuade Trump to release some sort of calming statement, Scavino and others walked out of the dining room, leaving Trump alone, sources said. That’s when, according to sources, Trump posted a message on his Twitter account saying that Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done.”
Trump’s aides told investigators they were shocked by the post. Aside from Trump, Scavino was the only other person with access to Trump’s Twitter account, and he was often the one actually posting messages to it, so when the message about Pence popped up, Cipollone and another White House attorney raced to find Scavino, demanding to know why he would post that in the midst of such a precarious situation, sources said.
Scavino said he was as blindsided by the post as they were, insisting to them, “I didn’t do it,” according to the sources.
Some of Trump’s aides then returned to the dining room to explain to Trump that a public attack on Pence was “not what we need,” as Scavino put it to Smith’s team. “But it’s true,” Trump responded, sources told ABC News. Trump has publicly echoed that sentiment since then.
At about the same time Trump’s aides were again pushing him to do more, a White House security official heard reports over police radio that indicated Pence’s security detail believed “this was about to get very ugly,” according to the House committee’s report.
As Trump aide [Nick] Luna recalled, according to sources, Trump didn’t seem to care that Pence had to be moved to a secure location. Trump showed he was “capable of allowing harm to come to one of his closest allies” at the time, Luna told investigators, the sources said.
You well recall how the Secret Service reacted to the police radio reports. Agents began texting home saying things like they believed it possible that they might not live to get back home again and telling loved ones goodbye. That is the level of menace that Trump unleashed upon Washington and the world.
This most recent story proves up, once again and conclusively, that Trump is not fit to lead anything. He doesn’t care about anybody or anything except people who are willing to break laws and potentially wreck their own lives, not to mention doing everlasting damage to this nation, to support his fantasy life. Trump lives in a world of fantasy. Once that is understood, the rest of it begins to make sense.
The story goes on to elaborate how this tweet was sent: Â “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously and viciously stripped away from great patriots. … Remember this day for forever!” it read. There was no landslide. Nothing that belonged to Trump was stripped away from him, or anybody. This is the dream world he lives in and asks his cult to live in with him. And they do. Just as the Heaven’s Gate cult believed in an E.T. version of the Rapture, that they would depart on the flying saucer that was allegedly tracking the Hale-Bopp comet, as it passed near earth for this purpose, to collect the faithful, so does MAGA support Trump’s whims. People will believe anything, if the right set of circumstances exist. We are bearing witness to that, daily.
Then Trump doubled down later on that night, the article goes on. “Cipollone called Trump, relaying what a “horrible day” it had been and urging Trump to tell Republican allies in Congress that they should withdraw any objections to the certification so the country could move on, sources said.”
Instead, Trump again declined to act, telling Cipollone, “I don’t want to do that,” Cipollone recalled to investigators, according to sources.
Trump then had another strained phone conversation, when he called Scavino to ask for his take on how the public was digesting the day’s events, sources said.
“Not good,” Scavino told Trump, according to the sources.
This passage is good to study as well. We see the pattern clearly develp: 1. Trump decides on a fantasy; 2. He briefs everybody on the fantasy; 3. Some go along, some don’t; 4. Shit hits the fan; 5. Trump’s aides come along, like the guy who cleans up after the elephant and then exclaims, (when people ask him why he doesn’t quit) “What and leave show business?” The aides tell Trump the sorry state of things. 6. Trump doesn’t listen, doesn’t care. Moves on to the next debacle. 7. Rinse and repeat.
That’s it. Go through the past seven years, see if you can find a Trump catastrophe that doesn’t fit that paradigm to a tee.
At least six of Trump’s closest aides continued to push Trump to do something more forceful than posting what they saw as a weak message on Twitter, sources said.
Trump listened to the pleas, “but he was just not interested at that moment to put anything out,” Scavino told Smith’s team, according to the sources. Instead, Trump was focused on watching TV and taking in the chaotic scenes, Scavino said, the sources added.
Testifying before the House committee, an aide to Meadows similarly said she heard Meadows say of Trump that day, “He doesn’t want to do anything.”
Nero fiddled, Trump watched Fox News, as their capitols burned. At least six aides and Ivanka, that we know of, begged Trump to make it stop and he wouldn’t. And it’s apparent he didn’t care if Mike Pence got killed. Once again, I call your attention to the fact that Pence refused to get in the limo and leave, telling his Secret Service man, “I trust you, Tim, but you’re not driving the car.” I have always believed that Pence wouldn’t get in the car because he thought there was a serious danger of being kidnapped and/or assassinated. And Trump would not have cared if that happened. There has never been a relationship between a president and a vice president like this one, in our history.
The story I would like to see investigated is that one. Who was driving the car? Why did Pence fear getting into it? What does Pence know that we don’t? If Pence truly wants to do a service to his country, he would reveal all this. But on the other hand, he’s undoubtedly scared to do so, and I don’t blame him. The MAGA crazies have already turned on him, why throw gasoline on the fire?
Just another boulder on a growing mountain of evidence that Donald Trump is utterly unfit to lead. Yet the GOP, who knows this as well as we do, will crown him again as their standard bearer and America will have to eliminate him at the polls.
Pence NEVER had any integrity. Look what he allowed to happen to gay folks when he was governor and aids was wiping them out. Oh, and all the while acting like he was following Jesus. He’s been a liar and hypocrite all along as he stood by this evil pissant for all the years he was the Oval office. He only acted in self interest by not going along with the plan, AS HE IS DOING NOW! Is he on the front lines of TRUTH to stop this maniac? HELLPHUCKINGNO! He’s a coward, a religious hypocrite, and a traitor just like his boss. I wouldn’t cross the street to piss on him if he were on fire.
At least Mikey realized his presidential run was an act in futility early on. Maybe he can write a sequel to his Marlon Bundo book about his rabbit.
Trump does find the delusional ones, I’ll say that much.
Pence. He finally accepted he wasn’t going to be nominated and win the 2024 election. It took too long for him to do so and he visited a lot of unnecessary, useless humiliation on himself but once he accepted for for him was the saddest of truths he has at least admitted a few things. You pose an interesting question about who was driving that car and the agents (not from his own detail) there to “rescue” him – WHY didn’t he trust them? Was it only a gut feeling or did he actually have some knowledge, something he’d heard but discounted as CT like crap until the riot breached the Capitol? That’s one helluva interesting question. I suspect he, probably through his detail had heard what they considered wild-ass rumors. However, Pence as you say isn’t talking. Why not? I don’t think it’s so much his safety, but that while he accepted not winning the Presidency THIS time, he’s holding out hope that he can be the one who emerges from the wreckage of the GOP and be the nominee in 2028. In other words, he’s going to be both wanting and needing some of that MAGA vote in four years and can only go so far (he’s already pissed them off) and have any chance of convincing them he’ll be able to pick up Trump’s mantle.
What a piece of shit.
Pence would have to be an idiot to have not weighed the pros and cons of defying Trump. The biggest pro in defying Trump is that he’s not now under federal indictment himself.
I think Pence knew that things could got hairy and he was afraid to get in the limousine because he didn’t know how crazy Trump was and he didn’t want to find out. Trump would not have cared if they did “hang Mike Pence” that day. In Trump’s mind, it was deserved.
Or he did know how crazy he was. I can’t imagine the actual conversations that we don’t know about between magaturd and pence leading up to Jan 6.
Neither of them ever had ANY integrity and is anyone REALLY surprised he didn’t give a shit about the VP during the Insurrection HE fomented? We’ve known since he belched his way down that cheesy gold escalator he is a malignant narcissist. After so many years being infected with “trumpitis”, we need to make that personality disorder unacceptable in “polite society” and “LOCK THEM UP”.
another angle…”Peril”
my freedom for a friend…
the adolescent loser tried to shame pence into
witholding the count as if they were grade school
school children on the playground.