The January 6 Committee is in a brief recess right now and will resume in a few minutes. Here are clips that you will probably see over and over again in the media. Liz Cheney gave the opening statement. Here are some of the highlights.
"Red flag for me personally" — Cheney plays a clip of Gen. Milley telling the January 6 committee that when he talked to Meadows on January 6, Meadows's concern was making sure people understood Trump was still in charge pic.twitter.com/0zVVaZeb45
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 10, 2022
And another.
A video played by the January 6 committee shows how the tweet Trump posted after the Capitol had been breached criticizing Pence for not helping him overturn the election prompted "hang Mike Pence!" chants pic.twitter.com/SnYd1AU5lz
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 10, 2022
This will blow your mind.
the juxtaposition of Trump fans stomping cops on January 6 and then Trump calling them "peaceful people" in a subsequent interview is quite striking pic.twitter.com/2X9mAICvqh
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 10, 2022
Peaceful people and lots of love. Righto.
More material later after the second half of the hearing concludes.
I don’t want to dig too deeply into this tonight because I want to keep most of my attention on the hearing, but one issue you raised concerns me deeply – Chain of Command. The President sits at the top and unless for one reason or another he/she is relieved of or temporarily cedes power (thereby elevating the VP to acting with full authority of the Office) then a VP has ZERO authority to issue orders to the military. So things were well and truly fucked that day if Milley was acting on “instructions” from Pence.
The former guy was certainly trying to avoid responsibility for all the sh1t that day. (As usual.)
I think as Milley has already said, he was prepared to ignore an unlawful order from the commander-in-chief because he was certain things were fucked.
Excellent point. Sometimes huge concepts get lost in the minutiae. This is an example of that. The fact that Milley and Pence were having a conversation at all gives you a concept of how things were marginally in control, at best. I would be interested if Milley would write a memoir at some point and see if it crossed his mind — as it must have — whether he would be placed in the position of making a decision about the military taking charge. It occurred to everyone, it had to have occurred to him.
As I mentioned above, Ursula, I am certain I heard ahead of time that Milley had stated publically he would not obey an unlawful order from Trump. This is “Seven Days in May” in reverse, when the military was prepared to make a defensive stand against a corrupt and rotten government and not to create a military coup but to preserve the order that was about to go all to hell.