TRUMP LOSES TWITTER. Twitter said on Friday that it had permanently suspended President Trump from its service “due to the risk of further incitement for violence,” effectively cutting him off from his favorite megaphone for reaching his supporters, the New York Times reports.
Washington Post: “The move amounted to a historic rebuke for a president who had used the social-networking site to fuel his rise to political prominence. Twitter has been Trump’s primary communication tool to push policies, drive news cycles, fire officials, dispense falsehoods, savage opponents and praise allies. It also means his tweets disappeared from Twitter, removing the catalog of his thoughts except for those preserved by researchers and other documentarians.”
Vox: Why Twitter finally banned Trump.
“President Trump has many prized possessions. But few seemed to inspire as much personal joy as his Twitter feed. Trump routinely boasted of the social media bullhorn he possessed. He credited it with launching his political trajectory. And he used it as a tool to lacerate his foes,” Politicoreports.
“On Friday night, he lost it. And, then, he lost his mind.”
“The president is ‘ballistic,’ a senior administration official said after Twitter permanently took down his account, citing the possibility that it would be used in the final 12 days of Trump’s presidency to incite violence. The official said Trump was ‘scrambling to figure out what his options are.’”
“President Trump suggested Friday night that he may seek to build his own online platform after Twitter permanently suspended his account less than two weeks before the end of his presidency,” The Hill reports.
Writing on his official White House account: “Twitter employees have coordinated with the Democrats and the Radical Left in removing my account from their platform, to silence me — and YOU, the 75,000,000 great patriots who voted for me.”
Pro-Trump lawyer Lin Wood has moved full-time to Parler after he was permanently suspended from Twitter on Thursday where he called for Vice President Mike Pence’s execution, Mediaite reports. Wrote Wood: “Get the firing squads ready. Pence goes FIRST.” Wood also claimed that Ashli Babbitt, the woman shot dead by Capitol Police on Wednesday, is still “alive.”
Google said it is suspending Parler from its app store because of continued posting that “seeks to incite ongoing violence in the U.S.,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
A senior Trump aide to Olivia Nuzzi: “This is confirmation of so much that everyone has said for years now — things that a lot of us thought were hyperbolic. We’d say, ‘Trump’s not a fascist,’ or ‘He’s not a wannabe dictator.’ Now, it’s like, ‘Well, what do you even say in response to that now?’”
The person adds: “There’s not a single person I have talked to at any level, from 23-year-old assistants to members of the Cabinet, who are not disgusted and ashamed with what has happened.”
INVESTIGATING THE COUP ATTEMPT. “A growing number of House Democrats say they’re concerned that tactical decisions by some Capitol Police officers worsened Wednesday’s riots and have raised the possibility that the pro-Trump mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol might have had outside help,” Politico reports.
Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) told CBS News that that the ease in which rioters were able to get into the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday suggests someone on the inside of the Capitol was “complicit” in the assault.
Reuters photographer Jim Bourg tweeted that he heard at least three pro-Trump rioters at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday saying they wanted to find Vice President Mike Pence and execute him by hanging.
“Investigators are trying to determine whether some who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday intended to do more than disrupt the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory,” the Washington Post reports.
“Authorities are particularly interested in images of people carrying zip ties, a plastic version of handcuffs, and at least one man was arrested while allegedly carrying a pistol on the Capitol grounds.”
“On the cusp of the second impeachment battle in just over a year, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is circulating a memo to Republican senators that outlines how a potential Senate trial would work for President Trump — proceedings that would all but certainly occur after he leaves the White House,” the Washington Post reports.
“McConnell’s office notes that the Senate will not reconvene for substantive business until Jan. 19, which means the earliest possible date that impeachment trial proceedings can begin in the Senate is the day before President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated.”
NO TRUMP INTERNATIONAL AIRPORTS. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) announced in a tweet that he would be introducing legislation that would prevent any federal buildings or property from ever being named after President Trump.
HALEY BLASTS TRUMP. TLTL. Former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley sharply criticized President Trump over the Capitol riot and his behavior since the election, telling RNC members in a closed-door speech Thursday evening that Trump’s actions “will be judged harshly by history,” Politico reports.
PELOSI LAPTOP STOLEN. A spokesperson for Nancy Pelosi confirmed that a laptop was stolen from the speaker’s office, amid the violent siege of the Capitol on Wednesday.
KIM CLEANED UP. Rep. Andy Kim (D-NJ) told GQ that he stayed in the U.S. Capitol until 3 a.m. Thursday morning to help clean up the debris left by pro-Trump rioters.
Saud Kim: “There was trash and debris everywhere, broken furniture and broken flags, coats and gloves, cigarette butts and car keys. Trump flags and random bits of food. There was some body armor. This was probably the worst condition that room has ever been in. It broke my heart—I almost started crying.”
New York Daily News: Pro-Trump rioters smeared poop in U.S. Capitol hallways during belligerent attack.
TRUMP FACES PROSECUTION. Washington Post: “Legal advisers to the president and his allies expressed increasing concern Friday about possible criminal liability in the wake of Wednesday’s melee… Trump has been told by attorneys that he could face legal jeopardy for inciting a mob; he has responded that it was never his intent to do so.”
Michael Cohen said in a tweet on Friday that he is cooperating with “multiple government agencies” probing President Trump and his family.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski has become the first Republican senator to call on President Trump to resign in the wake of the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol this week, according to a blistering interview with the Anchorage Daily News.
Murkowski also told the Anchorage Daily News that if the Republican Party cannot separate itself from Donald Trump, she isn’t certain she has a future with the party.
When asked if she would become an independent, she said: “Well, you know, there’s a lot of people who actually thought that I did that in 2010, think that I became an independent. I didn’t have any reason to leave my party in 2010. I was a Republican who ran a write-in campaign and I was successful. But I will tell you, if the Republican Party has become nothing more than the party of Trump, I sincerely question whether this is the party for me.”
VOWING TO RETURN FOR A FINAL BATTLE. “In the wake of Wednesday’s riot at the Capitol, Trump supporters with extremist views feel emboldened and are vowing to return to Washington for the upcoming inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden on January 20, using online platforms to rally each other,” NBC News reports.
The FBI released a new “Most Wanted” poster featuring 10 more people suspected of being part of the violent siege on the Capitol.
MNUCHIN TALKS 25TH. “Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has been personally involved in discussions about invoking the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office, but is highly unlikely to pursue that extraordinary course of action,” the Washington Post reports.
“Mnuchin, who has long been one of President Trump’s most loyal Cabinet secretaries, publicly condemned the rioters for their siege of the U.S. Capitol building but refrained from openly criticizing the president. In private, however, he has fumed over Trump’s handling of the incident and has been directly critical of him.”
CIPOLLONE IS CONSIDERING RESIGNING. “White House counsel Pat Cipollone is considering resigning,” CNN reports. “Since the election, he had considered multiple times but has been urged to stay for the good of the country by members of the Senate and the Cabinet.”
DEVOS RESIGNED. “Education Secretary Betsy DeVos submitted her resignation on Thursday after she believed that it would not be possible to remove President Trump from office under the 25th Amendment,” Politico reports. Said an adviser: “Once that option was off the table, resignation was the only option.”
CALLS FOR HAWLEY AND CRUZ TO RESIGN. Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) called on Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) to resign. Said Murray: “At the end of the day, our job is to keep this country a democracy where voices win, not brute force. Any Senator who stands up and supports the power of force over the power of democracy has broken their oath of office.”
George Will: “The Trump-Hawley-Cruz insurrection against constitutional government will be an indelible stain on the nation. They, however, will not be so permanent. In 14 days, one of them will be removed from office by the constitutional processes he neither fathoms nor favors. It will take longer to scrub the other two from public life. Until that hygienic outcome is accomplished, from this day forward, everything they say or do or advocate should be disregarded as patent attempts to distract attention from the lurid fact of what they have become. Each will wear a scarlet ‘S’ as a seditionist.”
A Missouri businessman who helped bankroll Sen. Josh Hawley’s (R-MO) first campaign denounced him on Thursday as a “political opportunist” who used “irresponsible, inflammatory, and dangerous tactics” to incite the rioting that took over the U.S. Capitol Building, the Missouri Independent reports.
David Humphreys also called on the U.S. Senate to censure Hawley “for provoking yesterday’s riots in our nation’s capital.”
MEANWHILE… THE PANDEMIC IS STILL HERE. Washington Post: “The United States on Friday surpassed 300,000 daily coronavirus cases, the second alarming record this week. The number, which roughly equates to the population of St. Louis, Pittsburgh or Cincinnati, comes about two months after the country reported 100,000 coronavirus cases a day for the first time, and one day after more than 4,000 people died from the virus, also a record.”
TRUMP BETRAYED HIS SUPPORTERS. “Donald Trump’s most loyal supporters feel angry and betrayed over the Thursday video in which the president tried to distance himself from a pro-Trump riot in Congress, despite the president’s advisers assuring him he had not alienated too many of his fans,” the Daily Beast reports.
“Shortly after his White House video—in which a scripted President Trump acknowledged that a transition to a ‘new’ administration was underway, but stopped short of even admitting that he indeed lost fairly to his 2020 Democratic opponent—posted online, Trump started having second thoughts. Throughout the evening, the outgoing, increasingly authoritarian leader of the free world quizzed close advisers and White House officials about if he did the right thing, and if the reception from the public, the media, and his supporters was ‘good.’ … He asked if his supporters felt let down.
CALLS FOR TRUMP TO RESIGN. Peggy Noonan: “The president should be removed for reasons of justice—he urged a crowd to march on Congress, and, when it turned violent, had to be dragged into telling them, equivocally, to go home—and prudence.”
“As for prudence, Mr. Trump is a sick, bad man and therefore, as president, a dangerous one. He has grown casually bloody-minded, nattering on about force and denouncing even his own vice president as a coward for not supporting unconstitutional measures. No one seems to be certain how Mr. Trump spends his days. He doesn’t bother to do his job. The White House is in meltdown. The only thing that captures his interest is the fact that he lost, which fills him with thoughts of vengeance.”
A Wall Street Journal editorial called on President Trump to resign:
“We know an act of grace by Mr. Trump isn’t likely. In any case this week has probably finished him as a serious political figure. He has cost Republicans the House, the White House, and now the Senate. Worse, he has betrayed his loyal supporters by lying to them about the election and the ability of Congress and Mr. Pence to overturn it. He has refused to accept the basic bargain of democracy, which is to accept the result, win or lose.”
“It is best for everyone, himself included, if he goes away quietly.”
“Trump is a political David Koresh. He sees the end coming and wants to burn it all down and take as many with him as possible.” — Billy Piper, former chief of staff to Sen. Mitch McConnell, quoted by the New York Times referring to the cult leader who died with his followers during an FBI siege in Waco, Texas.
JOE BIDEN IS FINE WITH TRUMP NOT COMING. Joe Biden says Donald Trump not attending his inauguration is “one of the few things he and I have ever agreed on. It’s a good thing — him not showing up,” CNN reports. He added: “He exceeded even my worst notions about him. He’s been an embarrassment to the country, embarrassed us around the world. He’s not worthy to hold that office.”
“Joe Biden will begin his new journey as the 46th President of the United States in a familiar way: riding Amtrak from Wilmington to Washington,” CNN reports. “A day before he is sworn into office, Biden is planning to make his way to the nation’s capital on a family train trip that will be part of the festivities leading up to the inauguration on January 20.”
Wonderful headline! Thanks for a much-needed laugh among the chaos. …