Did the January 6th Coup Fail?

 

Did the January 6th Coup Fail?

By warping the Republican party, Trump made another coup attempt possible.

by MONA CHAREN 

JANUARY 5, 2022 5:30 AM 

January 6th should have been the point of no return, the pivot point at which even the most blinkered sugarcoaters of Trumpism recoiled in disgust from what they had wrought. For a nanosecond, it seemed that it was. In the first days after the desecration of the Capitol, a number of previously timid Republicans found their voices. As I noted at the time, Sen. Pat Toomey said the president had committed impeachable offenses and was unfit to serve. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said, “I want him out.” Sen. Lindsey Graham expressed his disgust on the Senate floor: “Trump and I, we had a hell of a journey . . . but today all I can say is: Count me out. Enough is enough.” Rep. Kevin McCarthy said Trump was responsible for the storming of the Capitol, and warned Republican House members not to criticize those who voted for impeachment because it might endanger their lives.

For everyone who had convinced themselves that, whatever Trump’s flaws, the true threat to the American way of life lay on the left and only on the left, January 6th was a blaring klaxon. Yes, Trump was a buffoon and incompetent and unfamiliar with the levers of power—and yet this clown nearly brought a 232-year-old democracy to its knees. Had it not been for 1) a half-dozen or so Republican officeholders at the state level who demonstrated basic integrity, and 2) the unwillingness of Mike Pence to perform as Trump had commanded, the outcome could have been very different. As George F. Will said, “I would like to see January 6th burned into the American mind as firmly as 9/11 because it was that scale of a shock to the system.”

The most threatening aspect of January 6th was not the ferocious attack on the Capitol but the response of Republican officeholders thereafter. Even after the unleashing of medieval mob violence; even after the erection of a gallows; even after members had been forced to run for their lives; even after the deaths and injuries; even after all of that and more, 147 Republican members of Congress voted not to certify Joe Biden as the winner of the presidency. The transformation of the GOP from a political party into an authoritarian personality cult became official that day. McCarthy’s bootlicking visit to Mar-a-Lago in late January 2021 merely provided the visual.

In the year since, most Republicans (with some extremely honorable exceptions) have descended further into cultishness. They blocked the creation of an independent January 6th commission, attempted to pack the congressional January 6th committee with Trump Dobermans like Rep. Jim Jordan, and engaged in flagrant gaslighting about the events of that day. Rep. Andrew Clyde was typical. He had been photographed screaming in alarm on January 6th and barricading a door to the chamber. But he told his constituents in May that January 6th had been a “normal tourist visit.”

Now, with the arrival of the first anniversary of the most shameful day in recent history, Republicans and right-wing opinion leaders have returned to their comfort zone: blame the media.

Pence, who frankly showed uncharacteristic independence that day, has been testing the waters and understands what works with the GOP audience. “I know the media wants to distract from the Biden administration’s failed agenda by focusing on one day in January,” he told Fox News. He and Trump are on great terms, he said, and he’s focused “only” on the future.

“I don’t think January 6th is going to help the Democrats like the media seems to think it will,” tweeted radio host Erick Erickson. “But there is a genuine obsession in the press about it. It was a bad day, but it doesn’t outweigh crime, inflation, COVID, school closures, etc. for voters.” A day later, responding to those who dug up his (subsequently deleted) January 6 tweet demanding that we “shoot the protesters, waive the rules, impeach!” Erickson was at pains to emphasize that he isn’t now minimizing what happened at the Capitol, but merely responding to a “press corps obsessed with it as the worst thing ever.”

This is not to say that there’s no such thing as press overreaction or hysteria. It’s as common as water, particularly among people who earn their living through clicks. But the right has been engaging in distraction and evasion for years with the “but the media” trope. In the wake of January 6th, it looks not just dishonest but absurd. January 6th is not an “issue” like crime or COVID or inflation. It’s the heart of our system. Without bipartisan allegiance to the verdict of voters and the willingness to cede power to those you oppose, no other “issues” can ever be addressed.

Erickson doesn’t even go as far as some on the right. W. James Antle III allows that the events of January 6th were “terrible” and “had the potential to be even worse in terms of injury or loss of life.” But the House January 6th Committee’s “obvious desire to elevate Jan. 6 to a 9/11-level event—and to treat a ragtag group of rioters, who made up most of the death toll, as a serious attempt to overthrow the federal government—is laughable.”

Just a ragtag group of rioters. Note that Antle includes only “injuries or loss of life” as the possible consequences, not the subversion of democratic governance.

In the Wall Street Journal, Barton Swaim was equally dismissive:

The idea that the Capitol rioters threatened the American republic is a fantasy. Even to pose such a threat, they would have needed to do far more than break into an unguarded Capitol building and stop Vice President Mike Pence from certifying the count of the Electoral College. To stage a coup, these renegades would have needed the backing of the military; and to govern afterward they would have needed cooperation from other institutions, including the news media and the federal bureaucracy. They had no support from those quarters and no hope of getting it. Their effort was witless and pointless, a dud grenade thrown at an armored division.

Encounter Books editor Roger Kimball mocked the gravity of January 6th. Trump might have been “imprudent” to stir up the crowd, but “was it an effort to overthrow the government? Hardly.” The trouble, of course, is the media:

I know this is not the narrative that we have all been instructed to parrot. Indeed, to listen to the establishment media and our political masters, the January 6 protest was a dire threat to the very fabric of our nation: the worst assault on “our democracy” since 9/11, since Pearl Harbor, since the Civil War!

In fact, Kimball claims, the media narrative amounts to a “January 6 hoax” to pair with the “Russia hoax.” Don’t be fooled by these warnings about the state of democracy, he advises:

Note that phrase “our democracy”: Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, and various talking heads have repeated it ad nauseam. But you do not need an advanced degree in hermeneutics to understand that what they mean by “our democracy” is their oligarchy. Similarly, when Nancy Pelosi talks about “the people’s house,” she doesn’t mean a house that welcomes riff-raff like you and me.

Bow-tie-sporting Kimball is also the editor of the arts journal the New Criterion. He received a degree from Bennington College in classical Greek and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale. But he suffers from “riff-raff” envy. Or, more likely, he understands that in our time, power resides in the mob, and far from identifying with them, he has such contempt for them that he assumes they don’t check Wikipedia.

Unlike some of those cited above, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat is not an apologist for Trumpism. He doesn’t blame the media, but, like Swaim, he doubts that Trump has the wherewithal to subvert our system. Yes, Trump did try to steal the election, Douthat writes, but:

If you compare all those Trumpian intentions with what actually transpired . . . what you see again and again is his inability to get other people and other institutions to cooperate . . . a variety of conservative lawyers delivered laughable arguments to skeptical judges and were ultimately swatted down by some of the same jurists—up to and including the Supreme Court—that Trump himself had appointed to the bench.

The political branches were resistant as well, Douthat argues. While Trump did pressure state legislatures and governors to “deliver” for him, “every state government dismissed it: No statehouse leader proposed setting aside the popular vote, no state legislature put such a measure on the floor, no Republican governor threatened to block certification.”

And while Douthat does say he underestimated the mob, he urges that “You can’t assess Trump’s potential to overturn an election from outside the Oval Office unless you acknowledge his inability to effectively employ the powers of that office when he had them.”

That’s a comforting thought, but it fails to grapple with two things. One is the GOP’s systematic purging of officials who did the right thing in the 2020 election. Remember Aaron Van Langevelde, a GOP member on the Michigan board of canvassers who refused to lie about the vote count? He’s out, and his family needs police protection. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has been removed from the board overseeing election certification, and is being primaried, as is Georgia Governor Brian Kemp. Local GOP groups are censuring Republicans who voted for impeachment. Across the country, Republican officials who stood in the breach when it counted and did the right thing are being hounded from office. Members who voted to impeach are resigning or close to resigning.

It’s true that Trump didn’t quite know where the pressure points were last time, but he’s learning. He has supported secretary of state candidates who deny the validity of the 2020 result in four swing states. Meanwhile, Republican-controlled legislatures in a number of states have passed laws withdrawing power over election certification from local election administrators and handing it to legislatures.

But the most profound reason to fear a repeat of something like January 6th is that Trump has corrupted the minds of a substantial percentage of Republican party members. As Lincoln said in a debate with Stephen Douglas, “Public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes, or pronounces judicial decisions.”

The polls consistently show that about two-thirds of Republicans believe the Big Lie that the election was stolen. Nearly a third believe that “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” Among rank-and-file Republicans, January 6th is not even viewed as regrettable. One poll found that 52 percent identified those who entered the Capitol as “defending democracy.” As Jonathan V. Last put it last year, “What the Republican party has done over the last two months is akin to having dropped polonium into America’s political groundwater.”

Institutions are not self-sustaining. They are composed of people, and if people have lost faith in them, or have given themselves permission to break the rules, they will crumble. John Adams cautioned that character is essential to self-government:

We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or Galantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

An updated version of Adams might add that a people beguiled, deluded, and propagandized cannot be trusted to uphold the pillars of the democratic process. Trump failed at his improvised coup, but he succeeded in warping enough of the electorate to make another attempt—and even success—all too possible.

SETH ABRAMSON ON GARLAND’S WEAK AND EMPTY SPEECH

 

SETH ABRAMSON ON GARLAND’S WEAK AND EMPTY SPEECH

 

1/ First, it's important to understand that—separate from criticisms DOJ has received from lay members of the public—the criticism Garland has received from attorneys and legal analysts like me *isn't* that he hasn't charged any high-level coup plotters yet. That's not the issue.

2/ Attorneys, legal analysts, and criminal investigators know that the federal criminal justice system moves much slower than state criminal justice systems—and the more complex and historic the case, the *slower* it moves. This was always a given in the January 6 investigation.

3/ By the same token, attorneys, legal analysts, and criminal investigators always expected that DOJ would follow its usual policies of (a) not commenting publicly on ongoing investigations, and (b) using cooperation deals with lower-level defendants to try to get at bigger ones.

4/ But what attorneys, legal analysts, and criminal investigators *also* know is that it's *impossible* to hide a large-scale federal probes completely. There are subpoenas, raids, document demands, court filings, interrogations, and more that are hard—or even impossible—to hide.

5/ Some of these investigatory events can't be hidden because they happen at least marginally in public (e.g., filings, raids and contested subpoenas). But it's also impossible to hide a large-scale federal probe because of (a) leaks, and (b) voluntary disclosures from witnesses.

6/ Rich, powerful, well-connected Trumpists in particular are infamous for howling into the nearest microphone the second they are treated as any other suspect, witness, or defendant in America would be treated. Indeed their cowardice and hypocrisy have long been defining traits.

7/ So while AG Garland pretended in his speech that the substantive criticism DOJ is facing comes from people angry that Trump and his January 6 co-conspirators haven't been charged with anything yet, he knows that this is *not* the criticism coming from those in the legal field.

8/ Instead, the criticism DOJ is facing that matters most—criticism that comes from those who understand how criminal investigations and prosecutions work—is that there is *no evidence whatsoever* that DOJ is conducting *any* large-scale investigation of high-level coup plotters 

9/ We have seen no court filings from DOJ to this effect. No cooperation deals. No raids. No subpoenas. No document demands. No device seizures. No interrogations. No howling from powerful Trumpists that they are being "targeted" simply for being... seditious insurrectionists.

10/ The conspiracy charges Garland spoke of today haven't led to cooperation deals that could reach Trump or top-tier agents—and we already know the names of 15-20 who helped coordinate what happened on January 6—and this failure lies in the shadow of DOJ's Trump-Russia failures.

11/ Moreover, one thing current or former federal criminal investigators like me know is that there's a *time* value in *all* investigations—and that testimonial evidence from cooperators is only *one type* of evidence. Even if such secret deals have been cut, it *isn't enough*.

12/ What Robert Mueller declared on pg. 10 of his first Trump-Russia report was that Trumpists had hidden and destroyed evidence, rejected all requests for cooperation, and obstructed his probe to the point that he couldn't possibly know if he had anything like all the evidence.

13/ But Garland didn't need Mueller to tell him that when dealing with Trumpist criminals you must get testimony and evidence—documentary, trace, material and otherwise—as quickly as possible, lest it be destroyed even as false testimony is encouraged, concocted and synchronized.

14/ Trumpists criminals aren't much different from *other* white-collar criminals—they don't believe the law applies to them and will tamper with, hide, destroy, miscast and otherwise pervert evidence (testimonial or physical) with a sense of impunity. So he needed to act *fast*.

15/ So the push from those in the legal field for DOJ to quickly demonstrate a commitment to pursuing high-level targets was *not* about partisan politics or a desire for emotional catharsis. It was about how you investigate cases and pursue rich, powerful, influential criminals.

16/ In his speech today, Garland uttered only *one line* relevant to *these* concerns expressed by his peers in the legal community. And it was thin gruel, indeed. He said that DOJ would pursue individuals who were "not present" at the Capitol. That "revelation" only goes so far.

17/ Our criminal justice systems—that is, at both the federal and state levels—find it *much* easier to charge poor and middle-class people with easily documented crimes than it does to charge rich people with inchoate crimes and behind-the-scenes crimes like criminal conspiracy.

18/ And indeed our criminal statutes are *written* by the very class of people with the most desire to protect rich folks with enough money—and power/influence—to get *others* to commit the most visible components of their crimes: politicians. Politicians like, say, Donald Trump.

19/ In the case of January 6, the middle-class/working poor agents of Trump and his cabal had a class of interlocutors between them and Team Trump's scions—a class of persons composed of Proud Boy, Oath Keeper, and Stop the Steal leaders. Some weren't at the Capitol on January 6.

20/ So when Garland speaks of potentially prosecuting some who "weren't present at the Capitol," he may simply be referring to this intermediate class of persons who are merely glorified domestic-terrorist thugs rather than Team Trump's leading organizers. It's impossible to say.

21/ What we *can* say, virtually for certain, is that as with the Mueller investigation, Garland has missed his window to get considerable physical evidence and untampered-with testimonial evidence, and has given the coup plotters ample time to concoct and synchronize their lies.

22/ What we *can* say, again virtually for certain, is that Garland is failing to get the cooperation deals he needs to get at Trump and his lieutenants, and that he's let Trump and his agents tamper with witnesses—and destroy evidence—*just* as they did in the Trump-Russia case.

23/ So when AG Garland loftily declares (in euphemistic terms) that his detractors are *only* upset because (a) they don't understand how investigations and prosecutions work, and (b) they are merely looking for the catharsis of seeing Trump in chains, that is absolute *hogwash*.

24/ I don't question Garland's values. The ones he expressed in his speech are ones I share; I'm glad he expressed them. But our criminal justice system is broken—as anyone who has worked in it knows—and one reason is because *institutional will* to pursue our values is lacking.

25/ In short, we let talking about values take the place of acting on them, and let a culture persist that undermines our values because it seems decorous and doesn't upset those who hold DOJ's purse-strings. Prosecutors don't worry about any of this stuff when pursuing the poor.

CONCLUSION   AG Garland's speech was as empty as legal analysts expected it would be—full of entirely proper ideals that DOJ is not living up to where the rubber meets the road. But Garland made things worse by miscasting criticism of the Department. What he could have done and consistent with DOJ policy to boot, was be more specific about the *types* of criminal offenses necessary to any coup or self-coup that DOJ is committed to pursuing. Of course, he wasn't going to mention names—nor should he have—but he could have said that a conspiracy to obstruct Congress can be conducted well in advance of the actual obstruction of Congress; that election fraud does not require a physical manipulation of ballots; and that foreknowledge and inducement of crimes can constitute aiding and abetting. And he could have done something to explain *why* the public sees *no* indications of investigative activity regarding high-level coup planning, when in *every* other major federal case in the last 25 years we have seen *some* indicators of the types I've described. Had he done these things—and framed them in the context of stating that an investigation of such historic complexity *can* take years (though he needn't promise it)—and can't run on any timeline but a proper investigative/legal one, it might have been a good speech.

HOWARD TULLMAN JOINS NEW LISA DENT WGN RADIO SHOW TO TALK ABOUT 2022 HIRING/FIRING PLANS

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE 

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

How to Stop Trump and Prevent Another Jan. 6

Major corporations were quick to condemn the insurrection and tout their support for democracy — and almost as quickly, many ditched those purported values by cutting big checks to the very politicians that helped instigate the failed coup attempt. The increasing volume of corporate donations to lawmakers who tried to overthrow the will of the people makes clear that these companies were never committed to standing up for democracy in the first place.

How to Stop Trump and Prevent Another Jan. 6

Jan. 4, 2022, 7:00 p.m. ETTop of Form

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By Thomas L. Friedman

Opinion Columnist

On Christmas morning, I woke up early and flipped on CNN, where I found the newscaster toggling among three news stories — two really depressing ones and an amazingly uplifting one.

The first depressing story was the rapid spread of the Omicron variant. The other was the looming anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection. Both the threat from the virus and the distorted beliefs about the attack on the Capitol were being fueled by crackpot conspiracy theories circulated by Facebook, Fox News and Republican politicians.

But then there it was — sandwiched between these two disturbing tales — a remarkable story of U.S. and global collaboration to reach a new scientific frontier.

It was the launch at 7:20 a.m. Christmas Day of the James Webb Space Telescope. According to NASA, “thousands of scientists, engineers and technicians” — from 306 universities, national labs and companies, primarily in the U.S., Canada and Europe — contributed “to design, build, test, integrate, launch and operate Webb.”

Thank you, Santa! What a gift to remind us that a level of trust to do big, hard things together is still alive on planet Earth. By operating from deep in space, Smithsonian magazine noted, “Webb will help scientists understand how early galaxies formed and grew, detect possible signatures of life on other planets, watch the birth of stars, study black holes from a different angle and likely discover unexpected truths.”

I love that phrase — unexpected truths. We have launched a space telescope that can peer far into the universe to discover — with joy — unexpected truths.

Alas, though, my joy is tempered by those two other stories, by the fact that here on Earth, in America, one of our two national parties and its media allies have chosen instead to celebrate and propagate alternative facts.

This struggle between those seeking unexpected truths — which is what made us great as a nation — and those worshiping alternative facts — which will destroy us as a nation — is THE story on the anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurgency, and for the coming year. Many people, particularly in the American business community, are vastly underestimating the danger to our constitutional order if this struggle ends badly.

If the majority of G.O.P. lawmakers continue to bow to the most politically pernicious “alternative fact” — that the 2020 election was a fraud that justifies empowering Republican legislatures to override the will of voters and remove Republican and Democratic election supervisors who helped save our democracy last time by calling the election fairly — then America isn’t just in trouble. It is headed for what scientists call “an extinction-level event.”

Only it won’t be a comet hurtling past the Webb telescope from deep space that destroys our democracy, as in the new movie “Don’t Look Up.”

No, no — it will be an unraveling from the ground up, as our country, for the first time, is unable to carry out a peaceful transfer of power to a legitimately elected president. Because if Donald Trump and his flock are able in 2024 to execute a procedural coup like they attempted on Jan. 6, 2021, Democrats will not just say, “Ah shucks, we’ll try harder next time.” They will take to the streets.

Right now, though, too many Republicans are telling themselves and the rest of us: “Don’t look up! Don’t pay attention to what is unfolding in plain sight with Trump & Company. Trump won’t be the G.O.P.’s candidate in 2024.”

Who will save us?

God bless Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the two Republican House members participating on the Jan. 6 investigation committee. But they are not enough. Kinzinger is retiring and the G.O.P. leadership, on Trump’s orders, is trying to launch Cheney into deep space.

I think our last best hope is the leadership of the U.S. business community, specifically the Business Roundtable, led by General Motors C.E.O. Mary Barra, and the Business Council, led by Microsoft C.E.O. Satya Nadella. Together those two groups represent the roughly 200 most powerful companies in America, with 20 million employees. Although formally nonpartisan, they lean center-right — but the old center-right, the one that believed in the rule of law, free markets, majority rule, science and the sanctity of our elections and constitutional processes.

Collectively, they are the only responsible force left with real leverage on Trump and the Republican lawmakers doing his bidding. They need to persuade their members — now — not to donate a penny more to any local, state or national candidate who has voted to dismantle the police or dismantle the Constitution.

Yes, that’s false equivalency. Nothing is as big as the Trump cult’s threat to our constitutional order. But it’s still relevant. For a lot of Americans, watching a smash-and-grab gang ransack their local mall and violent crime jump — and then seeing the far-left trying to delegitimize, defund or dismantle their police — is just as frightening as those trying to dismantle their Constitution on the Capitol mall.

I believe there are many Americans in the center-left and center-right who vigorously oppose both, and they think it’s a disgrace when progressives tell them not to worry about the first or when Trumpers tell them not to worry about the second.

When you take both seriously, many more people will listen to you on both. Individually, in their hometowns — like mine, Minneapolis — business leaders have effectively pushed back on dismantling the police. Now it is time for America’s business leaders to just as forcefully push back on the Trump Republicans trying to dismantle the Constitution.

Why should they risk alienating pro-Trump lawmakers who soon may control both the House and the Senate? Besides love of country?

Let me put it crassly: Civil wars are not good for business. I lived inside one in Lebanon for four years. Corporate America shouldn’t be lulled by 2021’s profits, because once a country’s institutions, laws, norms and unstated redlines are breached — and there is no more truth, only versions, and no more trust, only polarization — getting them back is almost impossible.

Can’t happen here? It sure can.

Rick Wilson, a longtime G.O.P. strategist opposed to Trump, recently described to The Washington Post what will happen if the campaign by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and other Trump cultists succeeds to get more Big Lie promoters elected in 2022 — and the G.O.P. takes the House or Senate or both: “We’re looking at a nihilistic Mad Max hellscape. It will be all about the show of 2024 to bring Donald Trump back into power.” He added, “They will impeach Biden, they will impeach Harris, they will kill everything.”

So what will big business do? I wish I were more optimistic.

CNBC reported Monday that data compiled by the watchdog group Accountable.US “shows that political action committees of top corporations and trade groups — including the American Bankers Association, Boeing, Raytheon Technologies, Lockheed Martin and General Motors — continued to give to the Republican election objectors.”

Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US, said in a statement: “Major corporations were quick to condemn the insurrection and tout their support for democracy — and almost as quickly, many ditched those purported values by cutting big checks to the very politicians that helped instigate the failed coup attempt. The increasing volume of corporate donations to lawmakers who tried to overthrow the will of the people makes clear that these companies were never committed to standing up for democracy in the first place.”

The leaders of these companies are totally underestimating the chances that our democratic institutions will unravel. And if American democracy unravels, the whole world becomes unstable. That will not exactly be good for business, either.

Neutrality is not an option anymore. As Liz Cheney put it on Sunday: “We can either be loyal to Donald Trump or we can be loyal to the Constitution, but we cannot be both.”

So, my New Year’s wish is that item one on the agenda for the next meetings of both the Business Roundtable and the Business Council will be: Which side are we on?

The Viral Lies That Keep Killing Us

 

The Viral Lies That Keep Killing Us

Jan. 3, 2022

 And the success of destructive vaccine politics is itself deeply horrifying. It seems that utter cynicism, pursued even at the cost of your supporters’ lives, pays.

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By Paul Krugman

Opinion Columnist

A year ago it seemed reasonable to hope that by early 2022 we’d mainly be talking about Covid — or at least Covid as a major health and quality-of-life issue — in the past tense. Effective vaccines had been developed with miraculous speed; surely a sophisticated nation like the United States would find a way to get those vaccines quickly and widely distributed.

So why didn’t we get past the pandemic? Part of the problem has been the creativity of viral evolution. The Delta variant shocked us with its lethality; now Omicron is shocking us with its transmissibility. Still, we could and should have done far better. And the main reason we didn’t was the power of politically motivated lies.

Before I get to the specifics of those lies and the damage they’ve done, let’s be clear: Yes, this is about politics.

I know I’m not the only commentator who has faced a lot of pushback against emphasizing the partisan nature of vaccine resistance. We’re constantly reminded that many unvaccinated Americans aren’t Republican loyalists, that there are multiple reasons people won’t get or at least haven’t gotten their shots. All this is true; but politics has nonetheless played a crucial — and growing — role.

Look, for example, at a KFF survey from October, which found that 60 percent of the unvaccinated identified as Republicans, compared with only 17 percent who identified as Democrats. Or look at the invaluable Charles Gaba’s analysis of county-level data, which finds that on average a one percentage point higher Trump share of the 2020 vote corresponds to about a half-point reduction in a county’s current vaccination rate.

But how did politics do so much to undermine what should have been a medical miracle? I’d identify three important lies that keep being repeated by Republican politicians and right-wing media.

First is the claim that the coronavirus is no big deal. You might think this claim would have been retired, given that more than 800,000 Americans have died from Covid since Rush Limbaugh compared its virus to the common cold.

But it’s still out there. Political figures like Marco Rubio are dismissing the response to Omicron as “irrational hysteria” because the variant appears to cause relatively few hospitalizations among the fully vaccinated. He slips quickly past that last qualification, which the KFF survey suggests has eluded millions of unvaccinated Republicans, who declare themselves unworried by a disease that should have them very worried indeed.

And conservative commentators erupted in rage when President Biden pointed out, reasonably, that the coronavirus is still extremely dangerous if you haven’t gotten your shots; Tucker Carlson accused Biden of treating the unvaccinated as “subhumans.”

Next up: the claim that vaccination is ineffective. “If the booster shots work, why don’t they work?” tweeted Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee.

What they were getting at, presumably, is the fact that Omicron is producing a number of breakthrough infections, while carefully ignoring the overwhelming evidence that even when vaccinated Americans do get infected they are far less likely than the unvaccinated to be hospitalized — or die.

Finally, there’s the claim that it’s all about freedom, that remaining unvaccinated should be treated simply as a personal choice. For example, the administration of Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas has used that argument as the basis for a lawsuit seeking to block federal vaccine mandates. The Abbott administration has also appealed for federal aid to help Texas — which has a strikingly low vaccination rate in part because Abbott has prevented private businesses from imposing vaccine requirements — cope with a surge in Covid cases and hospitalizations. Need we say more?

Alert readers will have noticed that these Republican claims, in addition to being false, contradict one another in multiple ways. We can ignore Covid thanks to vaccines, which by the way don’t work. Vaccination is a personal choice, but giving people the information they need to make that choice wisely is a vile attack on their dignity. It’s all about freedom and free markets, but this freedom doesn’t include the right of private businesses to protect their own workers and customers.

So none of this makes any sense — not, that is, unless you realize that Republican vaccine obstructionism isn’t about serving a coherent ideology, it was and is about the pursuit of power. A successful vaccination campaign would have been a win for the Biden administration, so it had to be undermined using any and every argument available.

Sure enough, the anti-vaccine strategy has worked politically. The persistence of Covid has helped keep the nation’s mood dark, which inevitably hurts the party that holds the White House — so Republicans who have done all they can to prevent an effective response to Covid have not hesitated, even for a moment, in blaming Biden for failing to end the pandemic.

And the success of destructive vaccine politics is itself deeply horrifying. It seems that utter cynicism, pursued even at the cost of your supporters’ lives, pays.

NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN BY HOWARD TULLMAN

 

Don't Let the Theranos Trial Deter You From Being an Entrepreneur

For every lying scoundrel like Elizabeth Holmes, there are thousands of folks grinding it out to get new companies off the ground. They deserve our attention and our dollars. 

 

BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS@TULLMAN

The much-anticipated verdicts of the Elizabeth Holmes/Theranos trial will definitely send some complicated messages (good and bad) to entrepreneurs around the world. In cases like this one, it's useful to try to put the entire proceedings into some realistic context. There is definitely going to be a time of mixed emotions - somewhat like watching your mother-in-law go over a cliff in your brand-new car. And it's gonna take some explaining.

However this media circus and huge waste of time and resources turns out won't be especially good news for the millions of honest, hard-working men and women who are trying to start or sustain their own dreams and turn their visions into real enterprises. Whatever the technical, hyper-legal outcome may be, to the average citizen, Theranos is a big black stain on eager entrepreneurs. The trick for all of us is to not let the trial, the turkeys, and the decision that takes place get us down, dismayed or discouraged. Every entrepreneur knows that life - and especially the law - is never fair. If it was, we'd deserve all the nasty things that happen to us along the path to eventual success.

A positive approach is especially important for the folks who are in the trenches every day trying to raise the often-modest funds that are essential to sustain and keep building their businesses. We're not talking about billions-chasing bullshit spewed by blondes in black turtlenecks here, but the bucks needed to keep the doors open and the companies moving forward. And we're also not talking about the greedy, ignorant, and allegedly sophisticated investors and VCs who will still be running around like headless chickens, carelessly tossing around tens of millions of dollars as they look for the next great deal long after the Theranos dust has settled. Those guys never learn anything from their losses. They just keep betting that they'll get lucky the next time.

We need to be sure that the stain and stigma of Elizabeth and Sunny Balwani (her ex-boyfriend and co-conspirator) and the whole "fake it 'til you make it" culture that they unfortunately represent doesn't stifle the steady and substantial stream of new capital investments we've seen over the last few years into all sorts of startups from investors of every size and shape.

Right now, nothing could be more important to our country's long-term health and growth than honest and solid innovation in the area of medical technology, although fixing education is certainly a close second. We can't let the lies and frauds of these two phony fantasists dissuade or discourage serious investors from continuing to support the efforts and investigations of real entrepreneurs in these crucial areas.

And speaking of Sunny B, whose separate trial will begin shortly, I'm a little concerned, as a lawyer, that the current jury will be just confused and misled enough by Elizabeth's lawyers to give the poor little dear a pass and justify it by assuming that the evil and manipulative Sunny will get creamed in his trial and that's how "justice" will be served.  As much as she play-acted the hapless and naïve young waif at the trial, this woman is a convincing liar and a sociopath who was willing to keep risking patients' lives with her seriously flawed testing and fake "black box" machines. One lesson Sunny will learn for sure is that when you get in a cage with a tiger, you're not a visitor or a spectator, and you're certainly not in charge. The fact is that you're soon to be lunch.

So, when the topic of Theranos and what happened there comes up, as it inevitably will with friends, family, and especially prospective financing partners, you want to be sure (unlike the Democrats who can't seem to get even the simplest story straight these days) that you've got some honest and straightforward answers and explanations. Here are some suggestions.

1.     What Passes for Truth in a Courtroom has Nothing to Do with the Real World

Honestly, between the original Wall Street Journal articles, the book(s), the podcasts, and the daily coverage and commentary about courtroom testimony, the entire outside world clearly knows the truth about the Theranos scam. They know who the prime mover and liar-in-chief was during the many years the fraud persisted. In fact, and sadly, the only folks likely still in the dark about the sum total consequences and impact of Holmes' lies are the poor members of the jury. They have to deal with bizarre rules of evidence and exclusion, extensive and often conflicting instructions from the judge, and flat-out half-truths and lies by the defendant and her lawyers. As the saying goes, 99% of lawyers give the others a bad name.

2.     The Primary Defense Objective in a Criminal Trial is Confusion and Doubt, not Truth

It's more disgusting than merely disingenuous when highly paid senior attorneys spend days attempting to confuse and mislead jurors about timeframes using years-old documents to claim current connections. Or highlighting positive "discussions" that ultimately went nowhere and ended in rejections and disclaimers rather than contractual commitments. Or alleging the failures and shortcomings of many company employees and senior executives (some deceased but not to the jury's knowledge). And, above all, there's the defense's constant assertion of their client's alleged ignorance concerning fundamental parts of the company's business, finances and operations. Never mind that she spent years telling the entire world that the company was owned by her, tightly managed under her direct supervision, and all part of her special talent and genius.  

And then, of course, there's the utter BS about her romantic relationship with her long-time business partner and lover - now conveniently turned abuser. Interestingly enough, toward the end of the trial the defense largely abandoned the "poor picked-on me" pleas - perhaps realizing that they really didn't square with the other days of Holmes's testimony. They decided to not even call their expert witness on abusive relationships to testify - again perhaps realizing that even the jury would realize that for every courtroom "expert", there's an equal and opposite expert standing right around the corner.

3.     When Even the Best Initial Intentions Collide with Life's Harsh Realities and Lie After Lie Follows - Fraud is the Result

This case has nothing to do with medicine or science since the Theranos machines never worked as repeatedly described and promised by Holmes. The entire question is simply about whether claiming that Holmes was just "trying really hard" and had the "best of intentions" when she began more than a decade ago justifies and excuses (a) her continuous and current lies to countless people after she knew the Edison machines were deeply flawed; and (b) whether her at-best- deluded belief that the machines would someday work is somehow an effective defense to (i) the clear evidence from her own taped conversations, in which she makes knowingly false statements; (ii) doctored pharma documents, which she faked and then offered up as pharma endorsements; (iii) fictitious and fudged test results as well as tens of thousands of belatedly voided and canceled tests - all for real patients; (iv) repeated claims about the broken Theranos boxes performance while secretly  doing thousands of tests on third-party machines, and, of course, (v) the many lies about actual in-theatre use by the armed forces.

In some respects, it's unfortunate that the government took on the extra burden of a criminal fraud proceeding where intent is a crucial element of the burden of proof instead of a civil action where - even as proficient a liar as Ms. Holmes - wouldn't have had a snowball's chance of overcoming the cumulative and compelling amounts of testimony and evidence in order to avoid serious liability.  

As always, no one puts these complex questions more simply than Bruce Springsteen. As he asks in The River: "Is a dream a lie if it don't come true - or is it something worse?" In this case, it's a crime.

JAN 3, 2022

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.