In the last two weeks, all the pieces have come together. We now know exactly how Donald Trump intended to use Jan. 6 to destroy American democracy, install himself as an authoritarian dictator, and crush the Constitution.
• We have the memo that shows Trump’s team knew everything they were spreading about voter fraud was a lie that they continued to push simply to generate anger among his supporters and provide a cover story for his actions.
• We know the scheme that was being executed to remove the acting attorney general and weaponize the Department of Justice to pressure state officials and spread a patina of legal legitimacy across the refusal to tally electoral votes.
• We have the six-step plan by which Trump wanted Mike Pence to leverage a ceremonial role into actions that would have thrown the nation into chaos, declared his continued occupation of the White House, and marked the end of representative government.
None of this is rumor. None of this is conjecture. None of this is coming secondhand. It doesn’t require assembling a panoply of clues or making logical leaps. It’s all right there, in black in white, much of it on stationary that carries the White House seal. Donald Trump planned to not just contest the election, but declare himself the “winner” on January 6, ending over two centuries of American democracy.
It not only should be the biggest story in decades, it definitely is the most important story—a greater threat than the nation has faced since the Civil War. But as this story that The Washington Post slipped into the “Lifestyle” section puts it, there’s just “so much other news to cover these days,” including “the audience-riveting case of Gabby Petito.” So they can’t be bothered to mention the attempted coup.
Priorities, people. Priorities.
To be fair, Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan seems to have some handle on the importance of the information that has come out, saying that “In a normal world, the ‘Eastman memo’ would be infamous by now” before going on to list all the reasons why media executive say they’re not making a big deal—or any deal at all—about the revelations of the plan to overturn the election. But then, Sullivan herself goes on to compare the memo to Trump’s “Access Hollywood” tape in which he brags about getting away with sexual assault.
This is not that.
The Access Hollywood tape shows that Trump is a crude misogynistic ass and that the allegations of past sexual assault and rape should be taken very seriously. It’s an extremely bad thing.
The Eastman memo describes the step-by-step effort to end the United States of America. That should be, in any rational world, more important than even Trump’s disgusting and violent attitudes toward women. Those two stories should not be seen as equivalent. And they’re not, of course. Because in this world, the media apparently believes that “the locker room talk” is worthy of their precious air time. The fate of the nation … not so much.
Analysis from Media Matters from America shows that “ABC, CBS, and NBC morning and evening news broadcasts have all ignored the revelation that one of then-President Donald Trump’s lawyers authored a memo laying out how Trump could effectively pull off a coup.” The Eastman memo didn’t just get a small amount of airtime. It got none. It merited a mention on only one of the Sunday talk shows, where infinitely more time was spent puzzling over what it would take to please Joe Manchin. It didn’t get so much as a standalone story at The New York Times, where the memo is only mentioned in passing as part of a larger story about the new book from Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.
Why isn’t the media giving coverage to a story that should be rocking the foundations of the nation, dealing as it does with people who used positions of power to threaten those foundations?
According to a media executive quoted by the Post column, Eastman wasn’t a familiar name. He was just “an unknown lawyer, who says he’s on the Trump legal team and had said Kamala Harris was not a citizen, and wrote a crazy memo.” That would be a lawyer who definitely was on Trump’s legal team, who founded and operates some of the most influential conservative institutes, who said Kamala Harris was not a citizen while running against her as a Republican candidate for California attorney general. Apparently, it’s okay to try to overthrow the nation, so long as you use unknown minions. But, in the media’s defense, Eastman is not blond.
And there’s the biggest defense, mounted by multiple media types who spoke to Sullivan. There’s no point in reporting on all this because: “After all, it didn’t happen.” The coup was unsuccessful, therefore, not worth considering.
This should come as a great surprise to every person ever jailed for a crime starting with the word “attempted.” But more than that, it is undoubtedly a great relief to the people who planned and attempted to execute this coup.
Because what the national media is telling them is clear enough: Keep trying, because we’ll ignore everything you do until you get it right.
• We have the memo that shows Trump’s team knew everything they were spreading about voter fraud was a lie that they continued to push simply to generate anger among his supporters and provide a cover story for his actions.
• We know the scheme that was being executed to remove the acting attorney general and weaponize the Department of Justice to pressure state officials and spread a patina of legal legitimacy across the refusal to tally electoral votes.
• We have the six-step plan by which Trump wanted Mike Pence to leverage a ceremonial role into actions that would have thrown the nation into chaos, declared his continued occupation of the White House, and marked the end of representative government.
None of this is rumor. None of this is conjecture. None of this is coming secondhand. It doesn’t require assembling a panoply of clues or making logical leaps. It’s all right there, in black in white, much of it on stationary that carries the White House seal. Donald Trump planned to not just contest the election, but declare himself the “winner” on January 6, ending over two centuries of American democracy.
It not only should be the biggest story in decades, it definitely is the most important story—a greater threat than the nation has faced since the Civil War. But as this story that The Washington Post slipped into the “Lifestyle” section puts it, there’s just “so much other news to cover these days,” including “the audience-riveting case of Gabby Petito.” So they can’t be bothered to mention the attempted coup.
Priorities, people. Priorities.
To be fair, Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan seems to have some handle on the importance of the information that has come out, saying that “In a normal world, the ‘Eastman memo’ would be infamous by now” before going on to list all the reasons why media executive say they’re not making a big deal—or any deal at all—about the revelations of the plan to overturn the election. But then, Sullivan herself goes on to compare the memo to Trump’s “Access Hollywood” tape in which he brags about getting away with sexual assault.
This is not that.
The Access Hollywood tape shows that Trump is a crude misogynistic ass and that the allegations of past sexual assault and rape should be taken very seriously. It’s an extremely bad thing.
The Eastman memo describes the step-by-step effort to end the United States of America. That should be, in any rational world, more important than even Trump’s disgusting and violent attitudes toward women. Those two stories should not be seen as equivalent. And they’re not, of course. Because in this world, the media apparently believes that “the locker room talk” is worthy of their precious air time. The fate of the nation … not so much.
Analysis from Media Matters from America shows that “ABC, CBS, and NBC morning and evening news broadcasts have all ignored the revelation that one of then-President Donald Trump’s lawyers authored a memo laying out how Trump could effectively pull off a coup.” The Eastman memo didn’t just get a small amount of airtime. It got none. It merited a mention on only one of the Sunday talk shows, where infinitely more time was spent puzzling over what it would take to please Joe Manchin. It didn’t get so much as a standalone story at The New York Times, where the memo is only mentioned in passing as part of a larger story about the new book from Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.
Why isn’t the media giving coverage to a story that should be rocking the foundations of the nation, dealing as it does with people who used positions of power to threaten those foundations?
According to a media executive quoted by the Post column, Eastman wasn’t a familiar name. He was just “an unknown lawyer, who says he’s on the Trump legal team and had said Kamala Harris was not a citizen, and wrote a crazy memo.” That would be a lawyer who definitely was on Trump’s legal team, who founded and operates some of the most influential conservative institutes, who said Kamala Harris was not a citizen while running against her as a Republican candidate for California attorney general. Apparently, it’s okay to try to overthrow the nation, so long as you use unknown minions. But, in the media’s defense, Eastman is not blond.
And there’s the biggest defense, mounted by multiple media types who spoke to Sullivan. There’s no point in reporting on all this because: “After all, it didn’t happen.” The coup was unsuccessful, therefore, not worth considering.
This should come as a great surprise to every person ever jailed for a crime starting with the word “attempted.” But more than that, it is undoubtedly a great relief to the people who planned and attempted to execute this coup.
Because what the national media is telling them is clear enough: Keep trying, because we’ll ignore everything you do until you get it right.