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Second rate reporter says what?

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You are here: Home / Jan 6: Insurrection / Domestic Terrorists Open Thread: Mark Meadows’ Turn in the Barrel

Domestic Terrorists Open Thread: Mark Meadows’ Turn in the Barrel

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Former President Donald Trump’s final chief of staff in the White House, Mark Meadows, has spoken with special counsel Jack Smith’s team at least three times this year, including once before a federal grand jury, which came only after Smith granted Meadows immunity to testify under oath, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The sources said Meadows informed Smith’s team that he repeatedly told Trump in the weeks after the 2020 presidential election that the allegations of significant voting fraud coming to them were baseless, a striking break from Trump’s prolific rhetoric regarding the election.

According to the sources, Meadows also told the federal investigators Trump was being “dishonest” with the public when he first claimed to have won the election only hours after polls closed on Nov. 3, 2020, before final results were in.

“Obviously we didn’t win,” a source quoted Meadows as telling Smith’s team in hindsight.

Trump has called Meadows, one of the former president’s closest and highest-ranking aides in the White House, a “special friend” and “a great chief of staff — as good as it gets.”.

The descriptions of what Meadows allegedly told investigators shed further light on the evidence Smith’s team has amassed as it prosecutes Trump for allegedly trying to unlawfully retain power and “spread lies” about the 2020 election. The descriptions also expose how far Trump loyalists like Meadows have gone to support and defend Trump…

Meadows told investigators he believes the Justice Department was taking allegations of fraud seriously, properly investigating them, and doing all they could to find legitimate cases of fraud — and he told investigators he relayed all that to Trump a few weeks after the election, the sources said.

Similarly — as described by sources to ABC News — despite Meadows telling investigators that Giuliani never produced evidence of significant fraud in the election, his book refers to Giuliani’s efforts to expose “the fraud, and the dirty tricks on election night.”

“The people who rigged this election knew that eventually, these irregularities would come to light … [So] they conducted the operation, then attacked anyone who dared ask questions about what they had done,” his book says.

Meadows went even further while promoting his book on right-wing media in November 2021. When asked by a podcast host if he believes the outcome of the 2020 election was fraudulent, Meadows responded, “I do believe that there are a number of fraudulent states … I’ve seen at least illegal activity in Pennsylvania [and] in Georgia” — referring to two key states that clinched the White House for Biden.

Under the penalty of perjury, Meadows offered a vastly different assessment to Smith’s investigators, telling them he’s never seen any evidence of fraud that would undermine the election’s outcome, according to what sources told ABC News…

Is Nil Nisi Bonum considered a defense under law?

If Murphy the Trickster God decides to be very good to us:

Reader Interactions

144Comments

  1. 1.

    J. Arthur Crank (fka Jerzy Russian)

    Tick, tock, fothermucker.

     

    Regarding that second to last tweet, Mrs. Thomas is married to a lawyer, so she does not need to look far.  However, upon further reflection, the word “good” was used in front of “lawyer”, so never mind.

  2. 2.

    J. Arthur Crank (fka Jerzy Russian)

    Also regarding “immunity”, was Mr. Meadows riding  on the antivax bus?   If so, there is some hidden irony out there somewhere.

  3. 3.

    Martin

    We’re going to need one of those attosecond lasers that just earned the Nobel prize to measure the length of speaker candidacies before this is over.

  6. 6.

    Scout211

    @Martin: They are voting now by secret ballot behind closed doors, for another go at it.  Some of them were floating the idea that McCarthy and Jordan could share the Speakership.  That was not a popular idea.

    Fun story re: Emmer. He was “killed” by Trump.  Link

    By Tuesday afternoon Trump called one person close to him with the message, “He’s done. It’s over. I killed him.”

  7. 7.

    Suzanne

    It’s been such a crazy news day that we didn’t even talk about the dumb shit Sinema said.

    I always wonder about the personal wealth of these people. Does Mark Meadows, or Cheese-bro, or Jenna Ellis, etc… do they have enough money for these ludicrously expensive attorneys they need? It just makes no sense.

  8. 8.

    Mousebumples

    @Suzanne: I always wonder about the personal wealth of these people. Does Mark Meadows, or Cheese-bro, or Jenna Ellis, etc… do they have enough money for these ludicrously expensive attorneys they need? It just makes no sense.

    I think some of them (Ellis, Powell), the answer is no, and they can’t afford good lawyers for a long RICO trial, sooo…

    Another reason to flip

    ETA – I probably don’t want to know, but what did Sinema do today?

  10. 10.

    brendancalling

    To quote an old hamburger ad, “I’m lovin’ it.”

    Kraken and Cheese-Bro and Cryin’ Christian Lady in Georgia, Cohen’s latest testimony, and now Meadows does a triple gainer.

    The walls of Mar a Lago run thick and red with ketchup tonight. How long has it been since Trump actually slept through the night, do you think?

  13. 13.

    Scout211

    @WaterGirl:I fervently hope that god loves us enough for Ginni Thomas to be exposed and indicted.

    I’m with you on that.  But lacking that, at the very least, I would want her to be called to testify as a witness.

  15. 15.

    Scout211

    And then there were four.

    The results of the first ballot are as follows, according to Rep. Dan Meuser:

    • Rep. Mike Johnson 85
    • Rep. Byron Donalds 32
    • Rep Mark Green 23
    • Rep. Roger Williams 21
    • Rep. Chuck Fleischmann 10 (eliminated)

    At least 30 lawmakers did not vote for any candidate.
    The conference has now moved to a second ballot.

  18. 18.

    dmsilev

    @Scout211: It’s kind of impressive, in its own way, that out of the 865 (roughly) candidates for GOP Speaker, not one so far has been a woman.

  20. 20.

    dmsilev

    Whoever is writing headlines for the Post just wants the madness to end: ‘House Republicans voting on yet another House speaker nominee’

  21. 21.

    Scout211

    NEW: “I told ABC that their story was largely inaccurate. People will have to judge for themselves the decision to run it anyway.” George Terwilliger, Mark Meadows lawyer, to CBS News, responding to new reporting “Ex-Chief of Staff granted immunity, tells special counsel he…— Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) October 24, 2023

  22. 22.

    West of the Rockies

    I’m surprised Trump doesn’t have every stress-related gastrointestinal disorder known to science (especially with his diet and weight).

    I wonder what his BP is.

  24. 24.

    Martin

    @Scout211: I’m 100% down to cut the two of them down the center and stitch the two halves together as McJordan and Jorcarthy and having them run against each other as speaker.

  28. 28.

    Scout211

    @dmsilev: Yes.  NBC even has a news story up about that.

    ‘Too smart to want the job’: Why no women are running for speaker of the House

    It’s not that great of an article but at least the MSM is talking about it.

    This was a precious quote:

    “There is still, I hate to say it, a glass ceiling that the conference chair is the ‘girl job,’” one Republican strategist who previously worked in the House told NBC News, speaking on anonymously to be more candid about the state of their party.

  29. 29.

    WaterGirl

    @Scout211: What I saw earlier said that Meadows was granted immunity for what he said on the stand, that his testimony couldn’t be used against against him in a federal case.

    That’s a lot less than a lot of what I’m hearing.

    I don’t think Meadows is a “cooperator”, for what it’s worth.

  31. 31.

    Chetan Murthy

    @dmsilev: And in the midst of that,  Stefanik is in House GrOP leadership, yet she doesn’t make a move to put herself forward as a candidate.  Speaks volumes about that damned party.

  35. 35.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Scout211: ​ 

    Sweet Jesus smoking in the boys room, they really are trying to elect the homecoming king, aren’t they?

    They’re fucking juveniles!

  37. 37.

    Scout211

    @WaterGirl: Are they saying the “girls” can’t break the glass ceiling to be speaker?

    No, they are saying that Republican “girls” can’t break the the glass ceiling.

  38. 38.

    Suzanne

    @WaterGirl: I mistyped. She didn’t kill the filibuster. She killed the killing of the filibuster. Which deserves to be killed.

    I’m sorry, I have a a four-year-old demanding Donald Duck cartoons distracting me,

  39. 39.

    HumboldtBlue

    From Greg Sargent’s twitter.

    It seems to me that something critical is being memory-holed. Kevin McCarthy engaged in more double-dealing with Trump and more whitewashing on 1/6 than any other GOPer. He is not somehow a cut above other Rs on that front. He’s the chief enabler. He led the 1/6 whitewashing.

  40. 40.

    rekoob

    One salutary effect of this is that the Democrats, specifically Jeffries, Clark, and Aguilar, have bonded with their colleagues and have seen the wisdom of Nancy Pelosi’s observation that “our diversity is our strength, our unity is our power”.

  41. 41.

    Barbara

    @Scout211: ​I guess Cathy McMorris Rodgers hit the glass ceiling a long time ago. I haven’t heard her name associated with leadership for a long time.

  42. 42.

    Scout211

    Now two.

    GOP conference chair Elise Stefanik of New York posted on X that a third ballot has begun, with two remaining candidates: Reps. Byron Donalds of Florida and Mike Johnson of Louisiana.
    Reps. Mark Green and Roger Williams were eliminated in the second round.

  43. 43.

    dmsilev

    @Scout211: As with Emmer long ago (aka this afternoon), the key isn’t winning the majority of the caucus, it’s the ‘will 98% of the caucus support him on the House floor’ follow-on vote. I guess we tune in tomorrow morning to find out.

  46. 46.

    different-church-lady

    If I were Ginni Thomas I’d be looking for a damn good criminal lawyer right about now.

    To paraphrase Jesse Pinkman, she’s married to a criminal lawyer.

  50. 50.

    danielx

    Trump has called Meadows, one of the former president’s closest and highest-ranking aides in the White House, a “special friend” and “a great chief of staff — as good as it gets.”.

    Trump in the past.

    Trump tomorrow (incoming!)

    Barely know the guy, and clearly a bad hire! But if he is saying what I’ve heard, he’s a traitorous wretch who in the past would have been executed!

  52. 52.

    Mike in NC

    Fat Bastard’s 18th Chief of Staff gave up a safely gerrymandered NC House seat in order to massage his master’s little orange balls. How does it feel, Meadows?

  53. 53.

    Scout211

    @danielx: Tonight.  He’s not trashing Meadows . . . yet

    Mark Meadows NEVER told me that allegations of significant fraud (about the RIGGED Election!) were baseless. He certainly didn’t say that in his book!

     

    I don’t think Mark Meadows would lie about the Rigged and Stollen 2020 Presidential Election merely for getting IMMUNITY against Prosecution (PERSECUTION!) by Deranged Prosecutor, Jack Smith. BUT, when you really think about it, after being hounded like a dog for three years, told you’ll be going to jail for the rest of your life, your money and your family will be forever gone, and we’re not at all interested in exposing those that did the RIGGING — If you say BAD THINGS about that terrible “MONSTER,” DONALD J. TRUMP, we won’t put you in prison, you can keep your family and your wealth, and, perhaps, if you can make up some really horrible “STUFF” a out him, we may very well erect a statue of you in the middle of our decaying and now very violent Capital, Washington, D.C. Some people would make that deal, but they are weaklings and cowards, and so bad for the future our Failing Nation. I don’t think that Mark Meadows is one of them, but who really knows? MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!

    There’s that stollen again.  Yummmmm.

  56. 56.

    Anne Laurie

    @Chetan Murthy: And in the midst of that, Stefanik is in House GrOP leadership, yet she doesn’t make a move to put herself forward as a candidate. Speaks volumes about that damned party.

    I said yesterday I thought she was playing some kind of Lady MacBeth maneuver, and so far I see no reason to revise my statement.

  57. 57.

    Geminid

    @Chetan Murthy: Republican misogyny could well be the explanation for Rep. Stefanik not making the Speaker race, but it’s also possible that she has exposure in George Santos’s criminal affairs and wants to lay low.

    I remember seeing Santos’s Twitter heading back in January, when he was getting a lot of attention.  At the top there was a picture of Santos and another one of Stefanik. I was pretty sure this was the last thing the Congresswoman would have wanted. I took it as a blackmail threat .

  58. 58.

    scav

    Oh, the little goopers are going to be soooo sleepy tomorrow after spending all night re-negotiating all their firm allegiances to the most recent and overly-enthusiastical duplicitous offer made them. At least, the ones not staying up obsessing over which dramatic last-minute back-stabbing personal psycho-drama won’t grab the most headlines and meme-space.

  59. 59.

    Jackie

    @WaterGirl:

    What I saw earlier said that Meadows was granted immunity for what he said on the stand, that his testimony couldn’t be used against against him in a federal case.

    Meadows should be more concerned about being convicted in Fulton County. He can’t be pardoned if he’s found guilty.

  61. 61.

    danielx

    Why would anyone want a job in which the chief function is to be a tool for the likes of Matt Gaetz and/or Jim Jordan, both about as popular as herpes with their colleagues and the general populace? And at risk of being humiliated and fired whenever one of the crazy 8s or some other raging mass of protoplasm gets a burr up his or her butt, say about keeping the government functioning? ? And, and…with the added attraction of hostile flying monkeys waiting to threaten to kill you and all your family and friends at all times?

    Sounds like a great opportunity and a real resume-enhancer! Where do I sign up? Better than going South Bend or Cedar Rapids to practice law* or actually do something else productive!

    *Yes the practice of law is necessary, if evil.

  63. 63.

    RaflW

    WaPo Ed Board, in their masthead opinion this evening, are loudly crowing their total, self abnegating collapse into Republican codependency.

    Fuck them with red hot pokers.

    (Not linking to their “Democrats need to fall on their swords ‘for the good of the country'” bullshit. No page views, no traffic, you craven fuckers.)

    Popehat and others are having a field day on Bluesky about, though!

  66. 66.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @RaflW: My suggestion made first at Wonkette was that the WaPo editorial board should be sent to the library, a window opened for them, a glass of whiskey poured, and then be handed a revolver.

  67. 67.

    cain

    @WaterGirl:

    @Suzanne: When did Sinema kill the filibuster?

    Well according to Santos, it happened while they were in the Andes searching for the lost treasure of Ix Chel. The trip it seemed was a dud, and Sinema in a pique – called McConnell and said.. ‘Kill it, KILL IT now” although she meant something else but a snake showed up and she screamed those words instead.

     

  70. 70.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Scout211:

    Trump called one person close to him with the message, “He’s done. It’s over. I killed him.”

    My god, Trump is so pathetic.  He’s so desperate to think that he is important, he’s taking credit for shit everyone knew would happen without him.  It must hurt that he ordered Jordan appointed and the House gave him the middle finger.

    @Suzanne:

    I have a a four-year-old demanding Donald Duck cartoons

    The 2017 Duck Tales is very good.  You’ll both enjoy it!

  74. 74.

    RaflW

    FWIW, as a Minnesotan, I am kind of glad that Emmer got at least mildly humiliated today. I remember his wide-headed grin in some restaurant photo with TFG around the time of all the ‘stolen election’ malarkey, and my already sizeable dislike for Emmer rose.

    He, like everyone, has now seen that toadying up gets you nothing. Or worse, in the cases of the many co-conspirators now going down.

  75. 75.

    danielx

    @Villago Delenda Est: ​
     Could be, the daughter unit is a fanatic and I have heard about every aspect of the Potterverse to an obnoxious and redundant degree. Absorption through osmosis or something.

  76. 76.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Bryan metzger @metzgov 8h

    Sinema on re-election, per @mckaycoppins book: “I don’t care. I can go on any board I want to. I can be a college president. I can do anything,” she said. “I saved the Senate filibuster by myself. I saved the Senate by myself. That’s good enough for me.”

    her office has issued a denial

  79. 79.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @RaflW:

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    It may comfort you both to know that the WaPo Editorial Board is being clawed to bloody little shreds in the readers’ comments. So far, there are about 3,000 comments; I skimmed through the first 50 or so a few minutes ago, and I didn’t see one single word in support of the Post’s argument.

  82. 82.

    CaseyL

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Except that, apparently, Trump did kill Emmer’s candidacy, as revenge for voting to certify the election results (regardless of everything Emmer did up to that moment to support Trump’s claims).  All Trump had to do was tell the KKKrazy KKKaucus to vote against, and that did for Emmer.

  83. 83.

    Manyakitty

    @SiubhanDuinne: mine was one of them, from earlier this evening. They keep tempting me to cancel my subscription. One of these days, they’ll push too far and that will be that.

  84. 84.

    RaflW

    @SiubhanDuinne: “But our engagement numbers are thru the roof!”

    (Disclosure: as a subscriber, I contributed one of those 3000 or more comments. For the time being, my sense that cancelling would do too little to change things, and also get the GOP one tiny increment closer to a totally uninformed electorate, and that news and opinion are separate, keeps me hanging on.)

  85. 85.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    @SiubhanDuinne: It may comfort you both to know that the WaPo Editorial Board is being clawed to bloody little shreds in the readers’ comments.

    “Comfort” is perhaps not quite the right word, but it will have to do.

  86. 86.

    danielx

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I got through the first paragraph, got to this jewel and could go no further:

    This is Republicans’ mess. But it hurts the whole country. Democrats have to help them clean it up.

    No. No they don’t. It is not the Dems’ responsibility to save House Republicans from themselves and it’s not like anybody would thank them for it.

    This is nothing more or less than Post editorial staff acting like quintessential Villagers, advocating for consensus at all costs lest things get uncomfortable for…Villagers.

    Fuck those guys.

  87. 87.

    sdhays

    @CaseyL: I wonder if that’s true, though. If Trump had kept his anus-like mouth shut, I’m doubtful the result would have been any different.

    Maybe it would have taken Emmer longer to conclude it was useless, but I don’t think the House Republican caucus is ready to put on their big boy pants and stop shitting their own bed, regardless of what their god has to say.

  88. 88.

    Jackie

    So much news and so little bandwidth! Did this get mentioned?

    Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) won the GOP nomination for speaker, the Washington Post reports.

    Johnson is the fourth Republican nominee for speaker this month.

    The House Republican Conference is expected to hold a roll call vote Wednesday morning to see if Johnson has enough support to go to the floor.

    Asked about Republicans who were not there to vote Tuesday night, Johnson acknowledged there were absences and said he would be “working with them tonight.” It was not immediately clear how many votes Johnson received in the conference’s roll call.

  89. 89.

    scav

    @SiubhanDuinne: Ah, but all those comments are merely self-administered back-pats on their self-image of brave political truth-speaking!  The mere hoi cannot understand how women’s saying no in fact creates rapists, thus making men look bad.  The nerve of such!  Locking doors similarly creates burglars and makes their acquisition of property unduly difficult.  How dare the opposing team get in the way of the duly appointed running back! Or, something like that.

  90. 90.

    Gin & Tonic

    If it turns out that neither the Phillies nor the Astros are in this year’s World Series I will laugh and laugh.

  91. 91.

    Shalimar

    @WaterGirl: Perjury is prosecuted at the discretion of the prosecutor.  Cohen already went to prison in part for his earlier lies on Trump’s behalf.  I can’t imagine any prosecutor in New York having any interest in going back to old testimony now that he is telling the truth under oath.

  92. 92.

    Shalimar

    @Jackie: It would be hilarious if each new “nominee” gets 2-5 fewer votes than the last nominee.  I believe Emmer had 26 against.

  93. 93.

    sdhays

    @Jackie: Right. The guy who lost the last round will have more support than the guy who beat him.

    I guess at some point it may happen, but it will only be once at least 217 are sufficiently exhausted and ready to settle for someone they are willing to tolerate rather than like. I feel like the relevant players still have some fight in them. If Johnson actually had some consensus magic, one would think he would have won last time.

  94. 94.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @CaseyL:

    Trump did kill Emmer’s candidacy

    There is zero reason to think the crazies would have voted for Emmer if Trump kept his mouth shut.  Nobody has made it through the gauntlet, whether or not Trump farted his opinion about them.

  95. 95.

    Shalimar

    @sdhays: I think there would have been at least 10 hard NOs against Emmer no matter what.  He was never going to be Speaker.  But circulating that 200+ pages of opposition research against him this morning definitely accelerated the fall, and Trump supposedly ordered that.

  96. 96.

    Shalimar

    @sdhays: Next in line when Johnson fails is Byron Donalds.  That will be particularly funny.  He’s basically Jim Jordan but with only a 3 year track record of not giving a damn about governing or building consensus.

  101. 101.

    RaflW

    @danielx: It’s classic codependency. The Ed Board is saying surrender for a moment’s peace is worth it.

    It never is. And as anyone who has had a family member (or family system) fall apart under active alcoholism, a key moment can come when the codependent finally say ‘nope, not gonna cover for the drunk any more’.

    That drunk may get even more out of control in response, but that just means the impacted need to get further away, not more enmeshed!

  102. 102.

    RandomMonster

    I thought it was understood long ago that Meadows was cooperating. What’s a sentence or two about what’s different today?

  103. 103.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Scout211: Jesus. Byron Donald’s, token black guy who has engaged in literal fraud and is most recently responsible for producing falsified evidence into the “impeachment” process

  104. 104.

    Shalimar

    @Scout211: Whoever writes Trump’s social media posts that are in complete sentences (Scavino most likely) really needs to learn to spell stolen.

  105. 105.

    RaflW

    @MisterForkbeard: Am I right in thinking Donalds is just epically stupid? Like an order of magnitude dumber than Lauren Boebert?

    Maybe it’s just the lunacy that radiates the imbecility, but it strikes as emblematic of a party in absolute, not even a cliff ledge to bounce off free-fall to me.

  108. 108.

    Ken

    @Jackie: Quoth the Post: The House Republican Conference is expected to hold a roll call vote Wednesday morning to see if Johnson has enough support to go to the floor.

    I can save them some time. The answer is no.

  112. 112.

    piratedan

    @Soprano2: I feel for our Phillie fan brethren, it’s never a good feeling having your team go out when you have an opportunity to go to the top.  Opportunities can be few and far between at times.

  113. 113.

    Shalimar

    It’s been so long since Arizona has been in the World Series, Curt Schilling actually had a positive reputation the last time.

  115. 115.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @Geminid:

    I think Senator Cinema’s post-senate career is not going to be the cash-swimming experience she’s anticipating. She’s burned her bridges with the Democrats and she’s not a Republican, so she has little to no utility at that level.

    She has nothing else to offer that I can think of.

  119. 119.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Odie Hugh Manatee: i’ve seen the current state of play described as follows: senators and representatives do the bidding of deep pocketed interests, and then I rewarded after their careers in government with cushy sinecures.  What prevents those deep pocketed interests from reneging on the delayed bribe?  Why, The dollars that if they did so, then a new generation of legislators would not be so willing to carry their water.

    At least, that’s what I’ve read in some places.  On that argument, Cinema (sic) will get cushy no show jobs, no problem.

  120. 120.

    Jackie

    @RandomMonster: Don’t know about today, but I was wondering about how Meadow’s immunity would effect his standing in Georgia’s Fulton County “not guilty” plea, and here’s this:

    Immunity may only be half-full for Mark Meadows.

    Although Mark Meadows has made a deal to plead guilty so lead prosecutor Jack Smith can have him testify against former President Donald Trump in his federal indictment — he still has to deal with the Georgia RICO and conspiracy case, according to a legal expert.

    “People are suggesting Meadows ‘only’ got use immunity,” said George Washington University law professor Randall Eliason. “Yes, that’s standard federal immunity and almost certainly what he got.”

    “The key is not what kind of federal immunity he got, it’s that Smith couldn’t immunize Meadows for GA charges even if he wanted to.”

    Crucial to Meadows’ potential plight in Georgia is whether nor not the Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was part of the deal.

    “If Georgia DA did not sign on to the immunity deal, then Meadows would still have exposure in GA – and everything he told Jack Smith would be admissible in the GA trial,” Eliason added in the thread on his social media.

    “I expect we still have more to learn about Meadows and the deals he may have struck, or how exactly he ended up immunized in DC but indicted in Georgia.”

    If it’s the latter Eliason warns it could be catastrophic…

  122. 122.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @piratedan:

    I agree with that, probably best at Fox where she would fit right in as the female Lieberman/token Democrat.

    Then we just get to keep laughing at her until she washes up at another channel. And another channel… and so on…

    @Chetan Murthy:

    I think this is less likely, she without a ‘country’, so to say. Unless this is just pure cash for play, her utility is pretty much nothing.

  124. 124.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Chetan Murthy:

    What prevents those deep pocketed interests from reneging on the delayed bribe?

    Why would they?  It takes a special kind of chiseling asshole to not provide the sinecure job they promised.  Not every rich asshole is as petty a cheat as Donald Trump.

  125. 125.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Odie Hugh Manatee:

    Unless this is just pure cash for play

    What I read was, that it is precisely that.  Sens/Reps do these perfidious deeds for the rich, on the *expectation* that they will be rewarded after they leave office.  If the rich didn’t deliver on their end, the Sens/Reps wouldn’t have the same motivation to keep delivering on *their* end.

  126. 126.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @SiubhanDuinne: Made me look. Here’s Ken:

    Even though the minority party, Democrats have vested interests in having a working congress. They have the power to select which candidate that the Republicans put forth they prefer by adjusting their vote totals. “None” is not an acceptable choice.

    Accept that the leader should be a member of the majority party, pick the least obnoxious, vote that person in and get busy doing your job. Bonus points for neutralizing the far right Freedom Caucus.

    No, Ken, you won’t be getting the pony.

  128. 128.

    Martin

    @Sure Lurkalot: He seems to be under the impression that a candidate that Democrats expressed some support for wouldn’t immediately lose the support of the entire GOP. Because It’s not clear that wouldn’t be the outcome.

  129. 129.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Sure Lurkalot: what an idiot!  If you are the minority party, you’re going to get nothing unless you’ve got an arrangement with the Speaker that he or she defers to some of your priorities.  It takes a special kind of idiot to be a political reporter for the Washington Post and not remember these basic facts.  Or, a special kind of morally deficient person.

  131. 131.

    Martin

    @danielx: If Republicans come to rely on Democratic handouts, they’ll never learn to take responsibility, something, something bootstraps.

  136. 136.

    cain

    @danielx: This is nothing more or less than Post editorial staff acting like quintessential Villagers, advocating for consensus at all costs lest things get uncomfortable for…Villagers.

    It only applies to Democrats. The GOP doesn’t get anybody asking them about consensus. If the Dems were having the same crises, they would just sit around and watch – the GOP would be throwing bombs and having parties. The GOP wouldn’t be coming in to help bail the Dems out except in a manner that would give them total transfer of power.

  140. 140.

    TS

    @RaflW:

    Disclosure: as a subscriber, I contributed one of those 3000 or more comments.

    Disclosure – I subscribe & also called out the “editors”. The reason I don’t cancel – I have a subscription that is $19US per YEAR. No way would I ever get that again. I thought it was an introductory 1 year offer but 8 years later, I still have it.  It covers myself & partner plus a giveaway 1 month sub every month – so 3 subscriptions for $19.  I killed my NYT sub back in 2016 when they were all in for trump.

  141. 141.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @Sure Lurkalot: Yeah, well, if the Republicans can’t achieve consensus on a Speaker candidate without Democratic support, then they can’t complain when Democrats have a minimum acceptable standard, like, oh, say, “accepts the results of the 2020 Presidential election”. That should not be a difficult bar to clear, but if the Republicans can’t manage it, then it’s the equivalent of “save me from drowning, and then you get to choose whether I stab you to death, bludgeon you to death, or burn you to death”.

  142. 142.

    Geminid

    @Odie Hugh Manatee: Senator is a prestigious job in the business world and among the wider public. You may be projecting the contempt you have for Kyrsten Sinema onto other people and institutions.

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