Background Briefing: February 10, 2021

On By gram

 

History Will Condemn Senators Who Turn a Blind Eye to Trump’s Monstrous Crimes

We begin with the impeachment case the House Managers are making to the senate that makes it clear Trump set up his followers before the election claiming that if he lost it was stolen, then after the election he pounded away at the “stop the steal” lie eventually inviting his hardcore supporters to come to Washington on January 6th promising them it was going to be wild. Then after riling them up at a rally he directed them to storm the capitol in a last-ditch effort to stop Biden’s electoral college certification and even enjoyed watching the mob’s disgraceful brutality and vandalism praising these thugs and after it was all over, promising them to “remember this day forever.” We discuss exactly how this day will be remembered and whether those senators who fail to do their duty to defend the constitution and American decency will live in infamy in the history books and speak with Caroline Fredrickson, professor of law at Georgetown University and a fellow at the Brennan Center and president emerita of the American Constitution Society. The author of The AOC Way: The Secrets of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Success, she joins us to assess whether perhaps the single most outrageous attack against American democracy and the peaceful transition of power by a lowlife huckster weaponizing the big lie to impose his dictatorial rule, will go unpunished because enough Senate Republicans no longer believe in democracy and will do whatever it takes to stay in power.

 

A Biographer of Mike Pence on Our Homeless and Silent Ex VP

Then with Mike Pence’s name coming up constantly in the trial as the hero who did his constitutional duty only to have the man he so slavishly served, sent a lynch-mob of armed marauders to the Capitol to hang the Vice President as a traitor, we will speak to Tom LoBianco, the author of Piety and Power: Mike Pence and the Taking of The White House. The Washington Correspondent for Business Insider, he joins us to discuss how Pence is essentially homeless and while he has made several appearances, he is yet to say anything about what happened to him, his wife and his daughter when they barely escaped with their lives on January 6. 

 

What Happens When Anti-Government Libertarians Take Over a Town’s Government

Then finally we speak with Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling, a freelance journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist who won a George Polk Award and is the author of a new book, just out, A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears). He joins us to explain this amusing story of how a group of libertarians took over a small town’s government then immediately cut its tiny budget resulting in a collapse of services and by refusing to mandate bear-proof garbage cans, the town was soon overrun by increasingly bold bears.