Month: January 2022

Biden Accuses Trump of Holding “A Dagger at the Throat of America”

We begin with President Biden’s remarks today on the anniversary of the January 6 storming of the Capitol in which he accused Trump of holding “a dagger at the throat of America” as the GOP which the former president controls, moves aggressively to suppress the votes of Democrats using the “stop the steal” lie that Republican votes are not being counted. Joining us is Elie Honig, who served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York for 8 years and as the Director of the Division of Criminal Justice at the Office of Attorney General for the State of New Jersey for 5 years. He is the author of Hatchet Man: How Bill Barr Broke the Prosecutor’s Code and Corrupted the Justice Department and is the Executive Director at Rutgers Institute for Secure Communities as well as a legal analyst for CNN. We discuss how all those who entered the Capitol by force a year ago should be charged with a felony and that what happened was an insurrection warranting sedition charges which under the 14th Amendment bars those found guilty from future political office.

Who the January 6 Insurrectionists Really Were As the Movement Moves From the Far Right Fringes to the Mainstream

Then we look into who the January 6 insurrectionists actually were and how the “stop the steal” movement since then has moved from the fringes of the far right to the mainstream of the Republican Party with 21 million Americans convinced Trump won and Biden is illegitimate and that violence will be necessary to right this imaginary wrong. Joining us is Robert Pape, a Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago specializing in international security affairs. His current research focuses on the demographic makeup and motivations of the January 6th rioters and he has an article at Foreign Policy, “The Jan. 6 Insurrectionists Aren’t Who You Think They Are.”

The Coup Plot Preceded Jan. 6 and Failed So the Insurrection Was Plan B

Then finally we examine how the coup plot preceded January 6 and that the insurrection was Plan B after the coup to overturn the electoral count failed thanks to Vice President Pence’s adherence to the Constitution. Joining us is Sidney Blumenthal, the former assistant and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton, and senior adviser to Hillary Clinton who has been a national staff reporter for The Washington Post and Washington editor and staff writer for The New Yorker. His books include the bestselling The Clinton Wars, The Rise of the Counter-Establishment and The Permanent Campaign and his latest book is All the Powers on Earth, The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln 1856-1860. We discuss his article at The Guardian, “The insurrection is only the tip of the iceberg.”