How Republicans defended the House on Jan. 6

I discovered a fascinating Politico article about defenders of the House chamber. I'll quote extensively from the article and not clean up all the quote marks. 

“The idea was just to try to delay. I honestly didn’t believe we were going to keep them out of the chamber. I was 100 percent convinced that we were going to pile up at the door,” said Mullin. “It is all about time.”

Nehls (R-Texas), a former sheriff and military officer with five decades of military and law enforcement experience, ran over to Mullin, asking if he needed help.

“We have a choice. I’m with you, brother,” replied Mullin.

Mullin then broke two wooden upright hand sanitizer stations and handed a block of the wood to Nehls, giving both of them makeshift weapons...

“We didn’t know if it’s three people 30 people or 200 people. You just don’t have any way of knowing, and not knowing was unsettling,” said Fallon, who previously served in the U.S. Air Force.

“I thought, ‘We’re going to get in a street fight on my third day in Congress because we’re going to defend this place,” Fallon added, noting that they began shoring each other up...

Nehls looked through a cracked door window where rioters were attempting to break in and saw a man carrying a flag on a long wooden pole that was sharpened on the end, which he believes penetrated the window and caused the sound.

“It took an enormous amount of force to shatter that glass. You can see some remnants on top of the furniture — the little white sprinkling of dust from where the glass came in,” Nehls said.

Mullin then confronted the insurrectionists on the other side of the door through the tiny holes broken in the glass: “I said, ‘Is it worth it?”

When one rioter expressed confusion, he yelled again: “You almost got shot. You almost died. Is it worth it?’”

While some of the rioters paused temporarily after hearing Mullin’s warning, it wasn’t long until an agitator in the group began shaking the door again, yelling obscenities and shouting: “This is our House. This is our House. And we’re taking our House back.’”

Mullin shot back: “This is our House, too. That is not going to happen.”

Nehls then stepped in to attempt to deescalate the tense situation.

“I told the individuals on the other side of the door that they shouldn’t be doing this. ‘This is not the way we should be handling business. This is un-American, unnecessary and dangerous.’ And there’s no reason they should be doing this,” Nehls recalled. “I said, ‘You should be embarrassed of yourselves.’”

One of the rioters remarked that Nehls was wearing a Texas face mask and yelled at him: “You should be with us! You should be with us!”

To which Nehls replied: “No, sir, I cannot support what you’re doing right now.”

At about the same time, roughly 100 feet away, an officer shot and killed 35-year-old Ashli Babbitt, a former Air Force veteran who kept trying get inside the speaker’s lobby — where several lawmakers were — despite warnings that a gun was drawn.

The speaker’s lobby where the officer fired is directly adjacent to the House floor. People inside the chamber could clearly hear the gunshot.

Mullin said the officer who fired the fatal shot later entered back into the chamber and appeared “visibly distraught.”

“I hugged him and I said, ‘Sir, you had to do what you had to do,’” Mullin said.

Mullin and others who fought off the insurrectionists say if rioters had reached more doors leading into the House chamber, rather than just the one, then the situation could have ended far differently.

“He had to take someone’s life, but in return he probably saved a whole bunch of people’s lives,” Mullin said, praising law enforcement as the heroes that day...

Also reported is how one congressman decided to call his wife with a possibly final 'I love you.' Probably many others did that too. 

My big question now: Are these Republicans still talking this way about Jan. 6, or have they whitewashed it? Are they still supporting Trump? Probably most of them are. 

This is a sick outcome. The courage and principles that were so necessary on Jan. 6 were forgotten. It seems the partisan power is more important at the end of the day. 

Image: Politico

Fake polling to fuel a talking point

Talking point creation is an industry. No doubt some are paid very well for it. So here's one: Twitter closed down discussion of Hunter Biden's laptop for a week before the 2020 election. It probably wasn't a full lockdown because that would be very hard to do, but the New York Post twitter account was suspended. 

So how much effect could that blackout have? The conservatives have been trying to supersize the effect and actually did some polling to check on it, or to manufacture the data they wanted. 

Here is typical conservative reporting on the poll: 

WaPo reporting on the wording of the poll question. Wow. 

"According to our poll," the organization wrote a few weeks after Trump lost, "full awareness of the Hunter Biden scandal would have led 9.4% of Biden voters to abandon the Democratic candidate, flipping all six of the swing states he won to Trump, giving the President 311 electoral votes."

This is the poll question. Look at how stilted it was:

"At the time you cast your vote for president, were you aware that evidence exists, including bank transactions the FBI is currently investigating, that directly links Joe Biden and his family to a corrupt financial arrangement between a Chinese company with connections to the Chinese Communist Party that was secretly intended to provide the Biden family with tens of millions of dollars in profits?"

So this is more talking point manufacturing. The electorate already knew Hunter was a crackhead and had a cushy job that paid too well. We in the electorate didn't really care. No candidate is perfect--not even close. 

Image: Daily Mail

Extras. Politifact, if it helps any. NBC news from 10/30/20. I guess there was some coverage in MSM. 

What did the left actually say about Trump and collusion?

I read it all the time from conservatives: The left was sure Trump colluded with Russia in the 2016 election. 

Did the left actually believe that? Ok, I'll use google to find out. Looking at June 2016 until mid-September, I don't see declarations that Trump was colluding. I see discussions of Trump's financial ties, his statements about Russia, his choices of advisers, and how Russians apparently hacked the DNC and gave the documents to Wikileaks. I don't see claims that Trump colluded with Russians. 

CNN 7/26/16. Discussion on Russian meddling, no accusation of collusion or conspiracy involving Trump. 

Lawfare 7/27/16. Q&A, no charges of conspiracy or collusion.

Washington Post 7/29/16. Q&A, no charges of conspiracy or collusion.

The Guardian 7/30/16. Long article. Direct collusion "probably not happening."

Vox 8/15/16. Conspiracy theorizing is wild but grounded in Trump's Russia ties. 

Reuters 8/25/16. Focus on Carter Page, who was one of many advisers who had close Russian ties. 

Politico 9/5/16. Russia is interfering, but no accusation against Trump except for spreading hate. 

After leaks of the Steele dossier

So now I'll look for how it was discussed after parts of the Steele dossier was leaked to Yahoo, and was published in its entirety in January 2017. 

NPR 1/10/17. Reports on the dossier, which was published that day by Buzzfeed. "NPR is not detailing the contents of the brief because it remains unverified....." but characterized it as discussing efforts to cultivate Trump, blackmail possibilities, and secret mettings with aides. 

NYT 2/14/17. Unnamed sources say Trump campaign had repeated contacts with Russian intelligence. Alarming, but sources say no evidence of collusion this far. 

USA Today 2/15/17. Timeline of contacts. Not veering into speculation. 

Politico Magazine March/April 2017. Trump/Russia connections in 7 charts. Looks solid and not veering into speculation. 

The Guardian 3/22/17. Comey testifies that Trump is being investigated. Speculation on effect of that news, but not about possible actions by Trump and his campaign. 

Politico 3/22/17. Schiff claims the evidence for collusion is more than circumstantial. He can't say what it is. 

PRI 3/30/17. Very accusatory tone, but still couched as investigations and suspicions. 

CNBC 4/6/17. Clinton says potential collusion should be looked into. 

The Guardian 4/13/17. British spy services warned US intelligence dating back to 2015. An unnamed source states there is "concrete.... evidence of collusion" and that's the strongest statement in the article. 

Reuters 5/18/17. More contacts between Trump officials and Russians disclosed. Sources say no evidence of wrongdoing or collusion. 

I also checked some further left media. Many have told me that Rachel Maddow pushed the collusion story night after night. This video would be one example. I didn't watch her so I don't know how representative it is, but it does push the story hard, with statements like the evidence is growing and the Repubs were meeting with Russians just as Russians were hacking the elections. 

Keith Olbermann was always a human flamethrower and he continues it, though from a very shoddy video studio with terrible lighting. He latches onto the accusations from Louise Mensch, a name I had forgotten. Well, she was a bit correct but also going deep into nutcase territory. 

Personal memories

What I recall about the Russian collusion story: I was tentative on it, preferring to wait for hard evidence. Evidence was being uncovered frequently, so it was very reasonable to wait and see. I was dubious about the Steele dossier and the way it was released encouraged wariness. It was labeled as unverified from the very beginning. 

In contrast, most of the information covered in the Mueller report had been leaked beforehand, and the solid news organization were right on most of it. I read the indictments as they came out, and they were loaded with info. So I never had to correct mistaken claims I made because I was cautious and conservative. The Mueller report wasn't a relevation. The good MSM sources continued being fairly good, including when they reported that the Steele dossier was financed by the Clinton campaign. Now that was quite an Aha! moment. 

So I was cautious in what I believed, and I recall most on the left being that way too. Maybe because I don't watch MSNBC or Keith Olbermann. My conclusion is that conservatives downplay the actual events of Russian interference and overhype the collusion/conspiracy speculation on the left. 

Image: The Intercept