“If he is the nominee, if he was up against Biden, I’d vote for him again” Rusty Bowers, Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives who testified that President Donald Trump tried to get him to send fake electors to Washington on January 6, 2021.  

“We had at least 18,000. That’s on tape. We had them counted very painstakingly, 18,000 voters having to do with the Ruby Freeman. That’s — she’s a vote scammer, a professional vote scammer and hustler.” President Donald Trump while trying to fraudulently change the 2020 election results.

Michele and I have been watching the House Select Committee hearings on the January 6th tourist visit? riot? insurrection? Now, after seeing the first five hearings, I think insurrection is the best descriptor. Incompetent insurrection would be even more accurate. Watching these hearings, my impression is that Trump sort of believes he won, or should have won, which is the same thing in his mind, and reacted accordingly. But he couldn’t get anybody with the power to do anything about his imagined grievances to go along. Perhaps counterintuitively, what stopped the attempted coup were a handful of other, more principled Republicans. Really, that was all that stopped a coup.

In typical Trump fashion, when he knew he lost – and, by the way he reacted, he must have known he lost at some level – he just started throwing shit against the wall to see what sticks. He tried the Justice Department with his handpicked political rulers and he ran into a wall, he tried individual state Secretary’s of State and all of them said the results were real. He even tried to attack the Capitol and take over by brute force. Watching the hearings on TV – and now available on YouTube, which I highly recommend – is a little like watching a drowning child flailing around, begging for votes, trying to grab an invisible life ring. It’s pathetic except that, at the time, President Donald Trump was the most powerful person in the world with the keys to nuclear codes.

One of the things that made these hearings so powerful is that most of the witnesses are Republicans. Republicans, I want to add, who voted for Trump, all of them, I think, twice. Republicans who obviously wanted Trump to win but were not willing to perjure themselves. Listening to testimony about Trump hounding Brad Raffensperger, the then Georgia Secretary of State, for over an hour, whining, over and over again was very convincing. Convincing to me, at least, who had seen the insurrection live and was already convinced. Listening to the President of the United States whining, “People have been saying that it was the highest vote ever. A lot of the political people said that there’s no way they beat me.” and “I think I probably did win it by half a million. You know, one of the things that happened, Brad, is we have other people coming in now from Alabama and from South Carolina and from other states, and they’re saying it’s impossible for you to have lost Georgia. We won.” over and over, for over an hour, was like listening to a spoiled child. A young spoiled child.  

What bothers me most about Trump’s almost six-month insurrection attempt – and Trump started saying he would only lose if there was a fraud as early as May 2020 – is Trump’s attack on Shaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, two election workers in Fulton County Georgia. Two Black election workers who are about as far down the power scale as it is possible to get and Trump reached down to attack them. For what? To salve his fragile ego in some sort of perverted way, I guess. I know that Trump is a punch-down, suck-up kind of guy, like most bullies, and it is easy to say something like “Oh, come on, it’s just Trump being Trump.” and it is Trump being Trump but his disregard for the truth, his disregard for the pain and hardship he causes to others, is staggeringly ugly. And scary.

Listening to those two women talk about their helplessness to do anything about the attack, except quit their jobs and hide inside while people outside threaten to kill them, enrages me at a level deep in my psyche. That feeling of helplessness they testified about resonates all the way down to my core. All the way to my reptile brain. I want to say that everybody resonates with that feeling of helplessness at some time and it does seem close to universal watching the reactions of the members of the Committee, but maybe not. Maybe not with everyone, but it does with me and it remains the most memorable part of a hearing chucked full of memorable moments.

Now, today, the day after the Supreme Court ruleing on Roe and Thomas’ threatening, concurring opinion, I imagine a lot of people have that feeling of helplessness. When I first heard the ruling, even though I knew it was coming, my first reaction was That’s bullshit, sue those bastards. But it was just a blind reaction and immediately followed by Oh, we can’t sue, they are the final judge. There is nothing that can be done. But that’s wrong too, there are things we can do. Lots.