他们知道。他们都知道。
周一晚上发布的短信文本于 1 月 6 日发送给前特朗普白宫办公厅主任马克·梅多斯 (Mark Meadows)，当涉及到总统及其周围的人是否意识到当天的叛乱以及当时的角色时，这相当于一个确凿的证据。 - 唐纳德特朗普总统本人需要参加比赛。
有小唐纳德特朗普：“他必须尽快谴责这种狗屎。”
还有肖恩汉尼提：“他能发表声明吗？要求人们离开国会大厦？”
劳拉·英格拉汉姆：“马克，总统需要告诉国会大厦的人们回家。这伤害了我们所有人。他正在摧毁他的遗产。”
布莱恩·基尔米德：“拜托，让他上电视。摧毁你所取得的一切。”
毫无疑问，此刻，那些听过特朗普耳朵的人——从他的长子到福克斯新闻的支持者——不仅知道美国国会大厦发生的事情，而且还向梅多斯施压（和大概是特朗普）来做点什么。
你可能还记得，特朗普在几个小时内——即使国会大厦被洗劫一空——什么也没做。当他终于发布了回应骚乱的视频消息时，它是，嗯，缺乏有力的东西。
“我知道你的痛苦。我知道你受伤了，”特朗普说。 “我们的选举被偷走了。这是一场压倒性的选举，每个人都知道，尤其是另一方。”他补充说：“这是一场欺诈性选举，但我们不能落入这些人的手中。我们必须拥有和平。所以回家吧。我们爱你。你很特别。”
特朗普缺乏快速和令人信服的反应，这让他从周围人那里得到的警告明显紧迫而变得更糟。梅多斯的案文也对那天试图改写的行为进行了严厉的谴责——不仅是特朗普，还有他在国会的共和党支持者。
请记住，众议院少数党领袖凯文麦卡锡今年大部分时间都在淡化特朗普所知道的以及他何时知道的。
“我和特朗普总统谈过的事情，当骚乱发生时，我是第一个联系他的人，”麦卡锡在 4 月告诉克里斯华莱士他那天与特朗普的电话。 “他没有看到。他结束通话时说的是——告诉我，他会发布一些东西以确保阻止这种情况发生。这就是他所做的，他稍后发布了一段视频。”
那是，嗯，不是发生了什么。以下是 CNN 的杰米·甘格尔、凯文·利普塔克、迈克尔·沃伦和马歇尔·科恩在 2 月份的报道中发生的事情：
“麦卡锡在被围困的国会大厦内与总统交谈时，敦促特朗普取消他的支持者，并就人群的组成发生了激烈的分歧。特朗普关于可能的叛乱分子比麦卡锡更关心选举结果的评论是第一次本周早些时候，来自华盛顿州的共和党众议员海梅·埃雷拉·博伊特勒在市政厅提到了这一点，埃雷拉·博伊特勒和其他听取了谈话简报的共和党人向 CNN 证实了这一点。”
这里的要点很简单：1 月 6 日，与唐纳德·特朗普 (Donald Trump) 最亲近的人试图向他表明，美国国会大厦发生的事情需要停止——而他是唯一能够做到这一点的人。他花了几个小时拒绝做任何事情，当他终于发布了一个视频，呼吁他的支持者驱散时，视频中充斥着“欺诈性”选举和“从我们那里窃取”结果的言论。
真正值得注意的是，这甚至不是这些文本所揭示的最糟糕的事情。最糟糕的是：即使知道他们在 1 月 6 日对特朗普所说的关于正在发生的事情的严重性，这些人中的许多人在去年都竭尽全力淡化这一切——认为整件事被夸大了媒体及其民主推动者。
对我来说，这是所有这一切中真正令人震惊的部分。知道正确的事情——甚至在此刻呼吁特朗普做正确的事情——然后在接下来的 11 个月里假装公开假装你没有？总的。
The dirty little secret the Mark Meadows texts reveal
They knew. They all knew.
The release of texts on Monday night sent to former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows on January 6 amount to a smoking gun when it comes to whether those in and around the President were aware of the rising insurrection of that day and the role then-President Donald Trump himself needed to play.
There was Donald Trump Jr.: "He's got to condemn this sh*t ASAP."
And Sean Hannity: "Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol?"
And Laura Ingraham: "Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy."
And Brian Kilmeade: "Please, get him on TV. Destroying everything you have accomplished."
There can be no doubt that, in the moment, those who had Trump's ear -- from his eldest son to his enablers on Fox News -- were not only aware of what was happening at the US Capitol, but also were pressuring Meadows (and presumably Trump) to do something about it.
As you may remember, Trump, for a number of hours -- even as the Capitol was being ransacked -- did nothing. When he did finally release a video message in response to the riot, it was, um, something short of forceful.
"I know your pain. I know you're hurt," Trump said. "We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it, especially the other side." He added: "This was a fraudulent election, but we can't play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You're very special."
Trump's lack of a quick and convincing response is made all the worse by the clear urgency of the warnings he was getting from the people around him. The Meadows' texts also provide a bitter rebuke to the attempted rewriting of that day -- not just by Trump, but also by his Republican enablers in Congress.
Remember that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has spent much of this year downplaying what Trump knew and when he knew it.
"What I talked to President Trump about, I was the first person to contact him when the riots was going on," McCarthy told Chris Wallace in April of his phone call with Trump that day. "He didn't see it. What he ended the call was saying -- telling me, he'll put something out to make sure to stop this. And that's what he did, he put a video out later."
That's, um, not what happened. Here's what did happen, via reporting in February from CNN's Jamie Gangel, Kevin Liptak, Michael Warren and Marshall Cohen:
"Speaking to the President from inside the besieged Capitol, McCarthy pressed Trump to call off his supporters and engaged in a heated disagreement about who comprised the crowd. Trump's comment about the would-be insurrectionists caring more about the election results than McCarthy did was first mentioned by Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, a Republican from Washington state, in a town hall earlier this week, and was confirmed to CNN by Herrera Beutler and other Republicans briefed on the conversation."
The point here is a simple one: Those closest to Donald Trump spent January 6 trying to make clear to him that what was happening at the US Capitol needed to be stopped -- and that he was the only person who could make that happen. He spent hours refusing to do anything and, when he did finally put out a video calling for his supporters to disperse, it was sprinkled with talk of "fraudulent" elections and a result that was "stolen from us."
What's truly remarkable is that that isn't even the worst thing that these texts reveal. The worst thing is this: Even knowing what they said to Trump on January 6 about the severity of what was happening, many of these same people have spent the last year doing their damndest to downplay it all -- arguing that the whole thing was overblown by the media and its Democratic enablers.
That, to me, is the truly appalling part of all of this. To know the right thing -- and to even call on Trump, in the moment, to do the right thing -- and then spend the next 11 months pretending publicly like you didn't? Gross.
