*Editor’s Note: This entry is rendered as it was written in real time. Apologies to those loyal readers who prefer podcast style editions, but no audio will be offered for this entry.
President-elect Biden has just come on the television, making an appeal to the American public. He’s calling for peaceful de-escalation. He’s being…well. Presidential. Shortly after Biden’s speech, That Guy first dropped an unapologetic tweet sympathizing with his insurrectionists, then he issued a choreographed video tweet, both of which were promptly deleted by Twitter for inflammatory rhetoric potentially leading to violence.
His first tweet:
“These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously and viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly and unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love and in peace. Remember this day forever!”
His second tweet:
“I know your pain. I know you’re hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it, especially the other side. But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anybody hurt. It’s a very tough period of time. There’s never been a time like this where such a thing happened where they could take it away from all of us, from me, from you, from our country. 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. You’ve seen what happens. You see the way others are treated, that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel. But go home and go home in peace.”
Way to be a unifying presence, man.
A less than presidential stance.
Perhaps part of the reason this escalated was the collective national realization early this morning that Georgia is in fact going to flip blue in its Congressional representation. Democratic challengers Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff have unseated incumbent Republic Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, effectively giving Democrats control of the Senate, where Vice President-elect Democrat Kamala Harris will be a tie-breaking vote in a split.
Biden’s intentions to heal the country and American reputation across the world will be much easier without a Republican majority in the Senate. His ability to implement new policies became exponentially more viable with this political godsend. Chuck Schumer will become the new Senate majority leader, and Mitch McConnell will become the new minority whip, and the Democrats will have control of both the White House and both houses of Congress for the first time in ten years.
Once again we have Black women of power to thank for pulling our nearly cooked asses out of the frying pan, not only Stacy Abrams, but also the many Black women who led the voter turnout initiatives across Georgia and the entire country, including LaTosha Brown, Nsé Ufot, Melanie Campbell, Tamieka Atkins, Helen Butler, and Deborah Scott, all representatives and coordinators of voter suppression advocacy organizations like Fair Fight Action, the New Georgia Project, Fair Count, Pro-Georgia, The Peoples’ Agenda, the Black Voters Matter Fund, STAND-UP, and the National Coalition on Black Participation.
It also means That Guy’s base believes they’ve lost their edge of adequate representation at the legislative levels. Their frustrations are easily seen today on the Capitol steps. They have bought into a grifter scheme that never paid them one sliver of dividend. They’re feeling hopeless. Not unlike, say, the lefties did in 2016 when Hillary lost. The difference being, the nasty socialists didn’t storm the Capitol back then, and attempt an insurrection. They didn’t like the results, they certainly didn’t like That Guy, nor did they think he’d be a good president, but it didn’t occur to them to react with violence and chaos…or they wisely repressed those monkey-brain impulses like a society is supposed to do.
So much for the right’s anti-riot, anti-violence rhetoric of BLM condemnations, as well as their insistence that blue lives matter too. Capitol cops are taking a beating today from them, far more than any BLM march last summer. One side fought for the inclusion rights of all peoples. The other side is fighting for a guy that lost a free and fair election, not because his policies and governance helped them in any way in their individual lives, but because they erroneously believe he’s a common man representing the common people.
Today, MAGA faux-patriots have shown exactly how they feel about incendiary gatherings. They’re fine, as long as they’re representing their own whiteboy interests. They skipped the small businesses and went straight for the halls of justice. Yet I don’t think Washington D.C. will be burning tonight. Much as the lefty cable news pundits are hyping it, I don’t think we can consider this a serious revolution. Firearms and munitions are not being utilized by the invading mob. There are no usurped sections of military accompanying or backing the civilian marauders.
It is, for lack of a better term, a playtime insurrection.
Who’d have thought those even existed?
Fun to get the adrenaline rolling, trample all over the citadel of freedom, tailgate and picnic out on Pennsylvania Avenue, take a few swings at the po-po, wave the now prolific That Guy-as-Rambo flags in the streets, but in the end, were these fools thinking they were going to take on the might of the U.S. military, or even a militarized bolstering of Washington D.C police?
Do they really believe taking Pelosi hostage or executing Pence would’ve resulted in an actual overthrow of the United States government, banking on their presumed hope That Guy would refuse to issue the command to initiate counter-insurgency protocols?
Nah.
They were just winging it.
Still, an insurrection Lite is still an insurrection.
What the mob did, despite its lack of planning and endgame, is still treasonous, and it must be treated as such. Whether there was a full-blown exchange of armed conflict or not, whether the perpetrators had real, long term goals in overthrowing an old government and creating a new one (they didn’t), nonetheless by definition we have to treat it as a legitimate Those that actively perpetuated it must be prosecuted accordingly, including the outgoing prez.
It’s been a long and tiring day for tuckered out whiteboys.
They appear to be calling it a night.
Senatorial staff scrambled to rescue the Electoral College vote certifications held in the ceremonial mahogany boxes, in use since 1877. They’d probably have been destroyed by the encroaching mob if they’d been left behind in the haste of evacuation.
Vice President Pence and House Speaker Pelosi have announced Congress will resume certifying the count. They’re in chambers right now this evening, even as maintenance people continue to sweep up broken glass and clean smeared feces off the walls.
There’s a growing movement online heralded by federal and state leadership to invoke the 25th Amendment. Ilhan Omar tweeted out she’s actively drawing up Articles of Impeachment. Much of Congress is rumored to be considering having Pence take over these last two weeks.
The media reports sources close to That Guy’s circle are saying in no uncertain terms he’s lost his mind, that losing the election has consumed him, that it’s all he can think about, and now, after inciting his cult mob to march up Pennsylvania Avenue and storm the halls of Congress, he’s become a domestic terrorist.
Yeah, well, duh.
Since September, we’ve all been wondering what he might do in his remaining two months of tenure if he lost the election.
We’re finding out now.
If it’s just limited to his minions breaking a few federal trespassing laws and ransacking the halls of Congress, I’ll count us lucky.
I keep thinking about that nuclear football.
Our incumbent assured his rally attendees this morning during his flame-fanning speech he’d be right there with them as they marched down to the Capitol in solidarity. Instead, he took off in a car afterward, and voila, not an orange hairpiece in sight.
Nothin’ worse than amateur despots without a backbone, amirite?
Pence is making a televised speech from the halls of Congress now. He’s condemning the havoc of the day’s events. First goddamned thing he’s said right in four years.
McConnell’s up. He’s insistent they’re going to finish the job tonight. He claims Congress has faced greater threats than the thugs outside today. Um, those are your constituents, dude. He sounds resolute. “Criminal behavior will never dominate the United States Congress.” Ha! That’s a lark, Kentucky. Nonetheless, we get your gist. We’ll compartmentalize for now. Currently there’s a bigger fish to fry than corrupt middle management. Now’s the time you top tier whiteboys grow a spine? You’re a little rattled, perhaps? Your seats of power had interloper middle class asses in them this afternoon, and that maybe chaps your hide?
Schumer’s turn. “This temple to democracy was desecrated.” Boy. The speech writers and proofreading interns are really earning their pay today. Pence, Pelosi, McConnell, and Schumer all came back to chambers loaded for bear. Schumer is outright accusing the president of orchestrating the insurrection, in inciting his mob to act with violence. He’s saying January 6th will go down as one of the darkest days in American history and That Guy has pushed the country to the brink of ruin.
Chuck’s ticked off.
I imagine Nancy is as well.
The thought of some MAGA goon plopping his steel-tipped boots on her desk must be grating her cheese but good. Turns out he’s a guns rights activist from Gravette, Arkansas, name of Richard Barnett, who, in an interview outside after his invasion of the Capitol where he proudly showed off a stolen envelope from Pelosi’s desk, made it clear he’s dunk-dived to the bottom of the Kool-Aid keg. I must know hundreds of whiteboys just like him.
The CEOs of Twitter and Facebook agreed to lock That Guy’s accounts. They flagged his ‘rigged election’ posts as inflammatory. After today’s events, they probably don’t want their respective companies to be held liable in courts of law for contributing to an actual American insurrection. That tiny-thumbed dude must be seething without his socials, sitting alone in his bedroom at the White House, watching cable news op-editors torch the last remaining tatters of his executive legacy, with no venting outlets available to him. All that privilege, all that wealth, all that power, and tonight, the supposed leader of the free world is the loneliest man on earth.
9:30 PM, EST. The Senate and the House continue to deliberate. Many of the Republicans who were slated to contest the Electoral College certifications have changed their tunes after today’s raucous shit show.
This is where I get repetitive about humans requiring hammers over roses.
All former living presidents have weighed in, condemning the violent uprising.
Four people dead so far, dozens of police injured, very few arrests of hundreds of tin soldier insurrectionists who committed federal crimes today, so little explanation for the lack of tactical manpower that ought to have been in place for an expected day of tension.
3:15 AM, EST. Just after midnight here in California. 12 states to go. Representatives from Arizona, Texas, and Pennsylvania have hung up the process of getting this done, especially remaining loyalist holdouts like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley. The geezers in the Senate and the House must be pretty fried at this point. Stretched hours for the legislative branch, an early morning session, running from insurrectionists, a reconvening of what’s normally a quick and easy certification into the witching hours.
‘Twas a day indeed for the representatives of the American public.
And there it is. Biden just officially reached a certified count of 271 votes. It’s all over but the shouting. Pence looks beat. They all look beat. They’re probably not coming back into session until after That Guy is gone.
Final tally: 306 electoral votes for Biden, 232 for That Guy.
Senator Klobuchar has just announced Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will become the new president and vice president on the 20th of January. The president of the Senate, Mike Pence, has now read his own denouement. A closing prayer has commenced by the House chaplain. He’s kinda going on. It’s almost 4 AM, dude. Let those poor proxies of precincts crash. Amen, he’s done. Pence dissolved the joint session. It’s bedtime for Congress, at the tail end of a dark chapter in our history.
As I’m sitting here at my desk, fading fast, there’s breaking news. That Guy finally put out a concession statement, in the middle of the night, after the joint session wrapped up. His people clearly pushed him to do it. There’s no way he wanted to do it. With allies deserting him like rats fleeing a sinking ship, it’s apparent somebody convinced him he had to try and save face.
He said: “Even though I totally disagree with the outcome of the election, and the facts bear me out, nevertheless there will be an orderly transition on January 20th. I have always said we would continue our fight to ensure that only legal votes were counted. While this represents the end of the greatest first term in presidential history, it's only the beginning of our fight to make America great again.”
What a nice, passive aggressive concession.
I’m especially appreciating the thinly veiled threat of return in 2024.
I’m done today.
Good night, America.
*Compiled from January 6, 2021