Sasse: He wanted there to be chaos, and I’m sure you’ve also had conversations with other senior White House officials, as I have.
Hewitt: I have.
Sasse: As this was unfolding on television, Donald Trump was walking around the White House confused about why other people on his team weren’t as excited as he was as you had rioters pushing against Capitol Police trying to get into the building.
Hewitt: That said . . .
Sasse: That was happening. He was delighted.
Geraghty then goes on to quote from a Washington Post article in which an unnamed advisor reveals that the President,
...was hard to reach, and you know why? Because it was live TV. If it’s TiVo, he just hits pause and takes the calls. If it’s live TV, he watches it, and he was just watching it all unfold.The WaPo article continues:
. . . But the president himself was busy enjoying the spectacle. Trump watched with interest, buoyed to see that his supporters were fighting so hard on his behalf, one close adviser said.The WaPo is hardly a Trump-friendly paper so maybe we should take their reporting with a touch of skepticism, but if they are accurately recounting what happened it presents a very damaging picture of the president's behavior. Geraghty adds this:
. . . Meanwhile, in the West Wing, a small group of aides — including Ivanka Trump, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and Meadows — was imploring Trump to speak out against the violence. Meadows’s staff had prompted him to go see the president, with one aide telling the chief of staff before he entered the Oval Office, “They are going to kill people.”
Shortly after 2:30 p.m., the group finally persuaded Trump to send a tweet: “Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement,” he wrote. “They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!”
But the Twitter missive was insufficient, and the president had not wanted to include the final instruction to “stay peaceful,” according to one person familiar with the discussions.
The article paints an appalling portrait of the president’s refusal to act as the crisis worsened. But once again, we’re dependent upon sources in the White House who won’t give their names.If all that Geraghty says here is true, it's hard to see how Mr. Trump avoids impeachment, but whether it's true or not will only be ascertained, as Geraghty says, by putting these aides under oath.
The consequences of these statements are gargantuan; they’re describing a president refusing to protect Congress or his own vice president. If there was ever a time to go on the record, this is it.
Maybe the White House staffers closest to the Oval Office on Wednesday would be clearer and more specific if they were testifying under oath.
Earlier in the same column Geraghty quoted NRO contributor Andrew McCarthy as saying that if the Democrats really want to impeach Trump they're going about it all wrong by charging him with inciting insurrection.
If what the Democrats truly want is bipartisan consensus in the service of national security, rather than political combat, the articles of impeachment they plan to file should charge the president with (a) subversion of the Constitution’s electoral process, particularly the Twelfth Amendment counting of the sovereign states’ electoral votes; (b) recklessly encouraging a raucous political demonstration that foreseeably devolved into a violent storming of the seat of our government; and (c) depraved indifference to the welfare of the vice president, Congress, security personnel, and other Americans who were in and around the Capitol on January 6.I'm not sure the Democrats believe that it's all that urgent to get Trump out of office. Rep. Jim Clyburn said they might hold off until after Biden's been in office for three months before sending articles of impeachment to the Senate. If Trump really is a clear and present danger to the nation, as numerous Democrats and some Republicans have claimed, why would they delay the business of removing him?
That would be an accurate description of impeachable offenses. It would not disintegrate into legal wrangling over incitement, insurrection, and causation.