Donald Trump’s cuckoo coup

Fresno CA

Description

Donald Trump spent the final weeks before the January 6 attack on the Capitol careening recklessly between conspiracy theories and rebuffing anyone who tried to intervene. In Thursday’s hearing of the January 6 Select Committee, Chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) described Trump’s activities as “essentially a political coup.” And it almost was, but the effort the committee laid out seemed drawn out of some bizarre black comedy, with each detail more farcical than the last. The hearing room occasionally broke out in laughter at the ineffectual attempts of Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department official, to seize control of the department and overturn the election. Clark linked up with Trump, going through Trump allies and around his own bosses, and became integral to their plot to overturn the election by appointing fake electors from swing states to replace the legitimate electors that were to be counted on January 6. Clark was willing to execute a plan no one in line to be attorney general would touch, and that put him in position to ascend to a job that was otherwise out of reach. That plot was the central focus of Thursday’s hearing.