Donald Trump’s self-serving false comments about the innocence or meaninglessness of January 6th at Wednesday night’s town hall on CNN offended a former senior White House official to the point that he smacked Trump back with disgust
Marc Short delivered a dose of dark reality to Donald Trump.
Short is Vice President Mike Pence’s former chief of staff, who Thursday appeared on CNN to address Trump’s refusal to apologize to his former boss. At the widely panned town hall on the network last night, the criminally indicted ex-president claimed the former vice president wasn’t in danger but falsely said he “did something wrong.”
Those words ignited Short’s anger over Trump’s whitewashing of January 6th as a non-event that was somehow justified. Mediaite reports:
I was by the vice president’s side when the United States Secret Service three times asked him to evacuate the Capitol, and as you know, the vice president refused to leave because he said that that’s not the image he wanted the world to see. The hallmark of democracy, where a vice president would have to flee that setting.
A mob of protesters who wanted Mike Pence’s “blood” (“Hang Mike Pence!”) came within forty feet of Pence and his security team, according to Mediaite.
Marc Short was among them.
More than anyone, but perhaps Pence himself and the Secret Service, he knows how close the insurrection came to becoming a massacre.
“And after conversations I had with the Secret Service, they commented,” the former Vice Presidential aide explained, “‘Look, we were just inches away from actually having to open fire on that crowd, which would have led to a massacre in the Capitol.’”
Trump has continually downplayed the dangers he unleashed on the Capitol that day, even now calling people who nearly beat police officers to death “political prisoners.”
It is merely another example of the salesman and propagandist in Trump.
He invents his own reality and then sells it as “reality” to the people who believe every word Trump utters.
Obviously, the refusal was not “something wrong.”
It was simply not what Trump wanted.
And because of Trump and the crowd’s beliefs, it certainly did put Pence’s life at risk.
What did Trump want?
He wanted Mike Pence to go along with his self-coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Ironically, reports coming out well after January 6th prove that Trump mused on that day (January 6th) that perhaps Pence did, in fact, deserve to die, saying, “Maybe our supporters have the right idea” regarding hanging Pence.
If the Secret Service, Capitol Police, or Washington DC Police fired their guns that day, it would have turned into a battle scene with the carnage that would scar this country’s history at a level exponentially higher than January 6th already has.
And we were so close.
Yet last night, Trump stood in front of the nation on a supposed news tv channel and refused to apologize to Mike Pence because “he did something wrong” (never once pondering whether that “wrong” was worth his life).
The refusal to apologize operates as a refusal to apologize to the nation.
He still believes he was wronged.
Short must have decided he had seen enough and, by reminding the country just how close we came to having hundreds dead that day, the entire matter ended up sufficiently “innocent” for Trump to whitewash, as he did last night.
Indeed, Trump has falsely portrayed the worst offenders—TERRORISTS—as martyrs, calling them “political prisoners” and making a bizarre recording of the national anthem with them.
“Political prisoners.”
Ironically, Trump bragged throughout the entire summer of 2020 before voting began that he “signed an order” that anyone caught defacing or destroying a federal building would get an “automatic” ten-year prison sentence.
But he meant “ANTIFA,” of course, which is a non-existent group that is nothing more than the bogeyman to fascists who want an excuse to break things—or people.
Not his own Ultra MAGA supporters, who – like him – are being treated so unfairly.
You won’t learn that on CNN.
They’re more concerned with spreading lies to try and juice their plummeting ratings after rebranding as Fox lite.
Watch the complete video segment here on Mediaite.
Reach me at jmiciak@yahoo.com, @JasonMiciak, SUBSTACK: MUCH LEFT ADO
