Morning Joe - Morning Joe 7/22/22

Episode Date: July 22, 2022

Trump's dereliction of duty on Jan. 6

Whatever your politics, whatever you think about the outcome of the election, we as Americans must all agree on this. Donald Trump's conduct on January 6th was a supreme violation of his oath of office and a complete dereliction of his duty to our nation. In the end, this is not, as it may appear, a story of inaction in a time of crisis. But instead, it was the final action of Donald Trump's own plan to assert the will of the American people and remain in power. The eighth public hearing, the second in prime time by the House Committee investigating the January 6th attack on the Capitol, documented former President Donald Trump's dereliction

of duty for choosing not to act to stop the assault on the U.S. Capitol. Instead, for 187 minutes between leaving the Ellipse and telling the mob to go home, the 45th president of the United States first argued with Secret Service agents who refused to take him to the Capitol. Then, after returning to the White House, sat in a small private dining room off the Oval Office, transfixed by the violence he saw playing out on Fox News, which showed the Capitol under siege. Trump learned just 11 minutes after returning that the protest had turned violent, but he did not make any calls to intervene, failing to reach out to the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General,

or the Department of Homeland Security. Instead, he demanded a list of senators' phone numbers, calling and encouraging them to delay or object to the certification of the electoral college count. And while the president's official call log from the White House that afternoon is empty, Trump placed at least two other calls that day, not to the military or the police, but to Rudy Giuliani. For hours, Trump ignored pleas by his aides, members of Congress and even his own daughter to call off the violence as it unfolded before his eyes, even refusing at one point to include the word peace in a tweet. And while the vice president, Mike Pence, gave orders to the military to stop the attack, Trump tweeted out that Pence lacked courage. This while members of the vice president's Secret Service detail called their loved ones to say final farewells.

They knew their lives were in jeopardy as rioters came within just feet of the vice president. It was only after those officers defending the Capitol began to turn the tide that Trump relented and recorded a video in the Rose Garden telling his supporters to leave the Capitol. But he ignored the prepared draft of his remarks and instead praised them, telling them, go home, we love you. At 6.27 p.m., Donald Trump left the White House dining room to go to the residence. Reflecting on the day's events, he said nothing about the attack. Instead, he reportedly turned to a White House employee and remarked, Mike Pence let me down. Mike Pence let Donald Trump down. Mike Pence, whose life was endangered. Mike Pence's wife, whose life was endangered.

Mike Pence's family, whose life was in danger because of Donald Trump. And because Donald Trump poured kerosene on the fire when Mike Pence was in his gravest danger and his family was in his gravest danger. By sending out a tweet attacking Mike Pence, knowing full well that it would only incite the mob even more. He also re-sent a speech after being notified that the Capitol was under attack. He tweeted. What did he tweet? He retweeted his speech from earlier that day, telling them to go up to the Capitol. So here you have and we've got a theme here with Donald Trump's Republican Party. billionaire that's playing phony populist, lying to the American people, lying to his supporters, whipping working class people into a frenzy that followed him closely, getting them to come up because they believe that the election had been stolen because it's what he'd been telling them nonstop. And what does he do? He sits there and lets them beat the hell out of police officers, beat the hell out of cops. And he's not the only Ivy League elitist who did that.

We saw yesterday, again, the hypocrisy. We saw yesterday, Yaley and Stanford Law School graduate Josh Hawley, another Ivy League elitist who who took on this this phony populist post, just like we were telling yesterday, Dr. Eyes, you know, Mr. San Francisco, Mr. Venture capitalist, you know, J.D. Vance. We've got all of these elitists that went to all these Ivy League schools playing populist with deadly results. And here you have Josh Hawley, who, again, went to Yale, went to Stanford. The elitist, elitist, holding up his bird power signal. And there was a cop who, when he was doing that, cops saw Hawley doing that.

Because he was right there near them and they were protecting him. And made him mad because she noted he was doing this behind the line that they had created from a point of safety while the crowd was getting riled up. And so she's looking at this guy who does this just heinous pose. And then we find out later that after he whipped the frenzy, the mob into a frenzy, he ran like a coward. He ran like a coward from the mob that he himself instigated. And there he is running, running away from the mob while cops are getting the hell beaten out of them because of him and because of Donald Trump. He runs away to safety. The cops are on the front line getting beaten so badly that they're thinking of their children that they're going to be leaving behind, begging the mob, the rioters, the insurrectionists

to please spare their lives. You have Mike Pence's cops calling home, saying their goodbyes. They thought it was like 9-11. These are Secret Service agents. Secret Service agents calling home to say goodbye, Mika. And these cowards,

these Ivy League faux populists, whip up crowds, have no idea the impact. Hawley had no idea the impact it was going to have. And then runs like a coward from the very mob he helped. This is why those text messages from the Secret Service might be incredibly valuable, because they were saying goodbye to their wives and loved ones. Here's

the audio, by the way, the committee played of Secret Service agents scrambling to lead then Vice President Mike Pence to safety as the mob closed in on January 6. Take a listen. As rioters were entering the building, the Secret Service held Vice President Pence in his office right off the Senate chamber for 13 minutes as they worked to clear a safe path to a secure location. Now listen to some of that radio traffic and see what they were seeing as the protesters got just feet away

from where the vice president was holding. Hold. Hold. They can't get to the building. Hold. Pardon that, Dora. If we're moving, we need to move now. Copy. If we lose any more time, we may lose the ability to leave. So if we're going to leave, we need to do it now.

They've gained access to the second floor, and I've got public about five feet from me down here below. Copy. They are on the second floor moving in now. We may want to consider getting out and leaving now. Copy. Will we encounter the people once we make our way? Repeat. Encounter any individuals if we made our way to the...

There's six officers between us and the people that are five to ten feet away from me. I'm going down to evaluate. Go ahead. We have a clear shot if we move quickly. We got smoke downstairs set by unknown smoke set downstairs by the protesters. Is that route compromised? We have this. It's secure.

However, we will bypass some protesters that are being contained. There is smoke unknown. What kind of smoke it is. Copy that. Clear. We're coming out now. All right. Make a way. The president's National Security Council staff was listening to these developments and tracking them in real time. On the screen, you can see excerpts from the chat logs among the president's National Security Council staff.

At 2.13, the staff learned that the rioters were kicking in the windows at the Capitol. Three minutes later, the staff said the vice president was being pulled, which meant agents evacuated him from the Senate floor. At 2.24, the staff noted that the Secret Service agents at the Capitol did not, quote, sound good right now. Earlier, you heard from a security professional who had been working in the White House complex on January 6th with access to relevant information and a responsibility to report to national security officials. We asked this person, what was meant by the comment that the Secret Service agents did not, quote, sound good right now?

In the following clip of that testimony, which has been modified to protect the individual's identity, the professional discusses what they heard from listening to the incoming radio traffic that day. Okay, that last entry in this page of service, the capitol did not sound good right now. Correct. What does that mean? The members of the BP detail at this time were starting to fear for their own lives. There was a lot of yelling, a lot of very personal calls over the radio. So it was disturbing.

I don't like talking about it. But there were calls to say goodbye to family members, so on and so forth. He was getting, for whatever the reason was on the ground, the BPP tail thought that this was about to get very ugly. And did you hear that over the radio? What was the response by the agents, secret service agents who were there? Everybody kept saying, you know, at that point it was just reassurances, or I think there were discussions of reinforcements coming, but again, it was just chaos.

They were just yelling. Obviously, it can be disturbing, but what prompted you to put it into an entry as it states there, service to the county. They're running out of options and they're getting nervous. It sounds like we're, that we came very close to either service having to use legal options or, or worse. Like I, at that point, I don't know, is the VP compromised? Is the detail, like, I don't know. Like we didn't have visibility, but it doesn't, if they're screaming and saying things like say goodbye to the family. And we found out later, Mika, of course, but he couldn't have known that day in that moment that they were two to three minutes away from being trapped

and possibly confronting these rioters. This mob, this angry mob that Donald Trump and Josh Hawley whipped into a frenzy and this mob that wanted to hang Mike Pence. So that's one of the things that we found is things were far more dangerous for Mike Pence than originally thought, even when we knew that the guy was close to being captured by the mob. And again, to underline this, Donald Trump, when he knew Mike Pence and Mike Pence's wife and Mike Pence's family, when he knew they were in danger, that's when he sent out a tweet attacking him to whip the mob into a greater frenzy. Of course, that's when Pottinger and

so many others, Matthews and so many others, decided to quit at that moment because they understood the danger that Donald Trump had put him in. And what was that sociopath's final words that day? Mike Pence let me down. He's just a heinous human being. Just watching the Secret Service. Just a heinous human being. And by the way, there are people all around him who have had extraordinarily horrible judgment, who enabled him through Charlottesville, who enabled him through everything. And these people were calling, begging him to stop. These family members were begging him to stop.

Fox News hosts were calling, begging him to stop. His children were begging him to stop. Everybody around him was begging him to stop. And he was the sociopath that stood above the crowd. He was even more vile and more repugnant than everybody else around him. And wanted his vice president to die. Said his vice president deserved dying. My God. I mean, you listen to this testimony and you wonder. I'm not criticizing Merrick Garland. I want to be very clear. Ben Wittes, I'm not criticizing Merrick Garland. Be very clear. But you wonder

how this guy is not all ready in jail. It's staggering. Public servants, public servants protecting the Capitol Secret Service cops with no president, with the president on the side of the attackers. That is wrenching. Yeah. And Mika, you had Mike Pence, according to testimony of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, calling and having to call to get support. Said send in the military now, said he was very firm, very direct and needed it. And then you had Mitch McConnell calling him to calling the acting secretary of defense, saying, get down, you know, clean this up. We're not going to let them stop this vote. Clean it up and tell us when we can go back and start voting again.

So you have the vice president, you have Mitch McConnell, and then you have the other Republican, Donald Trump, who won't do a thing. So let's bring in the host of Way Too Early and White House bureau chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire, member of The New York Times editorial board, Mara Gay, NBC News presidential historian Michael Beschloss, former senior operations officer with the CIA, Mark Polymeropoulos, a national political reporter for Axios, Jonathan Swan. And I'm thinking, Joe, we do. We have so many elements to show. Yeah. But perhaps a rapid fire is a key takeaway.

Yeah. Let's do that. And Michael Beschloss, let's start with you as a presidential historian. I know this has never happened before. I'd always ask during the Trump years, is there any historical parallel? I don't have to ask that question this morning. I don't have to play by Marcus of Queensberry rules. I'm not going to ask it. I'm just going to just ask you to give me your thoughts as an American, as a historian. Biggest takeaway. You know, my biggest takeaway is people are talking about

dereliction of duty. And I almost don't like that because that implies that this was a spontaneous uprising at the Capitol. And Donald Trump was sort of reacting to what was happening. I think hearing by hearing everything we're finding out suggests that he was at the center of a blueprint for a coup d'etat. And it involved even the Supreme Court. Ginny Thomas was calling back and forth to Donald Trump's chief of staff. He was calling members of Congress. We certainly know that the Secret Service was involved.

There's the possibility, as you've both been saying, Nick and Joe, this morning that this involved intended assassinations. Never thought I'd say this about an American president. Intended assassinations of the vice president of the United States. We certainly have that quote from Trump saying Mike Pence deserves to be hanged. And also, do we think that he would have been unhappy if someone, God forbid, had gone after Nancy Pelosi or other congressional leaders? You look at authoritarians in history who try to overthrow governments. There's usually an assassination. And that, I think, is one question that we've got to ask about the Secret Service. Yeah. And Mark, there was a part of the testimony last night that hit you personally.

And it was when the Secret Service started calling home to say goodbye. You said you had done that yourself while working in the CIA, but never imagined that CIA that that Secret Service agents would have to make the same call because of a president's actions. That's right, Joe. You know, I remember clearly the day it happened, September 12th, 2006. I'm at a U.S. embassy in the Middle East. My wife and I were in the embassy. Al Qaeda attacked the embassy. A car bomb hit the back gate. It didn't go off. There was a frontal assault. There's a shootout on the street. Grenades and AK-47 fire are hitting the embassy. And my wife and I call our family members and we say goodbye. And just make no mistake, that was al Qaeda attacking the embassy. So in my view and hearing the testimony of that White House security official and then the transcripts of the Secret Service, it brought me back to that day.

But this happened in America. This happened in our nation's capital. So it just reinforces the notion that this was a domestic terrorist attack. And boy, for a lot of us who are in the arena, serving overseas and had to say goodbye to family members when we go off and do dangerous things. It was pretty harrowing listening to that last night. Yeah. Jonathan LeMire, you obviously covered the White House during the Trump years, still are. What was your takeaway from what you learned last night? Yeah, there was so much last night, Joe.

Certainly that moment there, those agents calling to say goodbye, perhaps the most powerful. But I think to pick up on Michael Beschloss's point, this was Donald Trump choosing not to act. This was not the president at that moment being unable to or failing to. He chose to not act. And I think that's what's so striking. We'll get to later in the show that even after the violence on the January 6th, when he put out a Twitter video later on the 6th, and when he gave a speech on the 7th, we saw outtakes last night about him still refusing to condemn the rioters and still refusing to admit that he lost. I don't want to say the election was over.

And that, to me, is most striking here. It's just how, despite what he saw, despite knowing, and those national security chats, the president also knew that Vice President was in danger within 15 minutes of those rioters breaching the Capitol. He knew. He didn't care. What he cared about still was the lie. And he and Rudy Gianni kept pressing that point with Republican senators, calling them even during the violence to say, hey, don't give up the fight.

We can still win this election. So, I mean, if you wonder perhaps why it's taking so long for perhaps the Justice Department in whatever they're doing to figure this out, it may not be that they don't see a problem. It may be that there are so many problems here. There are so many issues. Which way to go? Where? Where is their criminal behavior with the most intent beyond a reasonable doubt? And whether it's dereliction of duty or actual criminal acts, something really hellish went down at the Capitol and President Trump was at the core is what this hearing really put to the table last night. Maragay, what was your biggest takeaway? I think for me, it's the continuing and ever present threat that's so disturbing. hearing really put to the table last night. Maragay, what was your biggest takeaway?

I think for me, it's the continuing and ever-present threat that's so disturbing, because it's unfortunately not just one day we have to worry about, but we have a rolling coup attempt and we have a group of people in the United States, a small but dedicated and violent group of people who are willing to use violence to overturn our democracy. That has not gone away. And I think when you see the people who enabled this and who stirred up the crowd, it's not just Donald Trump. I was extremely disturbed seeing that vision, that image that we just saw again of Josh Hawley, which is the perfect example of this. He's still part of an ascendant movement in American life. And that is not going away. You still have missing text messages from Secret Service agents. We still have questions about why it is it took four hours to

deploy the National Guard. So there's a lot left to unpack in terms of how to strengthen our democracy. And we really need to accept that there was a violent attempt to overthrow the duly elected president of the United States or to prevent him from coming to office. And we need to think about this as an ever present threat. It's not just one day. And Jonathan Swan, to Mara's point, the president is still making calls right now saying the election was stolen and trying to garner support. And we know that violence is the outcome of pushing this big lie, pushing that anger to a breaking point. I spoke to a member of the select committee probably a couple of months ago, and they were expressing to me their concern that with our obsession in the media with secrecy,

you know, what's happening behind closed doors, where's the smoking gun? As they were thinking about preparing these hearings, this member of the committee said to me, you know, it's a whodunit, but we know whodunit. And they said, what I worry about, this is them, I'm paraphrasing them. They said, what I worry about is so much of this happened in plain sight. And we tend to in the media, I do this, I'm guilty of this. We all do it. I think we devalue what is right in front of our eyes. And we always look for the thing that's hidden. So much of this happened in public. And one thing that they tried to do last night was to counter a narrative that some Republican members of Congress and others have been pushing, which is that this was basically just a bunch of tourists, you know, happy boomers taking photos

on a retirement lap around the Capitol. And that's part of why they wanted to show that actually, you know, this was very violent, menacing, and that the people who were, you know, really hardcore security people who were, you know, police and others charged with defending the Capitol members were scared for their lives. So that's what I thought was striking about last night. And it just recalled to me that conversation I had, because part of the Select Committee's mission is actually just reminding Americans what they saw with their own eyes and what happened in public and and not that we need to see something that we don't know about or a smoking gun or an incremental private detail that's suddenly going to be revelatory. We know what happened. We know what happened.

But as Mika brought up about the investigation into this and as Maura brought up about how long it took to move, Michael Beshalov, we still it take four hours for the National Guard to move when everybody was watching their TV across this country and saying, where the hell is the National Guard? Why did the Secret Service destroy evidence of Donald Trump, the main plotter's actions that day? Why did they destroy that evidence after they had been put on notice by an inspector general and the United States Congress that they were to turn over that evidence? Why did the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security take part in a cover up to not let Congress know that the Secret Service had destroyed that evidence that would have told us exactly

what Donald Trump was doing on January the 5th and January the 6th. There are a lot of questions. I'm the first. And sometimes my wife suggests that I'm a bit too optimistic about this country, but I'm the first to talk about all the ways the system held, all the federal judges that stepped up and did the right thing, the Republican officials from Georgia to Michigan that stepped up to do the right thing when they knew it would probably end their political career. I could go down the list of ways the system sustained itself when faced with this fascist attempt to overthrow a United States election. That said, we have so many questions, the failures of the Secret Service, the failures

of the National Guard coming in, the failures of law enforcement to step up and move faster. So many questions now that still remain to be answered. Well, you know, if we believe in the tooth fairy, all those things happened accidentally. Donald Trump just happened to have other things to do for four hours rather than calling up the National Guard and saying, protect our Congress, protect our vice president, protect our country. And maybe it was an accident that the Secret Service destroyed all these tests. And maybe it was also an accident that Donald Trump in that dining room next to the Oval Office said, no pictures. If we believe in the tooth fairy, this is one accident after another. I don't believe in the tooth fairy. I think that this was a plan from the beginning to try to wage a coup d'etat against

our democracy that might have resulted in the murder of Mike Pence on that gallows outside, physical assaults on Nancy Pelosi and others, those people running through the hall saying, where's Nancy? That didn't happen by accident either. And I believe that it was a close call because if someone had grabbed those wooden boxes with those electoral votes inside and if Congress had been dispersed and if the election had not been certified that day or if Michael Pence was, God forbid, harmed or taken to some undisclosed location, we could have had a hostage crisis. We could have a president invoking martial law. This was a very close call. All of us have to resolve that we as Americans will never allow ourselves to live through a moment like that ever again. Yeah. And although you've broken the hearts of many children about the tooth fairy, reality does. And let me just say, kids, Michael, you know, Michael was just joking when he said there was no tooth fairy.

Right, right, right. Bottom line, though, reality matters and we got to face it as a country. Michael Beslos, thank you very much. Everyone else, stay with us. We have so much more. What did President Trump do at that point? He went back to calling senators to try to further delay the electoral count. While the vice president was being evacuated from the Senate, President Trump called Senator Tommy Tuberville, one of his strongest supporters in the Senate. As Senator Tuberville later recalled, he had to end the call so that he could evacuate the Senate chamber himself.

Let's listen. He called, didn't call my phone, called somebody else and they handed it to me and I basically told him, I said, Mr. President, we're not doing much work here right now because they just took our vice president out. And matter of fact, I'm going to have to hang up on you. I've got to leave. 14 minutes after former President Trump criticized his vice president in a tweet, he sent another saying, quote, Please support our Capitol Police and law enforcement. They are truly on the side of our country. Stay peaceful!

Exclamation point. We learned that Trump even argued against including any mention of peace in that tweet. Congressman Adam Kinzinger laid out how militia groups like the Oath Keepers took former President Trump's half-hearted denouncements of the violence as a signal to continue. Watch. President Trump's message was heard clearly by Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander. At 2.38, he told another organizer, quote, POTUS is not ignorant of what his words would do. Rioters storming the Capitol also heard President Trump's message.

In this video, you'll see surveillance footage from the rotunda that shows a group of Oath Keepers, including Jessica Watkins, who's been charged with seditious conspiracy. You'll hear her walkie-talkie communications with others as they share intelligence and communicate about President Trump's 238 tweet in real time. Again, we warn the audience that this clip also contains strong language. CNN just said that they evacuated all members of Congress into a safety room. There's no safe place in the United States

for any of these... right now, let me tell you. I hope they understand that we are not joking around. Military principle 105. Military principle 105. Military principle 105. Cave means grave. Trump just tweeted, please support our Capitol Police.

They are on our side. Do not harm them. That's saying a lot by what he didn't say. He didn't say not to do anything to the congressman. Well, he did not ask him to stand down. He just said, stand by the Capitol Police. They are on our side and they are good people. So it's getting real down there.

I got it on TV and it's looking pretty friggin' radical to me. CNN said that Trump has egged this on, that he is egging it on, and that he is watching the country burn two weeks before he leaves office. He is not leaving office. I don't give a s*** what they say. We are in the main dome right now.

We are rocking it. They're throwing grenades. They're f***ing shooting people with paintballs, but we're in here. Be safe. Be safe. God bless and Godspeed and keep going. Get it, Jess. Do your s***. This is what we f***ing lived up for. Everything we f***ing trained for. So, take over the Capitol. Overran the Capitol. We're in the f***ing Capitol, bro.

Mark, of course, you listen to that. This was planned all along. And Donald Trump, he had it planned. He knew exactly what he was doing. He knew exactly what impact his words would have. He knew exactly what message would be sent when he told the Proud Boys to stand back and stand by. Recruitment went up. He knew the signals that he was always sending.

And it's pretty remarkable. We get it firsthand from the people, the mob, the leaders of the mob that were attacking the Capitol that day. While on the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue, you had everybody in Donald Trump's orbit, everybody begging him to send a message out that would stop the rioters. He just simply refused for another two hours. That's right. And so, you know, Joe, I spent my entire career running counterterrorism operations. This was clearly a preplanned event. This was not spontaneous. I think you're not going to find anybody in my old line of work who would make that

argument. But as I as I watched the hearings last night, and of course, I remember that terrible day, I think to my friend, former CIA officer and Congresswoman Abigail Stanberger, who really that day performed heroically. She was going around and asking other members of Congress to remove their pins so they wouldn't be identified if the Capitol was was over. And she was helping shield members of the press. And so, you know, when you hear stories like that, and I've talked to Abigail numerous times, I think, you know, President Trump's and I wouldn't say inaction, I would say deliberate lack of action. You know, that really disgraces those the police officers who fought back that day. You know, Congresswoman Spanberger, who performed heroically.

And look, the world is watching. One of the things that I take from this entire, you know, kind of really necessary accountability of what happened on January 6th is that is that sometimes Americans don't understand the world is watching us. And failure to hold those accountable is something that's going to really damage the United States in the national security field. Our allies are watching because they see the degradation of democracy. And our enemies are cheering this because they see the United States, which for a long time, you know, when we saw Russians, Iranians or Chinese diplomats at international fora, you know, and talk to them about what America meant. Right now, they say, look, you don't practice what you preach. Look what happened in your country. So this is really an important seminal moment

for the United States. Accountability does mean deterrence. It does. Maraghe, it seems to me that anybody who claims this is political just doesn't understand the law and what the meaning of our democracy is about. It's not political at all. This was many, many crimes committed against our government and driven by one man. If you watch these hearings and listen to this sworn testimony, and I'm curious, hearing from these different groups, the Oath Keepers and the militias, and to hear the recordings, they begin to listen to Trump parsing words. And it makes me think of those two words that were said on the debate stage, stand back and stand by. This was their moment.

It's heartbreaking. I think it's extremely important that we start repeatedly using the phrase domestic terrorism because that is what this is and was. the threat that these militias and others like them posed, not just on that day, but also just the ongoing threat that they continue to pose to our democracy and to fellow citizens. And I think, you know, as a black American, honestly, it's just doubly heartbreaking because when you're a black American, you're never American enough. You don't get to be American. And so you can't help but contrast those images that we just saw and that footage that we listened to of militias bragging about being urged on by Donald Trump that they're going to take this country back, essentially. And you contrast that with Eugene Goodman, you know, the black Capitol police officer who's there, you know, trying to save members of Congress. And the contrast is striking. You know, you don't get to be American patriot when you're black, but yet there's Donald Trump sitting in front of Fox News in the White House that Abe Lincoln sat in, doing nothing,

deliberately doing nothing as American democracy is on fire. So what does that tell you? We need to really reflect as a country about what this means and what that day stood for and was about and continues to be about. Yeah. And as I said on January the 7th, the day after that crowd had been black, things would have gotten ugly very quickly. And there's no doubt the National Guard would have been called in immediately and many protesters would have been killed uh and if they were muslim as i said the day after uh they would put snipers up on the roof and just start shooting them that's just that's just the reality i you know i sat there enraged like all of you did uh like americans did as they just let them walk through the cap, didn't call any backups, which is absolutely outrageous.

I will say, if any American doesn't think Officer Goodman is not American enough, they're not members of my country. I mean, they're just not. I mean, that's an extraordinary example. And there's so many, many extraordinary examples that day of Capitol Hill cops who stood in the breach and helped protect and defend our democracy. Jonathan Swan, as bad as it was, you have new reporting on how the second term that Donald Trump's preparing for could even be worse. Joe, what I have today is the first in a two-part series I've been working on for months, which shows that there is much more detailed work and planning going on for a second-term Trump administration

than has been previously reported. Obviously, Trump himself remains obsessed with the 2020 election, as you've outlined, calling officials, trying to overturn it. But what he's done quietly is he's empowered some of his key trusted former advisers and senior officials in his administration, and he's funded, he's wired money to their groups. What they're doing is quite vast. I lay down the piece. It can't easily be summarised on TV,

but it's got multiple elements. The core of it is they're already building databases of names, potential personnel who they're vetting as being loyal to Donald Trump and committed to his America First ideology. They've got hundreds of names already, multiple databases, and they're working in loose coordination with each other. There's also a whole other dimension, which is based around a legal strategy, which most of your viewers probably haven't heard about. It's called Schedule F. This was a plan that Trump's team developed

during his administration in complete secrecy. They issued it as an executive order 13 days before the election. It got media coverage at the time, but was buried in the crazy chaos after the election. But what it does, it's quite radical. It allows a president to reassign tens of thousands of federal career civil servants in a new category that they're calling Schedule F. And what that allows them to do is it removes all their employment protections. It allows the president to fire them and replace

them with loyalists. So if you think about that, what the preparations that are going on right now, Biden rescinded that order immediately, but Trump's going to put it back in straight away if he gets back in. And this is why they're building such a huge labour force is because they're not intending just to replace the 4000 political appointees that are normally replaced every administration. They're looking at more beyond that career civil servants who typically continue from one administration to the other. So anyway, I encourage people to read the piece. I put a lot of this deep reporting and there's a lot in there, but it's a two-part, one today, one tomorrow. Tomorrow's piece goes really deep into how they're making these vetting decisions. There's scenes at Mar-a-Lago and some of the characters that are now in Trump's inner circle and likely to get big jobs. One of the people who I describe

in detail in a scene is Geoff Jeffrey Clark, who was the only official at the Justice Department willing to use the full force of the federal government, the Justice Department, to try to contest the election. Trump has kept him in his orbit. He's on the payroll of one of his key groups. He was at Mar-a-Lago in one of these sessions talking about the potential top level staffing of the DOJ in 2025 under Trump. So there's a lot in there. But, you know, we thought it was important to publish it at length because, you know, this is really serious. It's not it's not just a bunch of people who are sort of bloviating. It's actually people who worked in the administration who are adept working on these plans with Trump's blessing and in some cases

with Trump's direct funding and fundraising support. Yeah. And of course, if you read an Apple bombs latest book, Twilight of Democracy, she talks about how strong men when when they take power, the first thing they do is they got the government of competent bureaucrats. And they who do they put in place? Loyalists. And it all becomes about loyalty. It all becomes a personality called all of those people that push back on Donald Trump. The first term would not be pushing back against Donald Trump in the second term. You've got a guy that knows about oil spills that wanted to take over the Justice Department. And of course, we laughed about it when we heard it.

But again, this is it is deadly series is exactly what strongmen do when they take over. They get incompetent loyalists in their government. So you end up with something like Russia, where you have Vladimir Putin in power and nobody that can check him, even when he does something that is destroying his own country. Again, showing Donald Trump is still very much in action on all of this. Yeah. Now, I do want to say, though, Jonathan O'Meara, these these hearings politically, I believe, have left a mark. You look at fundraising for Donald Trump down significantly since the hearings began. You look at fundraising for Republicans, especially in the Senate races. They're getting in key Senate races. They're getting absolutely obliterated by Democrats.

A lot of that may have to do with the Supreme Court decisions. A lot of that may have to do with a mass chaos because Republicans support 18 year olds with mental defects, being able to buy weapons of war without any safeguards. But at the same time, though, Donald Trump, there is no doubt he, according to people close to him, he's obviously, if not panicked, very, very concerned that these January 6 hearings have had a real impact. Yeah, Jonathan Swan's reporting provides this split screen where Trump and his loyalists are preparing for a new administration. But the events of the last weeks really do endanger that possibility. I think we should be clear up front. Trump is still the favorite right now for the GOP nomination 2024 were he to run. But he definitely has taken on some damage here and people close to him recognize

that. And that is where there's a sense from the former president. That's why his timetable is accelerating, though. Most Republicans want to talk him out of declaring his candidacy before the midterms, thinking he'd be unnecessary distraction. It's not clear they're going to be successful. He is he is getting antsy. He wants to be out there to try to fend off a challenge within the GOP, but also to protect himself, perhaps from criminal prosecution and also to change the topic of conversation from these hearings. But the problem with that is it's the only thing he talks about. He is obsessed still with January 6th and obsessed with the 2020 election.

And as much as much as other Republicans want to look to move forward, he still wants to relitigate the past. And that's to your point, Joe, is why some of the GOP see an opening, why some are being like Governor DeSantis, why his former vice president, Mike Pence, are taking steps towards running, whether or not Trump does, because they do believe while he is still he is still the most powerful voice in the Republican Party. He is wounded and perhaps more vulnerable than he's ever been before. Jonathan Swan, Mara Gay, thank you both very much for being on this morning.