Battle

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) — who raised his fist in support of the Capitol insurrectionists earlier in the day — runs for his life from the rioters inside the building in never-before-seen video. pic.twitter.com/GU1L8ttN8u

— The Recount (@therecount) July 22, 2022

About an hour into last night's hearing I began to think I was seeing signs of a narrative arc that was leading to a particular place; the repeated juxtapositions between Trump in the West Wing dining room refusing to respond to everybody's entreaties and the carnage ongoing in the Capitol (to which his TV was tuned) were leading inexorably to the moment when he finally consented to go out to the Rose Garden and make the video:

Putting a prediction on the record: When Trump decides to shoot the video calling off the insurgents, is going to be the moment when it's clear to CNN or whatever he's watching that they can't win the Capitol, or that Pence is safe--something like that.

— Woke Mob For Disempowering Joe Manchin--Vote '22! (@Yastreblyansky) July 22, 2022

If, as I wrote after a previous hearing,

What he was waiting for that long afternoon was for his troops to win, over the purposely hobbled Capitol Police and absent national guardsmen, upon which the victors would invite him down to make his grand entrance

then when he did agree to do the video it must have been from the recognition that they'd lost. Which is pretty exactly how it was turning out in the hearing an hour after I posted the tweet (C-SPAN text, around 1:43):

THANK YOU MR. KINZINGER. AT 4:17, MORE THAN THREE HOURS AFTER HE STOPPED SPEAKING AT THE ELLIPSE, THAT IS WHEN HE TWEETED A VIDEO TELLING RIOTERS TO GO HOME. WHILE ALSO TELLING THEM THAT THEY WERE SPECIAL, AND THAT HE LOVED THEM. BY THAT TIME, THE VIOLENCE WAS FAR FROM OVER. LAW ENFORCEMENT HAD STARTED TO TURN THE TIDE, REINFORCEMENTS WERE ON THE WAY, AND ELECTED OFFICIALS WERE IN SECURE LOCATIONS. THE WRITING WAS ON THE WALL. THE RIOTERS WOULD NOT SUCCEED. HERE IS WHAT WAS SHOWING ON FOX NEWS, THE CHANNEL THE PRESIDENT WAS WATCHING ALL AFTERNOON.

(The congressmembers were safe by around 2:30, and the Capitol police really began turning the battle in the Speakers' Lobby with the shooting of Ashli Babbitt as she was smashing the door in a couple of minutes before 3:00.  Reinforcements were called in by Vice President Pence, and not, as Kayleigh McEnany falsely tweeted, Trump. At 3:13 Trump sent his first conciliatory tweet, "I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order – respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!" —and work on the video asking the insurgents to go home began.)

At 10:30 Kinzinger gets around to saying it explicitly.

— Woke Mob For Disempowering Joe Manchin--Vote '22! (@Yastreblyansky) July 22, 2022

IT WAS ONLY ONCE THE VICE PRESIDENT AND MEMBERS OF CONGRESS WERE IN SECURE LOCATIONS AND OFFICERS DEFENDING THE CAPITOL BEGAN TO TURN THE TIDE THAT THEN-PRESIDENT TRUMP ENGAGED IN. THE POLITICAL THEATER OF TELLING THE MOB TO GO HOME, AND EVEN THEN, HE TOLD THEM ALL THAT THEY WERE SPECIAL AND THAT HE LOVED ALL OF THEM...

News media aren't picking up on this, but I think it's important: The reason he finally agreed to make the video was that the battle was lost—not the war, he still hasn't acknowledged losing that, and there's no reason to believe he ever will, but definitely the one battle. He wasn't going to be entering the Capitol in triumph that day, the Electoral College vote for Biden was going to be certified, and it was time to move on to the next tactic, whatever that was going to be (maybe just to ensure the continuity of the money flow through the Save America "leadership PAC").

It's important because it confirms that the whole thing leading up to that moment, including those hours of apparent paralysis after the Secret Service stopped him from driving to the Capitol, really was a battle, whatever the House and Senate Republicans may have supposed. Trump really didn't have anything else to do, other than await the outcome. And he certainly didn't want to stop the battle as long as he believed he had a chance of winning it. But once it was to all purposes over, he made a show of being the one who had stopped it, there was some possible advantage for him in that.

I was a little disappointed in the hearing for a while, after having hoped they'd focus more on the active conspirators at the highest level and less on the essentially passive spider at the center of the web (wondering at the moment if that's really the job of the Justice Department working mainly with professional criminals in tandem with the Committee work with politicians and civil servants, and nobody quite able to decide which of the two Trump is). But if I'm reading it right, this is a really big contribution.