By Donald A. Collins | 6 December 2021
Church and State

I so appreciated the replaying by CNN on Sunday night December 5th of its June 2021 documentary program, Assault on Democracy, the complete airing of the events leading up to and afterwards of the January 6th US Capitol insurrection. It forcefully brought viewers the most cohesive review yet of the insurrection which could have changed the outcome of our 2020 Presidential election.
The Oath Keeper. The believer. The pastors. The Proud Boy. The cowboy. The political operative. Each played a role on Jan 6. Hear their stories. https://t.co/Vj23aOwuLn via @cnn
— Church and State (@ChurchAndStateN) December 6, 2021
The June description by CNN’s Brian Stelter of the intent of this program, “Assault on Democracy” confirmed its power. He said,
That’s the title of an ambitious new CNN documentary that is premiering Sunday at 9pm Eastern and Pacific and re-airing several times in the coming days. The subtitle is “The Roots of Trump’s Insurrection.”
Those roots run deep into the right-wing media dirt. The influence of MAGA TV, the radical right web and social media is highlighted throughout the special. “Former employees of InfoWars and Breitbart discuss the profit and political motives of their owners/leaders,” CNN senior VP Jim Murphy says. Fox News also comes up.
It’s important to connect the dots — say, from “the election of Barack Obama, when Rush Limbaugh said ‘I hope he fails,’ through Breitbart’s massive influence on the former president and thus his followers,” exec producer Patricia DiCarlo says. Trump “shared more articles from Breitbart than any other source,” she notes. Now, post-riot, “right-wing media helps keep alive the lie that the election was stolen.”
Regarding the riot, “we went behind the numbers, behind the court cases, and actually talked to the people who are charged,” correspondent Drew Griffin says. What is stunning “is that even now, even facing tremendous charges, some of them… don’t feel any remorse. They don’t feel like they were in the wrong.”
It’s sad when you think about how inevitable the January 6 riot felt, in hindsight. Trump’s lies were always going to lead to violence. When I Googled “assault on democracy” on Sunday, one of the first results was a January 2018 report by Freedom House — a stark warning that “democracy is under assault and in retreat around the globe, a crisis that has intensified as America’s democratic standards erode at an accelerating pace.” January 2018! Three years later, the assault continues…
Seeing this denunciation of the whole caper seemed to me to present the perfect case to use against Trump et al for the presently ongoing House Presidential Commission on January 6.
“Retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who was tasked by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with conducting a review of the US Capitol's security after January 6, on Tuesday said President Donald Trump's White House was complicit in orchestrating the insurrection.” https://t.co/0jZQ8gjUCK
— Robert Caruso (@robertcaruso) July 28, 2021
It raised for me the question of why after such a sweeping and accurate indictment of Trump he could count on any support from anybody. Many of the scumbags appearing on this illuminating program including the ex-President were and/or still are holding key elective offices in our federal government. For example, the flipflop Minority Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, who excoriated Trump right after the insurrection then switched his opinion completely, giving Trump a pass instead of a black eye.
In watching I sincerely hope CNN will continue to replay this program multiple times. Trump’s leading the planned conspiracy to overthrow the democratic transfer of power of a fair and conclusive election was so completely and definitively proved on gripping film by the words of the felons and the co-conspirators themselves. The behavior of Trump earned him his unique 2nd impeachment but no prison time yet. The Senate should have ousted him from office, even that close to the end of his tenure. The thought that he could again run for President and be elected is brings me nightmares of Hitler’s route to power.
That many who participated in the January 6th assault were influenced by the false information from the pro-Trump inspired media does not excuse them or any of the militant racists that surfaced so vividly on August 11 and 12, 2017 in Charlottesville and then collaborated with Trump and his follow instigators in attempting to overthrow Biden’s election. Remember? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally
A perfect example of Trump’s egotistical lack of concern for anyone, even his close colleagues was chronicled by the December 6th page one Washington Post article which reported that after he was diagnosed with COVID he exposed himself to 500 people.
Read it here.
From the day of his first positive test until his hospitalization last year, Trump came in contact with more than 500 people in proximity to him or at crowded events, not including rallygoers, according to a Post analysis https://t.co/XTolWRF4fP
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) December 6, 2021
So as his scumbag express rattles on, even some of those who knowingly echo his big lie about election fraud may come to realize his train is not a safe (electability wise) place to be in 2022 or 2024.
Trump, having partially succeeded in denigrating all 3 of the branches of our national government, deserves conviction soon if only in the court of public opinion.
The House of Representatives Commission probing the events of January 6th will doubtless confirm and enhance the findings already reported by our non-fake media to whom we owe our profound thanks for offering us the facts and the chance to right our stumbling democracy.
Will Americans derail this scumbag express? Your call, Folks.

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"From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013": https://t.co/lkC2t3E1A9 pic.twitter.com/bQsL2mLBcO— Church and State (@ChurchAndStateN) November 1, 2021
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