First up above all else for a second this Monday morning — a great, big thank-you to tengrain, who wondrously blogs at Mock Paper Scissors, and who while handling Mike’s Blog Round-up this week at Crooks&Liars, gave this humble, lowly blog a much-appreciated great shout-out today.
Tengrain has done it more than once before, so this is also a belated multi-thanks.

Meanwhile, back to your regular whacked-out, doom-scrolling ‘normal‘ programming.

Again seemingly that PowerPoint slide show released last week from the House select committee on Jan. 6 reveals in even more stark relief the full-blown attempt to attack our democratic system, though, in a way-incompetent fashion. Apparently, all the reasons for T-Rump and his boys to stage a coup were lies, shit that wouldn’t stand any legal test; they didn’t give a shit.

Details of the slide show, however, are grim, and the press is giving it a soft rub:

Unpacking the pro-coup PowerPoint that wound up in Mark Meadows's emails, by @atrupar https://t.co/0OqzBXb0pQ

— Alex Segura ?? pre-order SECRET IDENTITY! ?? (@alex_segura) December 13, 2021

Aaron Rupar at his newsletter Public Notice this morning dives deep into the PowerPoint production and points out the entire scheme was a testament to stupid, lying criminals — well worth the full read as it goes into detail of what these assholes wanted to do, and how to do it.
Some snips:

Thanks to the work of the January 6 committee, the gaps in our knowledge of what happened in the weeks leading up to the insurrection are finally being filled.
In fact, as I write this newsletter late Sunday, a major story just broke about a January 5 email from then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows advising an unnamed person that the National Guard was on standby to “protect pro Trump people.”

That obviously sounds bad, but the extent to which then-President Trump tried to subvert the military to help him overturn his election loss (and thereby essentially end democracy in the US) remains somewhat shrouded in mystery.
A White House document that surfaced as a result of the committee’s subpoena of Meadows, however, indicates the National Guard comment was more than idle chatter.

The document I’m referring to is a PowerPoint presentation that circulated around Trumpworld ahead of January 6 and was part of the emails Meadows turned over to the committee.
And unlike the often dull PowerPoints you are I are familiar with from offices or academic settings, this one was basically a blueprint to a coup.
…
On Sunday I put together a Twitter thread sharing notable details from the 36-page document. You can check out the whole thing starting here.
But to boil it down, it outlines a fantastical, fact-free, debunked conspiracy theory about China being behind a global conspiracy to get Donald Trump out of the White House, then cites that conspiracy as a pretext for Trump to throw out the election results.
…
But one thing I want to emphasize is that we don’t need this PowerPoint or the Eastman memo that makes a similar pro-coup case in a more polished way to understand what Trump was up to. The incendiary speech he gave hours before the attack on the Capitol — one that included lines such as “we’re gonna have to fight much harder and Mike Pence is gonna have to come through for us” and “I hope Mike is going to do the right thing” — made clear that even at that late hour, Trump was hoping his vice president would take drastic steps to prevent Congress from certifying his election loss.

As I mentioned, go read the whole piece. We’re faced with a situation that should be obvious to anyone with walking-around sense, but there are too many asshole-liars and grifters to paint the horrible picture of T-Rump and his henchmen for what they are, and attempted to do, and are still trying to do right up to this very moment.
Yesterday, I broached the subject of live maybe televised hearings from the House select committee, but that’s weeks/months off and we need to formulate a reality now to broadcast the story.

Eric Boehlert at his PressRun, also this morning, described the ‘slow-walk’ process the media is taking to create the correct picture of the T-Rumpian coup — time is now.
Not much enthusiasm from the MSM:

Twelve months after the press shied away from calling Trump’s coup attempt a “coup,” the Beltway media continue to go slow on the latest revelation about how deeply enmeshed the White House was in its blatant push to sabotage democracy following the Republican’s lopsided loss to Joe Biden.

The discovery of a pro-coup PowerPoint circulating within the White House last winter, designed to nullify millions of American votes, ought to be covered nonstop today, and used as proof that Trump is not suitable to hold office in this country.
Instead, the PowerPoint has received mostly passing, disinterested coverage.

Titled “Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 JAN,” the 38-page presentation is a rocket ship ride into the Big Lie abyss. The proposed plan was for Trump to declare a national emergency and for all electronic voting to be rendered invalid, citing foreign “control” of electronic voting systems. The chilling PowerPoint came to light recently when Trump’s fourth and final chief of staff, Mark Meadows, turned the electronic presentation over to investigators at the January 6 Committee. Days later, Meadows stopped cooperating with the panel.
…
We’re learning about it slowly though, and what seems to be reluctantly by the Beltway press, which instead of touting the PowerPoint as a smoking gun that reveals the GOP’s proudly anti-democratic ways, are treating the proposal timidly — an oddity that doesn’t demand much attention.
Virtually none of the coverage I’ve seen has included key context, such as quotes from experts on authoritarianism regarding the stunning implications of a White House likely consulting a sabotage plan like that.
…
The coup blueprint still has not appeared on the front page of single major American newspaper, nor has any influential editorial page weighed in.
Republican members of Congress have not been repeatedly pressed to explain the document and why, twelve months ago, the president’s chief of staff took a meeting with the author of the unhinged PowerPoint. Or why members of the author’s conspiracy team, just days before the deadly January 6 insurrection, spoke to a group of Republican senators and House members, briefing them on the bogus claims of foreign interference in the election.

As of Sunday afternoon, “PowerPoint” had been mentioned just 20 times on CNN in the previous week, 50 times on MSNBC, and to nobody’s surprise, 0 times on Fox News.
There has not been a single network evening news mention, according to a search of Nexis.

The media’s shoulder shrug response has left Democrats perplexed and enraged. “Can someone explain to me why this isn’t the only thing in the news?” tweeted Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI). “I deeply respect the fourth estate, but, holy shit they had a plan to just end democracy, and is the press gonna just be like “are democrats using the wrong words again?”
…
Back in October 2020, when he was asked whether he would agree to the peaceful transfer of power if he lost, Trump became the first president in American history to balk at the centerpiece of our democratic tradition.
The Times placed the story inside the paper on page 15, gently noting that Trump had “declined an opportunity on Wednesday to endorse” the idea. “Trump Won’t Commit to Peaceful Transfer of Power” should have been the headline on the front page of every major newspaper in America.
It didn’t appear on a single one.

Now they’re sleepwalking past the coup.

And maybe they should understand what happens to journalists fairly first and quickly in an authoritarian-governmental environment — for everybody, really.
Maybe too much Beltway bullshit.

Anyway, once again, here we are…

(Illustration out front is of a New York state high-school student exhibit: ‘The piece was displayed during student-driven art show at Shenendehowa High School. It consisted of at least 12 identical black-and-white pictures of Donald Trump. There was also a sign above the pictures that read, “Draw on Me.” Using markers from the art classroom, some students opted to scribble critical messages and profanities on the pictures‘ — and found here).