Quoth the Craven

"Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary... "(Or: my latest musings on the January 6 hearings)

From Merrian-Webster’s dictionary:

Definition of craven

1: lacking the least bit of courage : contemptibly fainthearted

In her closing remarks at last night’s January 6 hearings, Liz Cheney highlighted a critical fact: ”The case against Donald Trump in these hearings was not made by his political enemies. It is instead a series of confessions by Donald Trump’s own appointees.” Evermore desperately, critics of these proceedings are falling back on the only line of attack they can think of, that the hearings are a partisan witch hunt (notwithstanding the presence of two Republicans, including the vice chair). One of those critics is House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. McCarthy has insisted that had the committee included members more adversarial to the investigation itself and, therefore, more likely to cross-examine skeptically the witnesses testifying against Trump and his coup plotters, a different narrative of January 6 would be emerging. Cheney was appropriately dismissive of those claims. And that narrative McCarthy is now so desperate to discredit is precisely the one that he himself shared in real time, on January 6 and in its immediate aftermath.

The January 6 committee has pointed out more than once how McCarthy, on the day of the insurrection, pleaded for the President to intervene to stand down the gathering mob. Cassidy Hutchinson testified that McCarthy called her when he heard Trump planned to go to the Capitol to join the armed throng, insisting that she stop him from doing so. More bracing, after the attack had begun, McCarthy called Trump from the Capitol. Here’s an account of that call from Republican Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, played at last night’s hearing:

“[McCarthy] said, ‘You have got to get on TV. You’ve got to get on Twitter. You’ve got to call these people off.’” Herrera Beutler said. “You know what the president said to him? This is as it’s happening. He said, ‘Well, Kevin, these aren’t my people. These are, these are antifa.’” 

McCarthy responded that they were Trump’s people, and that his staff was running for cover, Herrera Beutler said.

“And the president’s response to Kevin, to me, was chilling. He said, ‘Well, Kevin, I guess they’re more upset about the election theft than you are.’”

At his most desperate hour, McCarthy begged Trump to call off the dogs. Trump essentially told McCarthy to go fuck himself. In the following days, in private meetings with other Republicans, McCarthy condemned Trump for his role in inciting the attack and said it couldn’t be “swept under the rug,” that Trump must be held accountable. But since then, McCarthy remembered that his primary political responsibility, which he’d briefly forgotten, was to shill for Donald Trump. McCarthy resumed that work in earnest in May of 2021, when he tried to gum up the work of the then-forming January 6 committee. When the House was in the process of impaneling members to investigate the January 6 attack, Speaker Pelosi offered McCarthy the opportunity to nominate people for the committee. McCarthy gave her five names. Pelosi rejected two, Jim Banks and Jim Jordan, “obvious Trump saboteurs,” as Greg Sargent put it. But McCarthy could have kept the other three. Instead, he yanked all of his picks, hoping the resulting committee would be deemed hopelessly partisan and therefore ineffectual, as he himself has subsequently acknowledged.

McCarthy had also insisted that the committee focus on antifa, in addition to the events of January 6. Think about that. On the day of the insurrection, McCarthy calls Trump and tells him he has to get the rioters to stop. Trump initially responds by saying it’s antifa. McCarthy knows that’s garbage (so does, Trump, of course. He told the rioters “we love you” an hour later, when he finally did tweet that they should go home). But within four months, McCarthy wanted to downplay the seriousness of a President plotting a coup by investigating an obscure group with no political power, the very group that Trump had so brazenly thrown in McCarthy’s face when McCarthy and everyone else in Congress was under siege. As Vanity Fair’s Bess Levin has put it, “while all of this would be pretty mortifying for McCarthy if Republicans had any capacity for shame, the unfortunate thing is that they don’t.”

On a cravenness scale of 1-10, McCarthy’s an 11.¹

McCarthy, of course, is not alone in possessing this particular character trait. The committee showed an exchange last night between Trump’s 2020 campaign communications director, Tim Murtaugh, and another Trump campaign official. In that exchange, three days after the attack, Murtaugh condemned Trump for not acknowledging the death of a Capitol police officer on January 6. Murtaugh then explained why Trump wouldn’t do so:

Pretty damning.

So what is Tim Murtaugh doing now? Funny you should ask. Murtaugh is working on the campaign of Harriet Hageman, who is running to unseat Liz Cheney as Wyoming’s representative in the House. Hageman herself once was a committed anti-Trumper who now calls the Donald “the greatest president of my lifetime.” She has also eagerly accepted his endorsement against the “traitorous” Cheney. So, it appears that Murtaugh has gotten over his brief bout of conscience and great consternation at Trump for being a lawless monster, and is now eagerly working to elect those who would do that monster’s bidding.

Sarah Matthews, a former Trump deputy press secretary, testified last night that she was among the people who watched with horror as the events of January 6 unfolded, of her growing frustration that no one could convince Trump to publicly address the rioters, to make them cease and desist (as they did essentially as soon as he finally told them to). Matthews said that at the peak of the violence on January 6, some members of the Trump team worried that if the President condemned the violence, it would be seen as a victory for the media (those were her words). Matthews testified that she pointed at a television broadcasting the attack and said "Do you think it looks like we're f—ing winning? 'Cause I don't think it does." Matthews, like others, was a committed member of Trump’s team. No doubt, she sincerely worried about the impact of the Capitol riot on the country. Perhaps even more immediately, the Trump loyalists who had real misgivings about January 6 believed the attack was manifestly such a fundamental breach of a President’s responsibility that Trump had permanently tarnished his own political standing, about which they all clearly cared.

But they were wrong. In spite of it all, Trump remains the frontrunner for the GOP nomination for President in 2024. The rank and file of the party is mostly dismissive of the seriousness of a coup attempt (though the hearings have put a dent in Republican support for Trump). There are lots of reason for that indifference. Perhaps the most critical factor, however, is the cravenness of a majority of GOP elites. Republicans like Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who have spoken and acted consistently and forcefully to hold Trump accountable for January 6, have sacrificed their political careers for doing so.

But their numbers are swamped by the Kevin McCarthys and Tim Murtaughs of the world, whose lack of conscience is the foundation for Trump’s continued political viability.

1. Yes, Spinal Tap does remain one of my favorite movies.