One of the focuses of the January 6th hearing presentations today is on
the relationship between Donald Trump and Mike Pence, we know that Donald Trump was
pressuring Mike Pence to do the impossible to somehow make him president again.
Well, that came up in the hearings with Liz Cheney showing this.
>> President Trump was told repeatedly that Mike Pence lacks the constitutional
and legal authority to do what President Trump was demanding he does.
This is testimony from Marc Short, the Vice President's Chief of staff who
served in the Trump administration in multiple positions over four years.
>> But just to pick up on that Mr. short, was it your impression that the vice
president had directly conveyed his position on these issues to the president,
not just to the world through a dear colleague's letter but
directly to President Trump.
>> Many times.
>> And consistent in conveying his position to the President.
>> Very consistent.
>> So Donald Trump knew from the words of his vice president person who he
trusted enough to make him next in line to be president,
that it was not up to Mike Pence to decide who gets to be president.
Okay, so Donald Trump cannot claim that he doesn't understand that he should have
known it anyway.
But Mike Pence was making very clear that he was not going
to overturn the results of the election and he couldn't if he wanted to.
And yet January 6th happened and in many messages leading up to it in
his speech that morning Trump continued to assert to his fans,
his cultists that it was all on Mike Pence and
that if mike Pence just does what he needs to do Trump and Maga will win.
And that led to the insurrection and
we know what happened when the people began storming the Capitol.
We're gonna have some new video of that in just a moment.
So don't go anywhere but David,
I want your thoughts on what Mark Shore revealed there.
>> It's very interesting and it fits a pattern because to hear that Mike Pence
repeatedly, and directly to Donald Trump said no,
I cannot do this I don't have the constitutional authority to do this.
And then Donald Trump went out and
tweeted it any way that we want Mike Pence to do this.
It fits a pattern that I think the committee has been very effective in and
that there are a lot more people who are telling Donald Trump on election night and
right after the election you lost.
The data is clear and
there are people that just department saying there's no evidence of fraud and
it's clear and so Donald Trump keeps hearing all of this stuff from people that
he put in positions of power and literally immediately goes on Twitter and says,
our elections being stolen or Mike Pence can do the right thing.
And so it shows a certain level of psychopathic nature to Donald Trump that
is even more severe than I think a lot of people didn't realize.
>> Yeah, and look at the end of the day,
it is important legally to lay out that Trump, knew what he was doing was illegal.
That's important.
Practically though we know that he doesn't care.
He wasn't pushing for it because he thought it was legal, he was pushing for
it because he wanted it to happen that's it.
He doesn't care about the law any more than he cares about the constitution any
more than he cares about American democracy.
He's not interested in any of that.
He just wanted to be president and
he would do anything that he thought he needed to do to stay on as president,
including threatening the life of Mike Pence.
And we already know from some of the earlier stuff from this week that he
talked to people about hanging Mike Pence, maybe that was necessary.
Maybe these people understood the anger better than Mike Pence did and
to remind you of how bad it actually was.
Take a look at this video which was revealed at today's hearings.
>> I hear the Pence just caved.
Is that true?
I'm hearing reports that Pence cave.
I'm telling you if Pence caves, we're gonna draft through the streets,
politicians are gonna get drug through the streets.
>> I guess the hope is that there's such
a show of force here that Pence will decide to
do the right thing according to Trump.
[INAUDIBLE].
So David, some of that I've never seen before.
We shouldn't need any more video.
We know what that crowd wanted to do.
We know that they brought the news and we're supposed to believe that all of that
was just bravado that if they had actually gotten to him and
a crowd had dragged him out, the rest would have all suddenly realized that they
had crossed an unacceptable line and they would have saved Mike Pence's life.
That, nobody who was trying to beat cops to death would have actually heard
a politician if they'd gotten to them, this whole thing is just so disgusting.
And I hope amongst all the different things that they're gonna reveal in these
hearings.
I hope that the,
obvious pushing these people to make lethal threats against politicians.
This is the thing that should get through.
What do you think?
>> Absolutely, I agree with you totally.
Because to the point, I mean, it was these people were clearly wound up.
They were clearly led to believe that Mike Pence might do something for Donald Trump,
even though Donald Trump knew all along, that Pence was saying, no,
I can't do this, I'm not going to do this.
So rather, say, Okay, in a couple of weeks before January 6th, hey,
Mike Pence can't do this we're gonna have to find another
alternative Trump led his people on, got their expectations up so
they would be so revved up that maybe January 6th might work.
Maybe Mike Pence would actually do this for us and
then they're let down in such a severe way that they want to hang mike Pence.
And again it gets to Donald Trump's intent, he intended to put Mike Pence's
life in jeopardy, he intended to create this pressure cooker and get his crowd so
riled up that they might actually resort to violence.
>> That's indisputable.
That is exactly what happened.
And that is why obviously the people who were trying to kill people on January
6th there need to be consequences for that if you're trespassing if you're
breaking furniture or whatever that that's all bad and you should be prosecuted.
But it is such a weird situation to be like a year into all of these
investigations and to have seen hundreds and hundreds of people get arrested.
And many of them, being sentenced and it was all just independent I guess it
was just a gnat-like crowd just came together like birds flocking.
No one directed it.
No one is actually responsible.
There every one of them is echoing the words of Donald Trump.
We know that they had this plan to try to scare Pence scare the Senate,
scare the house, and maybe scare the Scotties as well.
It is also clear and I still just don't have any faith that they're gonna be
consequences for Trump Merrick Garland can say that the doj is watching?
But I just don't know, do you have any more hope?
What do you what do you think?
>> Wow, that's and that's a great question.
I at least hope.
And I would think that even Merrick Garland as reluctant as he maybe will say,
okay, we're going to take this evidence, we're gonna present it to a grand jury and
let a grand jury decide.
And oftentimes like local prosecutors when they're dealing with cops who engage
in violence, the prosecutor doesn't wanna say, yeah,
the cops should be charged with a kick to the grand jury so
they can blame the grand jury for whether the cop is indicted or not.
I would like to think that Merrick Garland would at least do the same thing.
Take this evidence presented to a grand jury,
let a citizen panel decide should Donald Trump be charged or not.
And at least that way I suppose Garland can have some distance.
But for him at the Department of Justice after these hearings,
doesn't take some of this information and say no, we are going to review this.
I think it'll just be a green light for this stuff to happen over and over again.
>> Yeah, and maybe if they don't do anything in a couple of
years when Trump runs again and either just wins or loses.
But now they control so many secretaries of state and
they've got their insane people in Nevada and other places that they're just they're
gearing up to steal it they could just steal it.
Then we will get to feel a little bit of superiority and
knowing that we told them so.
But that will be so minute in comparison to the horror of the situation will be in.
We just need someone in a position of power to take this seriously And
there are so few that actually area.
The January 6th committee members are the ones coming closest but
even if they're saying they're just going to like send it to the DOJ,
they're not gonna do anything individually.
So I just have this queasy feeling in my stomach.
The footage is compelling.
This should be enough.
But it's difficult to have a lot of faith in our system, in our norms,
in the institutions after all that we've been through over the past decade.
>> I agree with you totally.
And again, at a time when we don't have this sort of confidence in so
many institutions, it would be such a shame that the Justice Department,
the Department of Justice added their institution is one more that, well,
we can't really trust, we can't have faith in.
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