The Accidental Seditionist

 

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)

One would need perhaps dual degrees from Ivy League schools in Political Science and American History to find an odder duck than Mark Meadows.

     No blushing liberal, the former congressman from North Carolina was one of the founding members of the Freedom Caucus (uncharitably but unerringly redubbed the "Sedition Caucus" by many in the MSM). Yet during virtually his entire Congressional career, Meadows had toiled in the trenches of the Republican culture wars, never close to a leadership position, a stint in Congress broken up only sporadically by occasional bouts of infamy, including being a key instigator in the 2013 shutdown of the government over Obamacare and being one of the authors of the infamous letter to Iran.

    Aside from that, Meadows was a largely overlooked snake in the grass. And then Trump came to town and reimagined what a swamp could be.

    The road to long-delayed power was made even longer. Before Meadows, Trump had torn through three chiefs of staff, starting with lickspittle former RNC chair Reince Priebus, then former Marine Corp general John Kelly then, in one of the silliest promotions in an administration that rewrote the book on silliness, Mick Mulvaney, who wore several hats including Director of the CFPB and, simultaneously, the Director for the Office of Budget and Management and, before leaving that job, Trump's third (but acting) chief of staff. For good measure, after fucking up at that job, Trump finally sent him packing to Northern Ireland as our Special Envoy.

     Enter Mark Meadows, the quintessential right hand man. After getting tapped by Trump to be #4 but before easing into the position, Meadows had to delay his own elevation to power on account of contracting coronavirus for the first of what would be two times, putting the kibosh to any doubts as to why Meadows had been kept so studiously from the levers of power.

     Meadows eventually proved to be that garden snake that people thought was a garter variety only to turn out to be a cobra with a flared hood, only one that wasn't terribly smart. He was one of those formerly anonymous right wingers who suddenly popped into infamy, after the fact, sort of like Jeffrey Clark. 

     Mark Meadows further solidified the case as to why he should be permanently kept from the levers of power in his bizarre conduct toward the January 6th Committee in turning over thousands of documents to the committee as per the conditions of his subpoena (he pointedly withheld about 1000 text messages). Then, after initially cooperating with the committee, he then decided to stop by invoking Executive Privilege (after publishing an occasionally spotted hagiography of Trump). This led the January 6 Committee to recently vote to hold Mark Meadows in contempt of Congress and the full House will soon vote to refer those charges to the DOJ.

     And it's those very same text messages, the ones that Meadows did voluntarily turn over to committee investigators, that's landed him in the hot seat, anyway.

Texts and Subtexts

 

Did I say "text messages"? Why, yes. yes, I did. 

     The ones sent to Meadows on January 6 as the Capitol was literally in flames and that were read by Liz Cheney on the House floor last night, make one wonder, "If these were the ones Meadows saw fit to hand over to the committee, then imagine the contents of the ones he thought were too hot to handle!"

     The ones Cheney had read that were sent to Meadows' cell phone were from Fox luminaries such as Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Brian Kilmeade. Thrown into the mix like a turd into a punch bowl were several from Fredo. The subtexts alone are mind-boggling. Why couldn't Junior reach Daddy himself? And how come Ingraham, Hannity and Kilmeade had the chief of staff's number, to begin with, let alone use it to try to manage Trump's behavior (One is half surprised Tucker Carlson didn't call asking why white supremacists weren't better represented at the riot. Or maybe he had and that was one of the hundreds Meadows wouldn't turn over to the committee)?

    And even before these texts were read on national television by Cheney, there were the other revelations. The Power Point presentation sent to Meadows that he claimed he hadn't disseminated let alone acted on (Yet on which he was briefed 8-10 times by disgraced ex Colonel Phil Waldron), Meadows pressuring the Justice Department to find evidence of voter fraud, etc.

     Like the drowning swamp rat he is, Meadows was in this thing hip-deep, not only by perpetuating the Big Lie but even in helping to foster the violence that took place on January 6th. His alarm at how much violence was being waged at and in the Capitol building was enough for Meadows to pressure Trump to call off the dogs. Looking back on it with hindsight, one gets the visual of a toddler playing with matches only to be horrified that his room is now fully involved.

     This was the man, remember who'd sent an email to an unknown correspondent claiming the DC National Guard should be on hand to "protect pro-Trump people" (against whom? The police trying to protect the Capitol?). As anyone who knows the first thing about the National Guard knows, its primary duty is to preserve and restore order on American soil. You cannot protect the target of the attack (the Capitol) and the ones carrying out the attack. It's tactically impossible.

     But it took three hours for the Guard to be brought in and by that time, several people were dead. That's on Trump, who was, nominally, the Commander in Chief and alone had the authority to call in the cavalry. But he waited those three hours as he stood in the Oval office dining room, watching the riot on TV and hoping against hope the rioters would succeed. And, by that night, those same Fox hosts who'd begged and pleaded with Meadows to talk some sense to Trump still went on the air to tell their already radicalized base that the Capitol was sacked by BLM and antifa.

     With the benefit of all this hindsight and the mounting pile of evidence against Meadows, it seems fitting, in a cruel way, that a seditious scumbag like him would be succeeded by a Nazi tourist like Madison Cawthorn.