40 Feet and a Puling

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

40 feet.

    That's how close Trump's fascist goons came to getting their hands on Mike Pence. That's what came out during yesterday's January 6 Select Committee hearing in which Rep. Pete Aguilar took point. Aguilar also revealed that a Proud Boys confidential informant told the FBI the Proud Boys “would have killed Mike Pence if given the chance.”

 

 

     As proof, moments after Trump sent out his now-infamous Oval Office tweet at 2:24 that essentially painted a huge target on Pence's back, and that was amplified to the masses via bullhorn, rioters began chanting "Hang Mike Pence!" from within the building. To back up their threats, someone had erected a symbolic gallows, complete with a knotted noose.

    

    Now, let's put aside for a moment the question of what took the Secret Service so fucking long to evacuate Vice President Pence and his family (40 feet is just two thirds the distance between a pitcher's rubber and home plate, more than close enough to see the whites of someone's eyes). Let's talk about proactive measures- 

     If the Proud Boys were that close to the second in command of the Executive Branch, why weren't any of them shot? Ashli Babbitt was shot and killed trying to climb through a broken window leading to a hallway where lawmakers were hiding in fear of their lives. Considering that Mike Pence was one heartbeat from the presidency, don't you think more proactive measures than were shown that day by law enforcement was called for?

     Let me make my position plain- The horrors endured by law enforcement, and the heroics that they'd achieved in the face of that horror, had earned my enduring respect. That especially goes for Michael Fanone, who'd endured pure torture at the hands of enraged rioters while he was flat on his back. I salute Eugene Goodman, who'd courageously led rioters away from the Senate chamber where senators and the vice president were at. And I commend Officer Caroline Edwards, who was knocked out and suffered a head injury on the West Terrace, then woke up and sprang back into action.

     But some of the cops did open doors for the rioters and some of them posed for selfies with them. And when Barry Loudermilk was giving recon tours to the next day's rioters, where was the Capitol Police that Chief Manger bragged about in his bullshit letter?

    And how, despite Officer Goodman's heroic actions, were the Proud Boys able to get within 40 feet of the vice president, literally the only person on the planet empowered by the Constitution to certify the election results?

     These are questions the J6 Committee hasn't even attempted to address and that need to be answered or at least seriously looked into as the questions that have already been answered.