What If? (Re-sent; read this one.)
There's a horse loose in a hospital--again. My musings on history and what it might tell us about the next 4 years. (Re-sending to add the right link to Musk. As he says, "We will make mistakes.")
As a rule, I am not a student of history–and I am very bad at learning lessons from history.
Not in school, not in life and not in running sports pools..
Never took much history in college.
Still going to therapy to try to stop repeating mistake after mistake from my past.
Always making my sports pools just a little too complicated. Just consider Steve’s $55 25-Question Super Bowl Quiz.
And so it is that I am perhaps not the best person to look back at the past few years—and to look ahead to what may come next. And yet, being the least qualified to make observations, judgments and predictions about the future has never stopped me before.
What if Donald Trump had not turned his head at exactly the right moment and at exactly the right angle on that July Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania?
(I’m not a believer in conspiracy theories, but if I were, I’d start here. How does a gunman get on the roof of the building that served as the headquarters for local police? Why didn’t the officer who climbed up onto the roof for a glimpse at the shooter fire a warning shot which surely would have alerted the Secret Service and Donald Trump himself to the impending danger? Why have we never seen the medical records from Trump’s injuries to his ear? And yet, although there are many things you can say about Trump, the fact that he was able to stand up, raise his fist and shout “Fight!” shows a strength of will and sheer physical moxie at age 78 that’s simply hard to fathom.)
What if January 6th had been worse? We’ve seen the security video of Vice President Mike Pence and his Secret Service detail scurrying down the steps of the Capitol. Secret Service agents were sending out text messages, preparing to die. The mob was chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!” and had a gallows out on the Mall, ready to hang him. What if the mob had somehow managed to get Pence to those gallows? They’d already overpowered Capitol Police Officers to get into the Capitol.
What if there had been a shootout before the mob snatched Pence from his Secret Service detail? What if a Secret Service Agent was shot or wounded? Would his or her injuries or possible death have been regarded as more dangerous to our democracy than the injuries and subsequent death of Capitol Police Officers who were battered, tased, sprayed with bear spray and crushed in doorways by an angry and armed mob using weapons they’d brought, picked up and stolen from the officers themselves?
What if Ashli Babbitt had not been shot and killed by a Capitol Police Officer?
In my previous role in broadcast news, I watched the full recording of the Babbitt shooting which is rarely shown on news reports precisely because it shows someone being shot and killed. The video is amazing-–in large part because it’s one long continuous recording of the several minutes that led up to that shooting, recorded from behind the protesters trying to storm through a glass doorway in the inner reaches of the Capitol.
At the beginning of the recording, you can see lawmakers through the glass doorway at the opposite end of the hallway identified as “Speaker’s Lobby,” approximately 20 yards away from the angry mob. They’re scared and worried and are soon escorted out of the hallway, essentially running away from the mob at the doorway. A few Capitol Police Officers guard the doorway, standing in front of the rioters so they’re between the mob and the glass doorway. During the recording, the camera pans over to show their replacements, Capitol Police Officers in full riot gear with helmets, forcing their way up a crowded stairway on the right. The riot gear officers are surging through the crowd, trying to get to the doorway, fortifying the police defense and keeping the mob from getting to lawmakers.
I cannot find the full video online, but this video from NBC4 in Washington shows the pivotal last 2:00 leading up to the Babbitt shooting. The police officers at the doorway walk away from the door to make way for the officers in riot gear, but before the tactical officers are in place, the rioters in the front of the mob storm up to the doorway, trying to smash through it with sticks and kicks. At this point, members of the mob notice that there is a Capitol Police Officer standing just inside the glass doorway to the left, his gun drawn, pointing at the doorway which the mob is ramming, trying to smash through. One of the rioters who notices the gun repeatedly shouts a warning in the narrow hallway, “He’s got a gun, he’s got a gun!” Some of the rioters back up, but those at the front of the doorway do not. While they’re pounding away at the glass door itself, someone smashes out the top glass panel on the right side of the doorway. Babbitt is at the head of the line of the angry mob on the right flank and she takes one giant step up on top of the wooden panel at the bottom below the now shattered glass. As she steps up, the officer on the opposite side of the glass can be seen adjusting his aim from the door itself to the breached top panel, up and to the right, firing one shot at Babbitt as she’s just about to catapult through the breached doorway. She falls back and is surrounded by the riot gear police who have made it beyond the stairway and almost to the doorway itself. They try to render aid and are able to restore order, the mob backing off the doorway, their access to lawmakers defended and denied.
Again, I cannot find the video of the whole incident from jaydenx online, but it’s also used with this Washington Post video report that does an excellent job of showing just how close the rioters got to lawmakers at multiple locations within the Capitol that day. (I wonder if Jeff Bezos has watched this video report?) The video of the pitched battle at the doorway to the Speaker’s Lobby begins at the 11:00 mark.
Would January 6th be regarded as more dangerous, more reprehensible and more unforgivable if the mob had gotten through that doorway stormed by Babbitt? If a lawmaker had been injured, would Mitch McConnell have gone beyond his harsh words for Trump and Trump’s role in the January 6th riot, leading Senate Republicans in voting to impeach Trump?
My own guess is that McConnell and his fellow spineless Trumplicans figured that January 6th was already bad enough. That it had forever stained Trump and that Americans would never vote for him again. Why stick your neck out and vote for impeachment? The man had been punished enough. No one will forget January 6th and certainly no one will forgive January 6th-–or so they thought.
What if Trump had not been protected at every turn by a renegade judge that he appointed when charged not only with keeping classified documents but actively hiding them from investigators working to retrieve them from the bathrooms and ball rooms of Mar-a-Lago?
What if Trump had not been protected by the Supreme Court, again with justices he appointed, helping Trump to run out the clock and to limit the prosecution of the former President as if leading the January 6th riot was somehow part of Trump’s official duties as Commander in Chief?
In the aftermath of Trump’s Inauguration Night pardons of all the January 6th attackers, FBI agents and prosecutors have fought to keep their names private for fear that they themselves will be punished, hunted and harmed by those who are sympathetic to the thugs convicted for the riot and savage assaults on police officers. What if one of those FBI agents or prosecutors is attacked, harmed or even killed by one of the January 6th thugs or their sympathizers? What if it’s a judge in one of the cases or a juror who is attacked? What if it’s someone from the online community of internet sleuths who worked to identify January 6th suspects by going through the cornucopia of video evidence–-which Trumplicans now say they haven’t seen-–using facial recognition to identify suspects?
Will the current FBI and DOJ work to investigate and prosecute any such attacks on those who worked to bring January 6th criminals to justice? Will Trump declare that such attackers are “good people”? Will any of the Trumplicans in Congress condemn such attacks?
What if a family member of the October 7th hostages who gathered on stage at Trump’s Inauguration Rally had condemned the President for his outrageous remarks that night when he said before pardoning the January 6th attackers that they too were “hostages”?
What if-–before the election-–Trump had talked about his plans to take over Gaza and remove all Palestinians from Palestine? Would those protestors who stormed college campuses have instead rallied forces behind Kamala Harris?
What if Harris had caught wind of Trump’s plan for an American takeover of Gaza and confronted Trump about it at one of their debates? Would he have dismissed it just as he dismissed the plans for Project 2025 which has, in fact, served as the blueprint for his first few weeks in office. Would anyone have believed that Trump’s idea of a 2-state solution in the Middle East would be these 2 states: Israel and the United States? “From the river to the Riviera” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Will any Trumplicans speak out against this Gaza-a-lago lunacy? Will they continue to praise Trump for being "bold," "independent" and "out of the box"--instead of "insane," "dangerous" and "out of his mind"? Will Marco Rubio resign?
What if Israel further obliterates Gaza next week if Hamas does not meet the new edict from Bibi and Donald that all hostages must be released this weekend or there will be a resumption of all-out war? Will more bombings somehow help further clear the way for the United States to take over Gaza? After all, as Trump has wondered, who wants to live in that “hell hole”?
What if the Palestinians object to being removed from their hell hole homeland and they attack American forces helping with the forced evacuation? What if American contractors working to build the Riviera of the Middle East are themselves attacked or even taken hostage?
What if instead of DOGE we called it EMTFONLETSOG for Elon Musk’s Task Force of Nazi-Loving Engineers Trying to Shutdown Our Government. (Pronounce it “E-M-T FON-LET-SOG.)
What if people refused to call Elon Musk’s efforts “the Department of Government Efficiency”? It’s not a department of the government. Musk has not been nominated or approved by Congress and even his rag-tag group of twentysomething tech gurus have been excused for racist social media posts supporting the Nazis.
(You may have read that 25-year-old Marko Elezwas was forced to resign from DOGE because of his past Nazi-loving social media posts published under a pseudonym. Well, he’s been hired back to DOGE after a public backlash and a Musk poll on X which the Free Press noted amounted to cancel culture being canceled.)
What if the billionaire immigrant charged with dismantling the United States from within decides that the best way to cover his lies about government spending is to hold another news conference with the President in which his 4-year-old son “Little-X” sits on his shoulders as he answers a question about why he said the government was sending $50 million worth of condoms to Gaza (in the Middle East) when it turns out the expenditure was for Gaza (in Africa), a small province also named Gaza within Mozambique where condoms are effective and needed to prevent the spread of HIV?(This video of Musk and “Little-X” is really worth watching. It’s like something out of an SNL Skit.).
I suspect that Musk’s answer, “Some of the things I say will be incorrect,” got lost in the media’s fascination with him taking questions in the Oval Office with Trump at his side and his 4-year-old son sitting on Daddy Musk’s shoulders.
Keep your eyes out for the White House to employ this trick again to deflect attention away from further future fabrications and lies. The old toddler-on-your-shoulders trick while you admit you’re making things up and shouldn’t be believed.
What if America had learned something from the first 4 years of Donald Trump in the White House? Did we enjoy what John Mulaney so aptly described back then as “There’s a horse loose in a hospital”? Did the loose horse improve healthcare in that hospital–-or did the horse just make the hospital an international spectacle of incompetence, devoid of decency and democracy, without compassion and caring?
What if we’d learned a thing or two from those first 4 years? That nothing’s off the table and the only mistake you can make is not imagining how much worse things can get.
A Tiki torch rally with chants of “Jews will not replace” in Charlottesville. Good people on both sides.
Puerto Rico’s ravaged by a hurricane. Throw them some more paper towels.
Go ahead, inject some bleach in your veins. That will stop COVID.
What if we learned some lessons from history and decided history should not repeat itself?
What if 49.8% of America had not voted for Trump on November 5th?