On Monday morning, Americans heard from former members of Donald Trump’s campaign and presidential administration who described unsuccessful efforts to disabuse him of various false claims about the 2020 election. Those tuning in to the hearing of the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot learned how people like former attorney general William P. Barr tried to explain to Trump that he was wrong in his assertions about rampant election fraud, with Trump simply choosing to press forward with false claims anyway.
The former president released a 12-page document articulating something of a greatest-hits collection for his long-standing crusade against reality. Peppered with the expected pejoratives against the Jan. 6 committee, it’s revealing not for what it says about the election but for what it says about Trump. Even now, 19 months after the election, he demonstrates no ability to discern fact from fiction about the election results but also shows no interest in trying to draw such a distinction.
The document is broken out into six sections. I’ll walk through them here, not because they are deserving of serious consideration but to demonstrate why they aren’t — and to serve as a one-stop rejoinder to Trump’s lengthy “statement.”
Disparaging the House committee. The document begins with an angry excoriation of the committee itself, making very clear that the document is meant as a rebuttal. Trump wails about having “the right to confront accusers,” as he did...
Government agents were confronted by protesters outside the Philippine Senate when they tried to arrest former president Rodrigo Duterte's chief drug war enforcer, but visuals shared online do not ...