Whether You Agree With Mark Meadows Or Not, Be Aware That He's As Stupid As Boebert Or Cawthorn

Before Trump appointed Mark Meadows, who grew up in Brandon, Florida, his 4th and final chief of staff in 2020, he was just a garden variety fascist congressman and nihilist from the backward western North Carolina district currently represented by Madison Cawthorn. Meadows, like Cawthorn, flunked out of college after one year and was eventually exposed for having lied about having earned a bachelor's degree. Needless to say, neither his dishonestly, his ignorance nor his jaw-dropping stupidity hampered his rise inside the GOP. He went from running a greasy spoon restaurant to being one of the founders of the neo-Nazi Freedom Caucus. He was also one of the key leaders of the 2013 government shutdown and helped drive Republican Speaker John Boehner into retirement. He is considered one of the architects of Trump's policy of politicizing the pandemic and in a just world, Meadows would arrested, be tried and executed for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Oh... and Meadows was a key coup plotter. If Biden had a fully alive attorney general, Meadows would be in prison awaiting trial or sentencing.

Instead, Meadows is busy trying to destroy Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), the same way he destroyed Boehner. Just after sex trafficker Matt Gaetz said he would like to hire murderer Kyle Rittenhouse as an intern, Meadows was on Gaetz's podcast whining that McCarthy isn't obstructionist and disruptive enough. Meadows, a big fan of Trumpian chaos: "You need to make Democrats take tough votes. You need to make sure that when you’ve got them on the ropes that you don’t throw in the white towel and surrender. And that’s what’s happened. We saw it with the infrastructure vote a few weeks ago… If you’re going to be the speaker of the House, you’ve got to be able to control those members and those members with particular positions of authority."

Meadows is doing all the neo-fascist media outlets now-- and joined Bannon today as well. You can click on the imagine to hear his garbage if you want to:

He told Bannon, that instead of electing McCarthy speaker, the House Republicans-- if they beat the pathetic Democrats in the midterms (as is likely)-- they should make Trump speaker. Politico's report this morning emphasizes that Meadows claims McCarthy didn't do enough to fight Biden's agenda and "is also calling for the 13 Republicans to face consequences, including stripping them of any ranking member roles on committees-- which members of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus have also pushed... Additionally, he argued McCarthy should cut them off from any campaign funds from the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP’s campaign arm, saying: 'If they're going to vote like Democrats, let the DCCC support them.'"

Meadows isn’t considered a big McCarthy fan to begin with-- though, the feeling is probably mutual-- but the fact that the North Carolinian is coming out swinging against the GOP leader shows he won’t hesitate to weigh in on House matters. Meadows, who now works at the Conservative Partnership Initiative, still holds a sizable influence both with the HFC, as well as the ear of former President Donald Trump. And McCarthy has worked hard to get the support of Trump and his right flank on board, with his sights set on taking both the majority and the gavel next year.

This morning, L.A. Times reporter Harry Litman noted that the select committee looking into Trump's coup isn't getting anywhere with Meadows and should probably handle him the same way they were forced to handle Bannon: criminal contempt. But, wrote Litman, "For the committee, a substantial downside to criminal contempt charges is that they’d lose access to Meadows and his information. His alleged crime is what would be decided in federal court, and until the case was resolved, which almost surely would be after the effective life of the Jan. 6 committee, no one in Congress would be grilling him. That was a cost the committee was willing to pay with the garrulous, ever-combative Bannon. He has made plenty of public statements the committee can make use of-- remember his Jan. 5 podcast classic, 'All hell is going to break loose tomorrow?' Not so Meadows, who has tried to stay out of the public eye since the rampage. As Trump’s primary minder at the end, he is perhaps the most knowledgeable source about the former president’s movements, statements, communications and emotions on Jan. 6. And news reports suggest Meadows himself may have been deeply involved in attempts to find Trump votes in Georgia and in planning the rally that sparked the Capitol conflagration. The House committee doesn’t want his evidence to be lost to a criminal process. Moreover, the committee can't predict what the outcome of a criminal referral would be. It doesn't know the particulars that fed into the department's decision to indict Bannon. Meadows' communications with Trump, unlike Bannon's, could be considered strong candidates for protection under executive privilege. If the committee refers Meadows to the Justice Department, it’s possible the Justice Department would evaluate Meadows’ criminal intent differently from Bannon’s... It’s galling to contemplate that Meadows might evade the full measure of his legal responsibility to comply with a congressional demand that is of surpassing importance. But Meadows and the committee are locked in a game of chicken, in which each has significant risks of losing something very valuable-- Meadows his liberty and livelihood, the committee critical testimony. Sometimes games of chicken end in spectacular crashes. Sometimes there's an outright winner. More frequently, the combatants veer away from an all-or-nothing outcome. Look for something like that to happen here."