You May Still Call The Republican Party "The GOP" But A More Descriptive Name Is "Idiot Island"

There Were 2 J-6 Trump War Rooms

The Trump campaign’s dominance— despite… well, everything— “is what results,” wrote Jennifer Rubin, “when a party, its pundit class and millions of followers cut themselves off from reality, fall into a world of paranoid conspiracies and refuse to simply acknowledge they were very, very wrong to side with him.” Yes, it’s a cult, just like Benito Mussolini’s, Adolph Hitler’s, Francisco Franco’s, Vidkun Quisling’s, António Salazar’s, Miklos Horothy’s, Ion Antonescu’s, Ante Pavelić’s, Philippe Pétain’s and Ioannis Metaxas’ were and just like Benjamin Netanyahu’s and Viktor Orbán’s are.

In the case of Trump, Rubin complained that mainstream media played the role of cowards: “Rather than challenge Republicans at every turn to defend their embrace of Trump or even to examine seriously the historical origins of toxic racist, xenophobic and delusional beliefs, the mainstream media largely sticks to horserace politics.”

But for Republicans it may be too late now. “The GOP,” she wrote, “could very well be saddled with a nominee who has been indicted multiple times and perhaps convicted more than once. They would be betting that millions of voters who didn’t vote for him last time would vote for an indicted or possibly convicted nominee who spends most of his time railing about his plight… If it seems fantastical, even unimaginable, that a party would put itself in such a position, remember this is a party that obsesses over Hunter Biden, elevates to prominence Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and still won’t admit that Joe Biden won the White House in 2020. Maybe it’s time to acknowledge that, barring an epiphany, the GOP’s self-delusion is risking a political wipeout that will take out more than its disastrous nominee. And it won’t be able to claim it wasn’t warned.” Just this morning DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene warned them: “Republicans continue to highlight that they are extreme. They aren’t interested in governing, and there’s no leadership. It’s terrible for the American people.”

Last week, Asawin Suebsaeng and Adam Rawnsley, reported on Jack Smith’s look into the J-6 Trump War Room at the Willard Hotel. “In the days and hours before the Jan. 6 Capitol attack,” they wrote,” diehard Donald Trump allies gathered at Washington’s Willard Hotel, hunkered down as the last-ditch efforts to overturn the 2020 election went forward. What exactly they were doing in those meetings was a subject of intense interest for Congress’ Jan. 6 investigation, but the committee ran into the limits of its powers as it struggled to reconstruct the specifics of those eleventh-hour meetings. Now, special counsel Jack Smith’s office is taking its shot, hoping to figure out exactly what went down in the Willard ‘war room’— and just how involved Trump himself was in the Willard-based efforts to stop the transfer of power to then president-elect Joe Biden… One former senior Trump administration official, who stayed on through the Jan. 6 riot, simply refers to it as ‘the crime headquarters.’”

So who was there? Suebsaeng and Rawnsley— like all the media reports I’ve seen— name Giuliani, John Eastman, Bernard Kerik, Boris Epshteyn and Steve Bannon. Hmmm… A couple of weeks after that night was using contemporanous reports to name a different cast of characters at a different Trump War Room, one at the Trump International, which now seems to be scrubbed from the new reporting. These were the people at that War Room— sound MAGA enough?

• Donald Trump Jr.

• Eric Trump

• Michael Flynn

• Peter Navarro

• Corey Lewandowski

• David Bossie, the Mercer family representative in Trumpworld

• Adam Piper, Republican Attorneys General Association executive director

• Charles W. Herbster, Trump's top rural advisor

• Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL)

This Herbster Facebook page confirms it:

Seth Abramson wrote that “We don’t have to guess what these nine men discussed on the eve of the insurrection, however, as the Omaha World Herald has already reported on what Herbster and his compatriots were doing that night: “discuss[ing] how to pressure more members of Congress to object to the Electoral College results that made Joe Biden the winner.”...According to the Omaha World Herald, “Herbster attended the rally where Trump urged supporters to march to the Capitol [the Stop the Steal/March to Save America], but said he left the area to fly home before the riot.” This remains unconfirmed, but if true, it suggests yet another top Trump adviser taking actions central to the events of January 6 but then conveniently deciding— in advance of the march— that he wanted to be far away as it was happening.

Suebsaeng and Rawnsley report that Jack Smith’s team has “questioned multiple witnesses— including then-top Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani— about the timeline and deliberations of the meetings, seeking to reconstruct the events, the sources say. The investigators also plan to bring in additional witnesses who have knowledge of the Willard meetings, the sources add… Smith’s office’s efforts to reconstruct what occurred at the Willard during the tumultuous Trump-Biden presidential transition could address questions left unanswered by Congress’ wide-ranging investigation into Trump and his associates.” I hope they’re not leaving out the treasonous bunch who were meeting in the other hotel room.

The Trump “war room” at the hotel was a subject of particular interest for the committee’s investigation for its role as a hub for the Trump campaign’s attempts to block the counting of electoral votes on January 6. Top Trump advisers used the so-called “command center” while pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject the counting of legitimate electoral votes and encourage state legislatures to instead send slates of bogus pro-Trump electors in battleground states where the former president had lost to Joe Biden.

In a sign that the fake electors plot could be a key part of the Smith investigation, the special counsel’s office has issued subpoenas to election officials in Arizona, Michigan, and Wisconsin seeking information about the activities of the Trump campaign.

Despite the “command center’s” importance in Trump’s attempted coup, during the presidential transition, the Willard hub attracted the private ire of other Trump advisers who were quietly embarrassed by Giuliani and others’ efforts. Other members of the administration and Trump campaign advisers, the former official says, regularly mocked their work and had nicknames for the “Star Wars cantina” of 2020 dead-enders.

One former senior Trump campaign official tells Rolling Stone that, in discussions at the time with other Trump aides, they called the Willard hotspot “idiot island.”