Say what you want to say about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and there’s a lot to be said, she is a woman with a steely backbone and a laser focus on history – both centuries past and the countless pages that remain need to be written.
Though it was shocking and apparently unprecedented that she was rejected two decisions by minority leader Kevin McCarthy for the special committee that will investigate the January 6 attack on the Capitol, it probably shouldn’t have. Pelosi is not interested in a dog-and-pony show, the distractions that conservative media feed endlessly and undermine the seriousness of the task before this panel.
A speaker who has chaired two impeachments, painful trials that exposed the egregious wrongdoing of President Donald Trump but did not discharge him, knows exactly what would happen if she gave a platform to Republican MPs Jim Jordan and Jim Banks would.
Ally with Trump no matter what
Both voted against on the state-approved election results – although the Department of Justice and dozens of courts found the objections unfounded, and even after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, injured dozens of police officers, threatened Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence and that Five people died – Including a Capitol policeman and a protester who was shot dead by a policeman breaking through a glass door to an area where lawmakers were seeking refuge.
Banken and Jordan showed us who they are.
Banks recently met with Trump twice, including on a trip to the southern border. “I’ll never be ashamed to say that Donald Trump is the most effective president of my life, “he said at the Conservative Political Action Conference this month, where his topic was” complaints against the government “.
When Banks was named to the select committee on Monday, he said it should investigate too “Hundreds of violent political unrest“And added last summer,” Nancy Pelosi founded this committee solely to slander conservatives and justify the left’s authoritarian agenda. “When she declined his appointment on Wednesday, he cited his service in Afghanistan, adding : “We have been saying all along that this was pure party exercise by the Democrats and Nancy Pelosi’s rejection of me and Jim Jordan shows once again that she is most partisan figure in America today. “
So heads I win, you lose tails.
Mark it on the calendar:January 6, 2025 could be the date American democracy dies
Jordan was like that avid defender of Trump and his “victory” in 2020, five days after the Capitol uprising, Trump awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The next day Jordan was on the floor of the house champion Trump and scourged the Democrats for indicting him – once again – “eight days before a peaceful transfer of power like any other time in American history.” History was already marked by violence, vandalism and death.
Former House Speaker John Boehner has called his Ohio compatriot Republican.a legislative terrorist“That is undoubtedly why McCarthy picked him and why Pelosi called for short-term ammunition to the GOP in exchange for a long-term historical record that doesn’t derail from conservative media games and what about the talk.
McCarthy does not want to name a successor. He threatens to be removed the three choices that Pelosi accepted.
Fine.
Personal testimony and violent video
The GOP will make or try to make hay out of anything that happens. Before a witness testifies or a conclusion is drawn, Banks and many others call the committee project a partisan hack job. We can only hope that truth and facts, backed by plenty of personal testimony and violent videos, will lift the scales from Americans’ eyes and produce a collective disclosure of where we have been as a nation and where we want to go.
Democrats and responsible Republicans alike must study the events of January 6th in depth. We need a definitive account of what happened that day, who was behind it, and how the government and all its protectors could have allowed thousands to break through the famous building that not only symbolizes, but actually is the beating democratic heart of the United States of America. We need to understand the roles of Trump, the Pentagon, the Proud Boys and other groups and why on earth would people say things, as Saundra Kiczenski told Wall Street Journal reporter Michael C. Bender: “We weren’t there, to steal things We weren’t there to cause harm. We were only there to overthrow the government. “
Clear the air, find the facts:The Commission’s defeat on January 6th predicts dangerous failures in votes and elections
As U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss said Tuesday when he handed down the first sentence for a January 6 crime, the flag Paul Hodgkins wore in the Senate after the Capitol invaded the Senate was not an American flag. It was a Trump 2020 flag – a distinctive symbol that Hodgkins “declares his loyalty to an individual to the nation,” Moss said. “Indeed, he has Threat to democracy that we all experienced that day. ”
Pelosi has the right to protect this process. We need to know what to do so that something like January 6th can never happen again.
Jill Lawrence is the USA TODAY Commentary Editor and author of “The Art of Political Deal: How Congress beat the odds and broke the deadlock. “Follow her on Twitter: @JillDLawrence
