Shameless GOP won’t reset moral compass

• Toronto Star
• February 1, 2021
• Rosie DiManno Twitter: @rdimanno

ERIN SCHAFF THE NEW YORK TIMES FILE PHOTO

It’s almost comical, were it not so damning, that at least some of the maddened Trump Tribe have turned on Fearless Leader — IT’S ALL HIS FAULT! — as the Republican Party, in reeling disarray, still trembles in its shoes and bends the knee.

White House minority leader Kevin McCarthy crawled to Donald Trump’s side at Mar-aLago last week, genuflecting, executing a screeching U-turn — he’d previously declared that Trump “bears responsibility for the violence that resulted in the death of five people, including a Capitol police officer” — the most, uh, flamboyant of the marauders was proclaiming to anyone who’d listen that, damn straight, he’d be willing to testify at Trump’s second impeachment trial, scheduled to begin next Monday.

Must be easier to see the light from behind bars.

Jacob Chansley, a vocal QAnon proponent from Arizona, a.k.a. Jake Angeli, popularly known by his pseudonym, the Q Shaman, is the weirdo who strode into the Senate chamber during the Jan. 6 invasion of the Capitol by a bloodthirsty mob. Shirtless, his chest covered with pagan tattoos, wearing a fur headdress with horns, wielding a six-foot spear.

In a terrific and exhaustive first-person narrative for The New Yorker last week, Luke Mogelson — a journalist who was present throughout the siege, eyewitness to events except for the 20 minutes when he was incapacitated by pepper spray — wrote about watching Chansley climb onto the dais minutes earlier vacated by Vice-President Mike Pence.

“I’m going to take a seat in this chair, because Mike Pence is a f---ing traitor,” Chansley announced. Then handed his cellphone to another Trump supporter. “I’m not one to usually take pictures of myself, but in this case I think I’ll make an exception.”

With a police officer looking on, not intervening, Chansley leaned his spear against Pence’s desk, as Mogelson recounts it, found a pen and paper and scrawled a message: “IT’S ONLY A MATTER OF TIME/ JUSTICE IS COMING!”

As Chansley departed, another group entered the chamber, recognizable as Proud Boys by their black-and-yellow plaid shirts, grunting “Uhuru!,” a Proud Boys battle cry.

Q Shaman, who turned himself in after granting a series of media interviews, has not made bail. Transferred from Phoenix to the District of Columbia, he’s facing six charges, including violent entry of a restricted building and disorderly conduct. He’d long been a fixture at Trump rallies.

His lawyer had called upon Trump to pardon “peaceful followers” who’d simply accepted the president’s invitation to, well, storm the Capitol and take back the country. The lawyer claims his client had been “horrendously smitten” by Trump but now feels let down. “He felt like he was betrayed by the president,” said Albert Watkins.

On Friday, Chansley — hornless and reportedly on a hunger strike — pleaded not guilty to federal charges. The judge, in rejecting bail, took a dim view of the lawyer’s beseeching before the court. “He’s a longstanding and committed follower of the Shaman faith,” argued Watkins. “This is his attire. It is something that he wears and has worn not just at Trump’s rallies but over the course of his adult life. You have to get to know the man behind the horns and the fur.”

So Q Shaman, ready to drop a dime on Trump as riot inciter in chief, has experienced an epiphany whilst incarcerated. It will be interesting to see how many more defendants — some 150 thus far charged by the FBI — turn stoolie on the disgraced president. Clearly this will be the primary line of defence for the accused thugs; that they were inspired by Trump and obeyed a presidential order. That doesn’t augur well for Trump, attempting to detach himself from the blood-drenched insurrection.

(In a dramatic turn Sunday, Trump’s entire legal team jumped ship, as first reported by CNN. Nobody wants to be snagged, reputationally, in the impeachment trial. It’s unclear whether Trump, who’s never turned a deaf ear to the siren song of a public pulpit, will actually appear in his own defence.)

Meanwhile the GOP is doubling down on exculpating Trump, so fearful that he still has the party by the throat and, eyeing next year’s primaries — Republicans hope to re-take the House — terrified his devoted base will turn on them.

No epiphany here. No reset of the party’s moral compass. No shame, evidently. Even though, under Trump, Republicans lost the House, the Senate and a presidential election. Demagogic populism may have seized the party at its misanthropic grassroots but it won’t bring the GOP a national mandate again, especially without a galvanizing Trump at the helm. McCarthy couldn’t even bring himself to severely admonish loony Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the freshman congresswoman from Georgia and QAnon devotee, as more of her archived hallucinatory social media content has surfaced in recent days.

She “liked” a Twitter post that said a “bullet to the back would be quicker” to remove House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and replied to a supporter who’d asked how they could “hang” former president Barack Obama.

One video shows Greene — conspiracy theorist, she insists shooting massacres at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut and Marjory Stoneman Douglas in Florida were staged events designed to help Democrats promote gun control — harassing students who’d survived the latter, trailing them on the street.

Hillary Clinton tweeted: “This woman should be on a watch list. Not in Congress.”

Instead, she was appointed to a congressional committee on education. You can’t make this stuff up.

Greene boasted on the weekend that she’s spoken to Trump and has his full support. “I had a GREAT call with my all time favorite POTUS, President Trump!” she tweeted. “The blood thirsty media and the socialists hate America. Democrats are attacking me now just like they always attack President Trump.’ ”

The thing is, such deranged cranks aren’t anomalies or aberrations. They’re duly elected politicians, a distinct thread of the Republican fabric, while colleagues apparently prefer playing footsie with fanatics to rescuing the party from white supremacists, anti-Semites and neo-Nazis.

Nor are the violent provocateurs necessarily lone outliers on the fringe, such as Q Shaman.

Some of the Capitol infiltrators were clearly there in a command and control capacity. They herded the horde. They had plastic cuff ties, wore communication wires and purportedly had much worse malice on the mind.

Which is why the FBI investigation is focused on farright militias and extremist groups such as the Proud Boys, founded by a Canadian in 2016 as an out-there crew protesting political correctness and perceived shackling of masculinity. Recall that, in a September presidential debate with Joe Biden, Trump called on the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”

Video and court filings describe how several groups of men, Proud Boys among them, appeared to “engage in concerted action,” coalescing as they moved toward the Capitol and overwhelmed police. At least half a dozen Proud Boys, who have a history of violently confronting left-wing antifascist activists, have been charged, including one of its top-ranking leaders, Joseph Biggs, a U.S. army veteran.

On Friday, an indictment charged Proud Boys member Dominic Pezzola, from Rochester, N.Y., with conspiracy — a far more serious offence — alleging in court documents that his actions showed “planning, determination and coordination.” A search of the exMarine’s home uncovered a thumb drive containing hundreds of pdfs, with titles such as “Advanced Improvised Explosives” and “The Ultimate DIY Machine Pistol.” Pezzola fired up a celebratory cigar in the Senate chamber and bragged in footage shared on social media that he and his companions could “take this mother--- over,” if they wanted.

Another Proud Boy organizer, Eddie Block, of Madera, Calif., livestreamed an hour-long video of the Capitol assault on YouTube, the throng bullhornurged to take the democracy citadel.

Ironically, the FBI has also disclosed that Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was actually a past informant for federal and law enforcement, a gobsmacking story broken last week by Reuters.

Tarrio, according to a courtroom transcript obtained by the news agency, was described by the federal prosecutor and his own layer as an undercover agent whose skulking — in exchange for a reduced sentence on a fraud charge — contributed to resolving numerous cases involving drugs, gambling and human smuggling.

Provocateur and collaborator. Tarrio wasn’t in Washington on Jan. 6. He’d been arrested by D.C. police two days earlier, charged with possessing two high-capacity rifle magazines and burning a Black Lives Matter banner at a December pro-Trump demonstration. He was ordered to leave the city pending a court date in June. The white nationalist lives in Miami.

Wonder what his Proud Boys foot soldiers think of the big rat now.