It’s now been nearly three weeks since the Justice Department was required, by law, to publish all the Epstein files in its possession. And look, they’re getting around to it, okay? It’s just taking a bit longer than they’d thought. In a court filing yesterday, department lawyers said that 12,285 documents have already been released. Only 2 million or so more to go. Happy Tuesday.
January 6th Never Ended
by Andrew Egger
Five years! Half a decade ago today, Donald Trump summoned his angriest, most loyal fans from across America to Washington, D.C., with a call to arms and a fervent plea: They’re trying to steal the country from us, and they’ll get away with it, unless we stop them. They assembled on the National Mall, their frustration and rage crackling in the air, waiting to be told what to do. Trump whipped them into a frenzy, sent them marching down to the Capitol, and waited.
Last week, an excellent New York Times editorial described the insurrection of January 6th as a riot that never ended—“a turning point, but not the one it first seemed to be.” To some, it felt like an ending, the final, violent death spasms of the cult of Trump—so much so that the Senate Republicans who could have slammed the door on him forever deluded themselves into thinking he would stay gone without their having to lift a finger.
Instead, it proved to be the dawn of Trump’s total liberation. He had stress-tested his own theory of his base: that they would swallow insane, ludicrous election lies simply because he asked them to, would march themselves into felonies because they thought he wanted them to, and would then sit in their jail cells, not disillusioned but unshaken in their faith in him, patiently awaiting the day of his return and their reward. Eventually, they got it.
Ever since, Trump has lived his life in accordance with the lessons he learned that day. There was no act of selfishness or vindictiveness too grotesque for him to survive, provided he kept his people adequately juiced in the belief that their enemies were worse—and provided he could claw his way back to actual, hard power.
So it’s true: We’ve never left the January 6th era. But what’s most staggering is how many people would prefer to pretend we never entered it in the first place. Outside the core of Trump’s zealot base, which celebrates the patriotic heroes of that day, sits a larger faction of more grudging GOP supporters, for whom the Capitol insurrection is an unpleasant memory repressed as a matter of mental hygiene. These people wouldn’t flat-out deny that January 6th happened, but they’ve mentally sequestered its memory and significance, refusing to allow it to force them into any uncomfortable conclusions. They’d laugh you out of the room for suggesting, for instance, that what happened just five years ago could plausibly happen again.
Three years from today, Donald Trump may well find himself in a familiar situation: asked to leave the White House and preferring not to. The strong odds are, of course, that he won’t be on the ballot himself. But if a Democrat wins the presidency in 2028, he’ll have far more compelling reasons not to let the transfer of power go ahead smoothly than he ever did in 2020. Back then, it was mostly a matter of arrogance and pride: He simply couldn’t accept that he’d lost to Joe Biden. This time, the personal stakes will be much higher. Wrapped in the powers of the presidency, he’s acted as a law unto himself for too long not to dread going back into private life, where long-delayed legal consequences might be lurking, waiting for him.
How might Trump’s strategic thinking run in such a moment? Look to his current handling of the situation in Venezuela. Trump has described Nicolás Maduro’s 2024 re-election as fraudulent—correctly, for a change—and explicitly compared it to his own defeat in 2020. But having plucked Maduro from power, Trump has not hastened to install that election’s rightful winner in his place. Instead, he has struck a deal with the politician of his choosing, Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, to serve as long as she continues to please him. And he has waved aside the idea that Venezuela should immediately hold new elections, as the country’s law demands in such cases. “We have to fix the country first,” he said. “You can’t have an election . . . We have to nurse the country back to health.”
Who’s to say Trump couldn’t try to pull the same thing here? That after a hotly contested 2028 election between, say, JD Vance and Gavin Newsom, in which he and his apparatus again spread elaborate rigged-election conspiracies among their followers, Trump might announce that the new president will be—temporarily, of course—neither? Trump himself would just have to stay on—just until they can get to the bottom of the election fraud that obviously took place.
Would such a move necessarily work? Of course not. But what it means to live in the January 6th era is to recognize that these scenarios are plausible. In fact, there’s only two things that stand between us and that reality. The first is the extent of Trump’s own presumption and hubris, against which it has been unwise to bet in recent years. And the second is the integrity of the men and women who make up the structures that restrain the will of a runaway president.
A lesson we learned in 2021—a lesson we keep learning over and over—is that these structures do not support themselves. The people entrusted with them have to choose to live up to their responsibilities, even when considerable pressure is on them not to. On and before January 6, 2021, enough of them did. And then, in the days, weeks, months and years after, Trump and Co. wore them all down into acquiescence and impotence. Here’s hoping the next batch will be as honorable. Three years from now, we may find we need them.
Stephen Miller, Anti-American
by William Kristol
Even by the standards of the Trump administration, Stephen Miller is a distasteful figure. One has the sense that even his colleagues shudder when forced to be in his spectral presence. Those of us who would like to preserve some measure of affection for the government of our country try to avert our eyes when he appears, not out of deference but disgust. And yet Miller is a top aide—perhaps the top aide—to the current president of the United States. Sadly, when he speaks, attention must be paid.
Yesterday, Miller informed CNN’s Jake Tapper that he believed the United States had the right and the power to take foreign territory and resources if we wished to do so. In particular, he refused to rule out using military force against our NATO ally, Denmark, to seize Greenland. After all, Miller explained, “We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.” And Miller dismissed international treaties—like the one establishing NATO—as “international niceties.”
You know who took international treaties seriously? Our Founders. One of the notable moments in George Washington’s presidency was the Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation, Between His Britannic Majesty and the United States of America, known as the Jay Treaty, signed by President Washington on November 19, 1794. It was duly submitted to the United States Senate and, after vigorous debate, ratified by the Senate on June 24, 1795, by a vote of 20–10, the minimum two-thirds vote necessary for passage.
Which reminds us that the Founders thought treaties important enough to deal with them in the United States Constitution.
In Article II, Section 2, the Constitution says the president “shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.”
In Article III, Section 2, we are told “the judicial Power shall extend to all Cases . . . arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties.”
And in Article VI, we are reminded that “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.”
The Founders did not want or expect a world without treaties or a world in which our own government would view treaties with contempt. The point of the United States, one could almost say, was to move as much as possible beyond the world Stephen Miller relishes, a world simply “governed by force, governed by power.”
In response to the Trump administration’s bullying, the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, the United Kingdom and Denmark were compelled to put out a remarkable joint statement reminding the United States that it is a NATO ally and that Greenland “belongs to its people.” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen earlier was more explicit when she said:
If the United States were to choose to attack another NATO country, then everything would come to an end. The international community as we know it, democratic rules of the game, NATO, the world’s strongest defensive alliance—all of that would collapse if one NATO country chose to attack another.
It is a sad fact—but a fact nonetheless—that the prime minister of Denmark is closer to our Founders in her view of the world than the Trump administration in the White House.
It is a sad fact—but a fact nonetheless—that one can have more confidence in the government of Denmark to respect election results and the peaceful transfer of power than in the Trump administration in the White House.
It is a sad fact—but a fact nonetheless—that we have in the White House a fundamentally anti-American administration. But that is the world in which we live for now, and dealing with it is the task patriotic Americans face.
AROUND THE BULWARK
January 6 Was a Dress Rehearsal For Trump, Not a Finale… Five years on, BILL KRISTOL sits down with TOM JOSCELYN, the lead writer of the House January 6th Committee report, to assess where the country stands today.
Debunking MAGA Myths about the Economy… CATHERINE RAMPELL joins MONA CHAREN to discuss why the factory revival was always a myth, how tariffs backfired, and why chaos, favoritism, and attacks on the rule of law are making the United States a riskier place to do business.
MAGA Influencers Cheered Trump’s Venezuela War. Their Audience Said ‘WTF?!’ Plus, how an irate clarinetist became a Justice Department cause célèbre. Only in this edition of WILL SOMMER’s False Flag.
Why Mark Kelly’s Case Matters… The action against him is unwarranted and could chill legitimate—and invaluable—public speech by veterans, argues MARK HERTLING.
Trump’s Obsession With Latin America Is a Strategic Calamity… While Trump gloats about Venezuela, he ignores the real risks to American security, writes MATT JOHNSON.
Quick Hits
ANOTHER NAIL IN THE COFFIN: Boy, are you ready for a real shocker? Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced yet another forward march in his war against pediatric vaccines yesterday. Effective immediately, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—but let’s be honest, that “Prevention” part is getting pretty thin—is reducing its recommended schedule of routine childhood shots from seventeen to eleven. The CDC will no longer recommend immunizations against hepatitis A and B, rotavirus, flu, RSV, and meningitis for all children, but only for certain high-risk groups or if requested by parents in consultation with their physicians.
In explaining the change, HHS resorted to funhouse-mirror logic: that “loss of trust” in vaccines was pushing down uptake rates even of “consensus vaccines” like “measles, rubella, pertussis, and polio.” That these are “consensus vaccines” might be news to Kennedy himself, who along with a motley cadre of other antivax nutcases spent the last several decades agitating against many of these very shots. What contributed more to “loss of trust” in vaccine, one wonders—the fact that scientists had developed safe, effective shots to ward children against so many different serious diseases, or the fact that a group of malcontents went around scaring parents for years with lies that those shots were going to give their babies autism?
The reactions have been so predictable you probably could’ve written them yourself. Public health experts have been horrorstruck—“The abrupt change to the entire US childhood vaccine schedule is alarming, unnecessary, and will endanger the health of children in the United States,” University of Washington professor Dr. Helen Chu told NBC News—while Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), the doctor whose assent allowed Kennedy to be confirmed in the first place, offered his latest way-too-late aw-shucks objection: “Changing the pediatric vaccine schedule based on no scientific input on safety risks and little transparency will cause unnecessary fear for patients and doctors, and will make America sicker.” No shit, Sherlock!
THIRTY LASHES WITH A WET NOODLE: When Sen. Mark Kelly and a group of other Democratic lawmakers with military or intelligence backgrounds got together last year to cut a video publicly reminding troops of their obligation not to obey unlawful orders, the White House went berserk. Donald Trump had a lengthy Truth Social crashout, accusing the Democrats of “seditious behavior at the highest level” and “punishable by death.” Kash Patel’s FBI reached out to the lawmakers requesting interviews, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth—who dubbed them the “seditious six”—ordered a military investigation into Kelly’s involvement in particular.
Well, the results are in. Yesterday, Hegseth announced an official censure for Kelly, threatening a reduction in rank and a hit to his ongoing military pension. “Your pattern of conduct demonstrates specific intent to counsel servicemembers to refuse lawful orders,” Hegseth wrote in a censure letter. “You were not providing abstract legal education about the duty to refuse patently illegal orders. You were specifically counseling servicemembers to refuse particular operations that you have characterized as illegal.”
It’s a hilariously anticlimactic punishment for behavior Trump openly said deserved death, but it’s also about as much as Hegseth could do without trying to subject Kelly to a court-martial—an adversarial process in which Hegseth would have had to prove his ridiculous case. Still, Kelly isn’t taking it sitting down. In a statement, he said he would “fight this with everything I’ve got—not for myself, but to send a message back that Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump don’t get to decide what Americans in this country get to say about their government.”
I PLEAD . . . TRUMP!: A former Tennessee Republican operative and legislator convicted of fraud just got a get-out-of-jail-free card, all because Trump pardoned . . . someone else.
Former state Rep. Robin Smith was spared an eight-month prison sentence yesterday months after Donald Trump pardoned her co-conspirators. (Full disclosure: Smith used to be my representative in Nashville, I’ve met her a couple times, and our families are friendly.)
Smith pleaded guilty in March 2022 to honest services wire fraud and cooperated with the prosecution of former Speaker of the Tennessee House Glen Casada and his chief of staff, Cade Cothren. The trio conspired to defraud the state by creating a fake company, Phoenix Solutions, to provide constituent mailer services to Tennessee Republican House members using the state’s postage and printing allowance, which funds the printing and mailing of constituent communications.
Over the course of 2020, the group received approximately $51,947 from the state in payments through Phoenix Solutions and two other consulting firms controlled by Smith and Casada. During that period, Cothren paid Casada and Smith more than $35,000 in bribes and kickbacks.
Casada and Cothren were sentenced to multi-year prison terms for fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy in September. Smith cooperated with the government and received a much lighter prison sentence.
Then, in November, Trump pardoned Casada and Cothren—but not Smith.
In December, the prosecutors in the case filed a motion saying Smith should not go to prison in light of Trump’s pardons. They told the court they had “not identified another federal case in which a testifying conspirator reported to prison after an equally culpable conspirator was pardoned,” and recommended in place of prison time “one year of probation with no special conditions and no fine.” Which is exactly what the court ordered yesterday.
Call it pardon-by-association.
—Jared Poland
Cheap Shots
Stephen Miller is “distasteful”? He’s a full bore Nazi, and he doesn’t even try to hide it. His stated presentation of our new world is one governed by the iron laws of strength, force and power. No mention of laws. A better descriptor of Miller is “evil”. We have to say it.
Fuck it, time for Darwin to take the wheel. I think we have worried about helpless children long enough. Sometimes the son pays for the sins of the father. Life is “brutish and short,” and the kids might as well realize it early.
I’m sorry, the vaccine news last night truly broke me.