☀️ This morning’s newsy @PunchbowlNews AM

"Trump's role in the riot"

Here’s a challenge: Make the argument that Donald Trump had nothing to do with the riot at the Capitol after the first few days of the impeachment trial.

G’morning from the Capitol, where we’re about to have a pro forma session in both chambers during which nothing will get done. This begins at 9

In the meantime, here’s what we said in Playbook this morning.

Headline: "Cyclone of uncertainty and chaos"

WITH 27 DAYS LEFT IN HIS PRESIDENCY, and the nation on the doorstep of Christmas, DONALD JOHN TRUMP has sucked Americans into a violent cyclone of uncertainty and chaos.

HE IS PARDONING CRIMINALS at a breakneck clip. Last night it was MANAFORT, who was in prison on tax charges, R STONE and CHARLES KUSHNER, IVANKA's father in law. Earlier this week crooked politicians and other unseemly actors. @BenSasse called the pardons “rotten to the core.”

>@maggieNYT and @nytmike put it this way: TRUMP “is at perhaps his most unleashed.”

@maggieNYT @nytmike TRUMP -- as he has so many times before -- has thrown the government he is supposed to be leading into an intractable crisis.

☀️ @PunchbowlNews AM: Problem Solvers Caucus grows

One of the trends we’ve noticed in this Congress is that middle-of-the-road caucuses are getting larger and attempting to grab more power.

We noted yesterday that the bipartisan Senate group that helped lay the groundwork for a Covid deal grew to 16 -- the Senate Sweet 16™, as we’re calling it.

News here from the House: The Problem Solvers Caucus has grown to 56 members, evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. @RepJoshG and @RepTomReed chair this group

@RepTomReed News here from the House: The Problem Solvers Caucus has grown to 56 members, evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Tom Reed (R-N.Y.) chair this group.

@RepTomReed I have dogged the Problem Solvers Caucus a good deal, but both of these groups have an opportunity here if they play their hand right.

☀️ @PunchbowlNews AM:

What is @LeaderMcConnell doing?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock with noise-canceling headphones on, you know that the left has been clamoring for Schumer to blow up the legislative filibuster.

@LeaderMcConnell Progressive groups are spending $$ it to happen. @AJentleson has made a cottage industry out advocating for the elimination of the 60-vote threshold. @AOC wants it gone. @BarackObama too. Even Harry Reid says it’s a matter of when, not if, the filibuster is gets thrown out.

@LeaderMcConnell @AJentleson @AOC @BarackObama So what is McConnell’s first ask of Schumer? To guarantee Schumer won’t do the very thing that most of his party wants to see him do.

@LeaderMcConnell @AJentleson @AOC @BarackObama And that’s what’s holding up the entire Senate -- McConnell's ask of Schumer to guarantee he won't blow up the filibuster. The chamber can’t efficiently function without an organizing resolution, and without some clarity on the filibuster, they won't have an organizing resolution

@LeaderMcConnell @AJentleson @AOC @BarackObama And that's why @JoeBiden nominees are moving slowly in the new president’s first week. Despite being in the minority, Republicans still technically chair committees.

Playbook: How it looks at the end

GOOD FRIDAY MORNING. Here’s how your American government is ending the year -- and the TRUMP presidency.

-- THE GOVT runs out of spending authority this evening at midnight. Typically, the govt avoids shutting down officially if there is a spending bill on the horizon, so we may be spared that drama. Divided govt began in 2019 w a shutdown, and it may end with another funding lapse.

-- CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS are preparing the second-largest federal rescue package in our nation’s history, and no one has seen it just days before it will get a vote.

-- ALL OF THE POWER is centralized among four people and their aides: @SpeakerPelosi , @senatemajldr , @SenSchumer and @GOPLeader

-- PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP has continued his, um, mastery of Congress, by nearly blowing up the talks by demanding large stimulus checks at the last moment -- this is per @JStein_WaPo, the master of the direct check, at the WaPo.

Playbook: "Reality, meet D.C.”

MAYBE IT’S THE COLD, the impending wintry mix that’s bearing down on Washington. Maybe it’s because we’re about to leave 2020 -- that wretched, disgusting year -- in the rear view.

WHO KNOWS WHAT EXACTLY PROMPTED THIS, but reality is beginning to intrude in Washington.

REALITY 1) @JOEBIDEN is going to be the president. This was obvious to most breathing, thinking human beings with a pulse, but many Republican members of Congress were willfully blind to it.

BUT A FEW OF THEM BEGAN JOINING THE REST OF US on Planet Earth on Monday. @SenThomTillis called BIDEN the “presumptive president.” @LindseyGrahamSC -- who was calling around to state election officials a few weeks ago -- said “it’s a very, very narrow path for the president."

@SenThomTillis @LindseyGrahamSC SEN. ROY BLUNT (R-Mo.), the chair of the inauguration, said: “We’ll deal with Vice President Biden as the president-elect. The president continues obviously to have all the options he has available to him, but the electoral vote today was significant.”

@SenThomTillis @LindseyGrahamSC RUSSIAN PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN took it further than most Republicans, straight up congratulating BIDEN after a month of saying he was waiting for the process to play out.

1) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Senate Trial today
 
What is expected to be the final day of President Trump’s second impeachment trial will begin at 10 am et today. We anticipate a final vote on the guilt or innocence of the former President as early as midday.

Much like the Gulf War, Trump's presidency never happened. Yes, there were soldiers in Kuwait, and there was a man named Donald Trump in the white house, but there was never a war, and there was never a presidency.

Trumpism was a bubble, and on Wednesday, it popped. In 2016, it felt like the beginning of a new American nationalism. Without Trump, that "movement" dies. Will those embers merely fade, or can the fire be rekindled?

If you want to transform the world, or your country, you cannot fuel your movement on discontent, nor on reasonableness. No, transformation can only be built on a foundation of extravagant hope

Gold toilets aside, Trump never had extravagance, in fact he had no content at all. He was the first fully post-modern president; what he did was so filtered through media that there's no effective difference between what happened and what the media says happened

We projected our dreams onto Donald Trump. A successful mass movement requires belief in an infallible leader or an irresistible doctrine. There is no mass movement without a little delusion (we call it a little delusion) "Reasonable" people can't effect big change

@Nick_Carmody @NBCNews @BandyXLee1 @Narcopath_UK @narceducator The same tactics used with Trump were used with Hitler by the Evangelicals to set up someone who exhibits qualities as an AntiChrist into a role of a Saint but this time targetting Muslims as Killers of Americans & still using gay people as abomination of God to con churches...1/

@NBCNews @BandyXLee1 @Narcopath_UK @narceducator This was by design and process that developed over 60 years of psychological influencing through a collaboration of the entertainment world, religious broadcasts, oil/gas loyalists who bastardized the US Constitution, and #KochNetwork #DarkMoney orgs connected to DeVos...2/

@NBCNews @BandyXLee1 @Narcopath_UK @narceducator Judeo-Christian America never existed. 1A was designed to removed Roman Catholic Church of England hold over the newly formed US Government. It demands zero influence of religion over law or government decisions. The Virginia Baptist insisted on it w/ Thomas Jefferson...2/

@NBCNews @BandyXLee1 @Narcopath_UK @narceducator Judeo-Christian is coined from Nitzche's book "The AntiChrist" that means Jews converting to Christianity. It is used in the context we see today to tie in a Jewish Jesus into the Torah so that the strict rules of the Torah are elevated to a Christian philosophy. A paradox...4/

@NBCNews @BandyXLee1 @Narcopath_UK @narceducator It is a paradox because Jesus was a rebel Jew. He defied the teachings of the Torah which pissed off the Pharisees - Jewish religious leaders. He elevated poor & people society condemned to same level as leaders. He is nothing like what we see today as American Christianity...5/

Thread tweet 1

Imagine for a second this:
1) Trump has Declassified everything, but not released it to the public
2) He or his lawyers or someone has everything
3) They try to impeach Trump but there is no conviction in the Senate