☀️ 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.

☀️ @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.

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.

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.

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.

☀️ @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.

(THREAD) Media has yet to do a deep dive on precisely what Trump *said* in his January 6 speech in DC—a speech now called an "incitement to insurrection," and the basis for an article of impeachment coming Monday. This thread unpacks the speech. I hope you'll read on and RETWEET.

1/ First, many don't realize that while the name of the *rally* was "Stop the Steal," Trump spoke flanked by banners that read "Save America March"—Save America being the PAC Trump has used since the election to scam voters out of more than $300 million for "election defense."

2/ It appears, therefore, that the link between Trump, his opposition to Biden's January 6 certification in Congress, and the insurrectionist march on the Capitol is one that comes, incredibly, with a paper trail—as it appears Trump *paid for* the seditious "Save America March."

3/ Seconds into his speech, Trump says, "These people are not going to take it any longer. They're not going to take it any longer...They came from all over our country. I just really want to see what they do." It's an astonishing admission he thinks something is going to happen.

4/ Trump then seems to catch himself, repeating the phrase "I just really want to see" but now adding "how they [media] cover it [the Save America March]." It's hard to know, therefore—perhaps deliberately—whether "what they do" means "what media does" or "what the marchers do."

24 January 20210 #MAGAanalysisisMini

"In the month leading up to the riot, Mr. Trump was devising his own plan: He and a Justice Department official plotted to oust the acting attorney general to try to advance baseless election claims, interviews showed...

Mega Thread:

I am so fed up with right wing hardliners on impeachment. I need to go on a rant. The more I interact with these people on here the more I'm pushed away from their position. On 1/6 I was adamant about Trump being at fault. He did not handle that day well IMO 1/

by that weekend, however, I'd started to reflect upon what he'd said and the events and begun to move away from the absolute position that it was all his fault. There were many reasons for this. One was that his rally happened while the break-ins were occurring, 2/

another was that so few people relative to his total followers showed up. Another was the fact that most of his followers I know were similarly outraged and disapproving. Another was that he explicitly said peaceful in all his remarks. And another was that 3/

upon reflection, I realized nothing he said was an escalation in his normal rhetoric, which had never caused any violence beforehand. But now, weeks later, I'm being radicalized in my aforementioned position by the right-wing hardliners who cannot discuss 1/6 4/

without resorting to the most melodramatic hyperbole imaginable. You simply will not gaslight me into viewing a small riot at the Capital as somehow orders of magnitude more grave and dangerous than months of left-wing rioting, or a left-wing insurrection 5/