Monthly Archives: January 2021

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | Leave a comment

by John Walters

U. Grant

We don’t want to say that former Civil War general and U.S. president Ulysses S. Grant was prescient as much as that he noticed some universal and timeless dilemmas that any democracy or society faces. Grant spoke the following words in a speech he delivered to the annual reunion of the Army of Tennessee on September 29, 1875.

If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason’s and Dixon’s, but between patriotism and intelligence on one side, and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other.

Listen Up

Don’t know who this dude is, or who wrote his eloquent prose, but it’s a must-listen.

WaPo For The Win

With its “41 Minutes Of Fear” piece, a video journey through the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, the Washington Post has deconstructed some of the mayhem that occurred on January 6th. Watching at home that afternoon, I never truly feared that the safety of U.S. senators and representatives was at risk. But I was wrong. I did not quite appreciate how much the inner sancta of the Capitol had been breached. This also is required viewing.

One thing that should impress/depress you as you watch the video is the utter and egregious sense of entitlement these white dudes have. They’re committing treason and they’re talking to the cops as if they’re employees at your local multiplex who’ve been charged with telling them that they cannot bring that bottle of beer inside to the screening of Deadpool. Or as if they’re gate agents who’ve just told them that their bag will not fit into the overhead and must be checked.

“AND YOU WILL ATONE!”

I picture Ned Beatty standing at one end of the conference table and little Donald Trump seatead at the other end. Beatty is telling him that his populist schtick was okay for awhile, but then once he incited a coup d’etat against the largest capitalist nation in the world, he’d gone a step too far. And there’s a price to pay for that.

“The world is a business, Mr. Trump.”

The most illuminating aspect of the past nine days, at least for me, was the swiftness with which major American corporations took action after Jan. 6th and announced that they would no longer donate to Republicans who backed the fraudulent claims of Donald J. Trump. First, you realize that they’ve been pumping blood into the insurrection for years by supporting these politicians in the first place (and likely the ones across the aisle as well).

Second, you have to say to yourself, that companies such as American Express, Amazon, AT&T (and that’s just the A’s on the list) and others did not just wake up on Jan. 7th and have this epiphany of, “Ohhh! Donald Trump is a lying sonofabitch who’s doing a terrible job as president.” I mean, the 3,500 dead per day should have told them that.

Nope. They woke up on Jan. 7th and said, “A violent insurrection and toppling of the government will create mass instability, which is bad for the market, which is bad for business. NOW this must be stopped!”

In other words, they didn’t get involved when Donald Trump was bad for America. They didn’t get involved until Donald Trump was bad for business. That’s your lesson for today.

Sham. Wow.

I used to think that all Minnesotans were wonderful people.
I’ve had to downgrade that assessment to “most.” Here’s Mike Lindell, MyPillow creator, departing the White House with his “Two-Minute Insurrectionist Offense” playbook. These are the most desperate of times for Mr. Lindell, but not so desperate that he’d be amenable to departing the White House with cup of coffee in hand. Did he just leave the greatest residence in our land or the 9 a.m. pitch meeting at the Mankato Free Press? Holy cats, Mike.

I don’t know what exactly it’s going to take to charge men like this with treason. But I think a good start will be boycotting big box stores (See: Bed, Bath & Beyond) that continue to sell his product. Watch the video he filmed below, flying home from the insurrection.

I can’t wait for three more days when the grown-ups are back in charge (they’ve named a Science Team!). And as the years pass we will look back on Nov. 3 and Jan. 6 and realize just how close this democracy came to plunging over a cliff, derailed by idiots and miscreants such as Lindell, Rudy Giuliani and Mike Pompeo. Among millions of others. Not a whit of decency among them.

30-Second Dossier: Lauren Boebert

–House of Representatives, Colorado

–High school dropout

–Resides in a town named Rifle, Colo., which is deep in the heart of the Colorado Rockies. The kind of town where you’d find Hank Reardon and Dagny Taggart holing up.

–Owns, with her husband, a saloon named “Shooters’ and encourages her employees to open-carry firearms.

–Had her mother at the insurrection.

–Used “I call bullcrap” on the House floor during a debate.

Finally, A White We Can Admire

https://twitter.com/scottEmovienerd/status/1350677303110610944?s=20

Simply gorgeous, simply hilarious. Betty White turns 99 years old today and what a stunner she was 70 years ago. And still is. If you are old enough to recall her playing the viciously funny Sue Ann Nivens on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, lucky you.

I didn’t quite understand Sue Ann’s motives when I was younger, but thinking back on her now, she was an early cougar preying on the middle-aged frustrations of Lou Grant and Murray Slaughter (men who were, most likely, younger at that time than I am now. And I’m still wearing a Speedo every day. Scary.) Sue Ann was sort of the Col. Flagg of MTM. You didn’t need to see her on every episode, they were never going to make her part of the inner circle, her entire persona was based on self-delusion (she’d be MAGA, you have to think), but all of that is what made her such a pleasure to watch. A classic TV character the likes of which you just don’t see any more.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 1 Comment

by John Walters

Trump/Nixon

The president is reportedly fuming (again) and shooting down any suggestions from aides that he resign. He’s particularly peeved that anyone inside his circle is even mentioning the name Richard Milhouse Nixon in his presence. From CNN

And he has made clear to aides in separate conversations that mere mention of President Richard Nixon, the last president to resign, was banned. He told one adviser during an expletive-laden conversation recently never to bring up the ex-president ever again.

Yet, if one is being honest, as deceitful and treacherous a president as Trump Nixon could be, it is he who should be insulted by comparisons with Donald J. Trump. This vignette stands out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opK4XeVEE1Y

So, you have an unpopular president who on his own meets with his detractors in person at the Lincoln Memorial. Which, as you know, is at the other end of the National Mall from the U.S. Capitol. And the purpose of his visit is to ease tensions as opposed to escalating them. And, to reiterate, he goes himself. He doesn’t send others to do his bidding.

Also, of course, Richard Nixon was reelected.

Banana Stand Republics

It’s crazy, when you think about it. Arrested Development premiered in 2003. It’s the story of a cravenly corrupt real estate magnate and his four grown children, three of whom are extremely dsyfunctional. Only Michael (Jason Bateman) has a moral center.

So the parallels are all right there—with the exception of Michael, and don’t for a moment think Ivanka; no, you don’t. How ahead of its time was this series, anyway?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNJ7qyhJONA&t=349s

Here’s Will Arnett, who played Job, having tons of vicious fun at Jason Bateman’s expense. You’ll laugh.

NFL Homonyms

This weekend Tom Brady will face Drew Brees in an NFL playoff game for the first time. Between them Brady and Brees have completed nearly 14,000 passes (they’re 2-1, respectively, on the all-time list), have thrown for nearly 160,000 yards (again, 2-1 all-time), and have each thrown more than 570 TD passes (1-2 on all-time list). They’ve also lived a cumulative 85 years and play a cumulative 41 seasons.

I doubt either will retire after this season. I also doubt either will lead his tam to a Super Bowl win (but I do hope that Tom Brady is playing in Lambeau a week from Sunday).

Next spring the NFL draft will be held and you should know that you’ll probably hear the name “Brady Breeze” called in the second or third round. He’s a defensive back from Oregon (that’s really his name) who was the Defensive MVP of the 2020 Rose Bowl. Solid player. It is probably his sincere wish to one day intercept Brady or Brees, if not both.

One Officer’s Story

In the days, weeks and months ahead you’re going to hear more and more detail about all the horrific stuff that happened at our nation’s Capitol building on January 6th. And I think we’ll all feel tremendous relief that as much of a catastrophe as it was, it could have been far, far worse. Something that those of us watching in real time (at least me) did not quit appreciate in the moment.

https://twitter.com/ryanjreilly/status/1350096088645169154?s=20

Sometimes, though, all it takes is to hear one officer’s story. This is the tale of Michael Fanone. That’s obviously him talking up top and then there’s video o how he was nearly murdered, in broad daylight, at the foot of the U.S. Capitol, is a Blue Lives Matter flag obscures him. Pure poetry, no?

****

A thought: if I were a shameless white supremacist with a lot of anger and weaponry, and sincerely butt-hurt that my racist president lost his election, to the point that I was willing to delude myself that he did not lose fairly, I might circle the date January 16th, Martin Luther King Day, to make my statement. I imagine our friends at the FBI have already considered this.

Joe Lives Matter

Yesterday came the news that officials in Australia were preparing to euthanize a pigeon, whom they’d named Joe (above). Seems it was believed that Joe had flown 8,000 miles from the USA to the land Down Under and officials there were concerned that he may be carrying strains of an American-borne disease (such as racism).

The sentence? Death.

But, unlike our current American administration, which has been putting actual people to death with nary a care in the final weeks of the presidency, Australian officials dug a little deeper. They discovered that the leg band Joe was wearing that identified him as being from Oregon (a militia pigeon?) was likely counterfeit and that he was most likely an Aussie bird.

And so they have granted him a reprieve.

Aussies: better than Americans again.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | Leave a comment

by John Walters

Unprecedented!

https://twitter.com/jcrutchmer/status/1349559682407530497?s=20

(But Not Un-presidented)

Ladies and gentleman, your first two-time impeached president, Donald Trump (are you tired of all the winning yet?). If you’re scoring at home, that’s two impeachments and also 0-fer-2 in popular elections. Trump’s 1-1 in Electoral College elections, which cater specifically to deals the founders made with slave owners long ago in order to get them to buy into forming the union. So he owes his lone win to racism. That fits.

From CNN:

As President Trump made history tonight as the only US president to be impeached twice, one White House adviser said “everybody’s angry at everyone” inside the White House, with the President being upset because he thinks people aren’t defending him enough. 

“He’s in self-pity mode,” the source said.

The story goes on to say that even Hope Hicks has departed. That’s right: all Hope is lost.*

*By the way, and I’m not making this up, if you visit Hope Hicks’ Wikipedia page, next to height it reads: ” 5’9″ (same as Chris Christie).” Oooh, snap!

AOC Sounds Off

I mean, not bad for a barmaid.

A Beard Grows In Brooklyn

The borough of Brooklyn is flush with millennials sporting outlandishly overgrown beards, but James Harden just became the most famous one. And perhaps the wealthiest. The Houston Rockets sent the former MVP-with-no-gruntle-remaining to the Nets in a multi-player trade. He joins long-time-ago OKC teammate Kevin Durant, another former MVP.

In nine of the past 11 seasons, either Harden or Durant has led the NBA in scoring. How will this work? Perhaps if former two-time MVP and assists wizard Steve Nash, the coach, puts himself onto the active roster.

For Clarity’s Sake

It may be too late to ever persuade all the Casey Affleck-lookalike wack jobs who stormed Capitol Hill that “Stop The Steal” is, as Yale prof Timothy Snyder has said, “The Big Lie” (this will be the title of Michael Lewis’ book, no?). But that does not mean that every GOP senator and representative who parroted President Trump’s false claims the past few months should not publicly reverse course. To quote The New York Times (something New York Post staffers are no longer allowed to cite as a news source…meaning everything you’ll read in the NY Post from now on will come directly from Twitter):

Republican lawmakers who objected to the electoral vote results on the grounds of mythical election fraud should immediately and publicly apologize, repudiate their lies and admit that Joe Biden won the election fairly.

We need clarity. And honesty. That is, as this editorial attests, the first step.

Clarity and honesty from all the GOP in Congress who repeated a lie to help make it grow and take root.

The next step? Clarity and honesty about what took place last Wednesday. You keep reading about how the details of what went down inside the Capitol would leave Americans shocked. You know what? Shock us. Or are they waiting until after Jan. 20 to share this news?

And, by the way, what is the excuse for Mitch McConnell to not think the Senate needs to convene to hold a conviction trial on impeachment? As we stated on Monday, the most plausible reason is that he doesn’t want to be the Majority Leader when it goes down. Let that be Chuck Schumer’s dog.

Iran-sacked

You gotta give the Iranian students and radicals—I’m assuming they thought of themselves as “patriots”—who stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979, this much: at least they didn’t kill anybody.

As we watched the storming of the U.S. Capitol unfurl last week in real time, those of us old enough to remember the Iran Hostage Crisis noticed how similar the scene looked: an unruly mob bent on destruction and violence criminally trespassing on U.S. government property and taking it over.

But again, they never killed a single American. Last week’s mob did, police officer Brian Sicknick. I guess it’s not terrorism if you think your side is in the right against Uncle Sam. I’d point this out to anyone in a MAGA cap but they’re either too dumb or too brainwashed to comprehend analogies that fit.

Or expose them to their own hypocrisy.

To them I say, “Argo f*ck yourself.”

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 8 Comments

by John Walters

Money Talks And Bullshit Walks

What happened was: Major corporations such as Airbnb, Amazon, American Express, AT&T, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Comcast, Commerce Bank, Dow Chemical, Marriott, Mastercard and Verizon all announced that they were halting donations to the GOP (should major corporations be allowed to donate to either party, I wonder? Hmmm.)

Then what happened was: Republican leaders such as Mitch McConnell and Liz Cheney suddenly found themselves to have a conscience, either saying they would vote to impeach Trump or at least, in Mitch’s case, not defending Trump.

The money spoke. Their consciences? Their consciences?!? The fuuuuuuck outta here.

Below, that’s Kenneth Langone, who has done some marvelous philanthropic work. But also a Trump backer. Amazing to me how people like this let their wallets be their conscience and fancifully ignored every last aspect of Donald Trump’s character and behavior until it was almost too late.

Randy Rainbow Coalition

Almost too easy, but still brilliantly done by our old friend.

Nobody Died In Watergate

On Sunday I tweeted that Trump would be out of a job by Friday and that Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan and Josh Hawley would be gone in a month. Those predictions may have been a little over-caffeinated, but Trump is going to be impeached today. The first president to be impeached twice. This nation had two impeachment in its first 242 years and now it’s had two in less than 13 months.

As for those senators and representatives, stay tuned. I truly believe we are at the incipient stages of a plot for treason. Congressmen and women who aided and abetted the rioters, particularly in the planning stages, should be hanged. Seriously. But at the very, very least they must be expelled from Congress and never be allowed to run for public office again.

https://twitter.com/FirenzeMike/status/1349146229129801735?s=20

Westy

All the events of the past two weeks caused us to neglect noting the death of one of our favorite Suns (favorite sons), Paul Westphal. He died of complications from cancer at age 70 last week.

I fell in love with the NBA during the 1972-73 season. The Knicks were my team and their nemesis was the Boston Celtics. Although Jo Jo White and John Havlicek were the men in green I feared most, I remembered this 6’4″ rookie who’d come in off the bench and just be a major pain in the ass for my guys Walt Frazier and Earl Monroe.

(Future NBA coaches who’d lose to Michael Jordan in the Bulls in the NBA Finals: Westphal and Jerry Sloan)

Westphal, a SoCal native who attended USC (when UCLA was THE PLACE to play hoops… would love to know why he didn’t team up with Bill Walton to play for John Wooden…. Wooden, Walton, Westphal, it just alliteratively fits), played in Boston for three seasons and won one ring there.

Then Boston traded him to Phoenix. I didn’t think much of it until the Suns made it all the way to the NBA Finals and there were all these dudes on their fun team with great tans: Westphal, the Van Arsdale twins, Alvan Adams. They were positively tanorexic. It was as if Westy had gone to Canyon Ranch and never returned.

Two years later, my family moved to Phoenix. A year after that, my parents got us two tickets to a Suns-Celtics game as a Christmas present. I went with my brother to the old Madhouse on McDowell, Veterans Memorial Coliseum, as Westphal and the Suns were playing a Boston team with a phenomenal rookie, Larry Bird.

It’s the best NBA game I’ve ever personally witnessed. Here, in the first season of the three-pointer, two future Hall of Famers dueled. Entering the fourth quarter the men in green led 107-96, which sounds like a final sore an sounded even more like one back in that era. This was just a high-scoring, exciting game with a Finals atmosphere (both teams were great that season, winning 61 and 55 games, respectively).

Larry Bird would finish with 45 points. But Westy, not to be too much outdone, paced the Suns with 34 and led them back from that 11-point deficit. The final score? Phoenix 135, Boston 134.

Yes, the Gar Heard game from three seasons earlier, these same two teams in the NBA Finals, lives in fans’ memories. But this midseason classic that I was fortunate enough to witness had a playoff fervor. Again, the best game I’ve ever attended. And Westy was the hero. He would become a terrific NBA coach and is in the Hall of Fame. And now he’s gone. He’ll always be that tanned zephyr with the flowing brown locks to me.

A female sportswriter (of great renown) once noted offhandedly that he was, in her mind, the best-looking NBA player ever. One person’s opinion. But I never forgot that she said that to me.

The other thing about Westphal? He was universally liked and loved. You have to watch this above. As “Chuck” says, “That’s a perfect example of who he was.”

I remember watching this play as it happened. It was hilarious. The Suns had already clinched top spot in the West, had already won 60 games. This was the third-to-last game of the regular season. And they still pulled this one out, in Portland, 115-114. I remember sitting on my futon couch and howling with laughter.

We Nearly Overlooked This, Too

There’s still 1:20 to play in the quarter when this young man loses track of time and tosses a full-court shot. That goes in. This is hilarious. How many kids that age can even toss the ball that far? I know I couldn’t.

Don’t you love how he turns to his coach with that “My bad, I know” reaction? Man, as someone else on Twitter noted, he should’ve flashed the double-guns, gunslinger reaction, then put them back in his holsters. But that might be too much to ask from one defining moment.

And He’s Not Even A St. Bernard

You Hate To See It

In yesterday’s New York Times, an amusing story titled “Lost Passwords Lock Millionaires Out Of Their Bitcoin Futures”

Here is the lede, by Nathaniel Popper, and it’s fabulous:

Stefan Thomas, a German-born programmer living in San Francisco, has two guesses left to figure out a password that is worth, as of this week, about $220 million.

The password will let him unlock a small hard drive, known as an IronKey, which contains the private keys to a digital wallet that holds 7,002 Bitcoin. While the price of Bitcoin dropped sharply on Monday, it is still up more than 50 percent from just a month ago, when it passed its previous all-time high of around $20,000.

The problem is that Mr. Thomas years ago lost the paper where he wrote down the password for his IronKey, which gives users 10 guesses before it seizes up and encrypts its contents forever. He has since tried eight of his most commonly used password formulations — to no avail.

“I would just lay in bed and think about it,” Mr. Thomas said. “Then I would go to the computer with some new strategy, and it wouldn’t work, and I would be desperate again.”

True story: A few years ago I bought two of these Bitcoin-related currencies. Also about that time I began, at long last, to keep a small notebook that had all of my passwords (but what if someone steals that notebook, you ask? I guess you just have to take that chance. It’s better than constantly having to create new passwords).

Just last Saturday, after not having taken a peek at either currency’s status in at least two years, I decided to check them out. One of them, Coinbase, had improved more than 700% since I bought it. The other, Bitstamp, has a new level of verification in which it asks for my social security number. Sorry, guy, no go. You can keep the money.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 1 Comment

by John Walters

DeVonta-Plus

Though he never caught a pass after halftime—a dislocated finger early in the third quarter ended his night prematurely-—Heisman Trophy winner DeVonta Smith had 12 catches for 215 yards and three touchdowns for the Crimson Tide.

All in the first half. Quite a validation of that Heisman for the Slim Reaper.

(Turf enough, but not fast enough)

Alabama beats Ohio State, 52-24 (that’s the same score the Tide beat Texas A&M by) for the national championship. It’s Nick Saban’s record-breaking 7th title in the AP poll era, his sixth in Tuscaloosa. Incredible.

https://twitter.com/russbengtson/status/1348867856746819585?s=20

Meanwhile in Tuscaloosa… a super-spreader event.

Patriot


New England Patriot football coach Bill Belichick stuns me by spurning Trump’s offer of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Belichick’s statement:

“Recently, I was offered the opportunity to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which I was flattered by out of respect for what the honor represents and admiration for prior recipients. Subsequently, the tragic events of last week occurred and the decision has been made not to move forward with the award.

“Above all, I am an American citizen with great reverence for our nation’s values, freedom and democracy. I know I also represent my family and the New England Patriots team,” he continued. “One of the most rewarding things in my professional career took place in 2020 when, through the great leadership within our team, conversations about social justice, equality and human rights moved to the forefront and became actions. Continuing those efforts while remaining true to the people, team and county I love outweigh the benefits of any individual award.”

You may recall that Trump appeared onstage with Belichick on the final day before the 2016 election.

Was this the final blow?

All The President’s Mendacity

(And the beauty of it is that those flags also may function as bludgeoning instruments)

From The Washington Post, an outrageous story of betrayal by the commander-in-chief last Wednesday. It details how Kevin McCarthy, Lindsey Graham and even Kellyanne Conway all tried to contact Trump last Wednesday afternoon in the early stages of the riot and he ignored all of them. Grampa was having too much fun watching his program.

Of course, the MAGA you know will disbelieve the story purely on the basis of who published it. Or blame the riot on Antifa infiltrators. Anything to avoid accepting the truth.

Worth reading. Remember as all of this mayhem takes place that America daily laps the world in coronavirus deaths. Donald Trump is a monumental failure.

The Big Lie

As Jake Tapper tweeted yesterday, from 1984 by George Orwell, “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” What did Hillary call them? Deplorables? That was too kind. I prefer “Y’all Queda.”

I don’t know about you, but this has been my experience: I’ve disagreed with family and friends who’ve supported Donald Trump in the past, but we’ve all been able (mostly) to continue to get along. Last Wednesday’s insurrection, for me, was the crossing of the Rubicon. If there are people who still support Donald Trump—even freakin’ Deutsche Bank has announced it will no longer do business with him—then those relationships are effectively over. You broke my heart, Fredo. You broke my heart.

Done. Finis.

Stand back and stand by, he said last October. And they did. And they’re planning more mayhem. It was so weird last night to listen to cable news stations nonchalantly mention the impending terrorist threats on all 50 state capitols and to realize that the people planning such terror were the loudest anti-terrorism (read: anti-Muslim) voices for the past two decades. And he person fomenting all of it was the president. Funny, that.

And yet, as Don Lemon noted on CNN last night, they’re the biggest SNOWFLAKES you’ll ever see: Viking horn guy is whining because they won’t serve organic food to him in lock up while many others wail because they’ve been put on no-fly list. That sound you hear is white privilege reckoning, for the first time, with consequences.

Also, every last Republican who still voted against ratifying the election results last week committed treason. They need to be dealt with. From Paul Krugman in The New York Times: “…the cynicism and cowardice of leading Republicans is, I would argue, the most important cause of the nightmare now enveloping our nation.”

True dat.

I mean, I could go on and find an item about a panda that plays chess or the world’s largest strudel, but between now and January 20th, what’s the point? This is no, “I like the Yankees and you like the Red Sox”-level argument. This is a battle for the future of our country. Do we want to be a nation of jack-booted thugs who render free elections non-existent and promise security in exchange for groupthink and white nationalism? Or do we want to be a democracy where open division still exists but where the individual may still think openly as he or she pleases and where disputes are settled by debate and voting?

We know what MAGA wants. This is the fight of our lives.

“I Pledge Allegiance”

To the flag (which I will use to bludgeon my opponents, including police)

And to the United States of America Donald Trump

And to the eventual fascist state,

For which white supremacy stands,

With liberty and justice for all those who think and act exactly the way I do

There are two Americas on display this week. The America we’ve always known, where we don’t always agree but where we express our differences with opinions and debate. And the America of those radicalized white terror caravans above, who seek to impose their will with guns and violence.

Another tip of the cap to Osama bin Laden: the greatest threat to America and freedom was always Americans. Someone simply had to unleash it. He did. In less than 20 years. Even he would be surprised, I think, that it happened so fast.

My hope: That Donald Trump is sent to jail and there, in a solitary cell, they put a camera on him (he’s always craved attention, right?). There is no sound and he has no access to the internet or even writing materials. The camera just remains on him as if he’s an animal in a zoo. That is how he should live out the remainder of his days.

*****

Last thing from me today (until something else comes to me): There are armed protests being planned at all 50 state capitols, which ordinarily would be seen by the President of the United States as a most grave threat to our democracy. All the president needs to do between now and then is to call a televised press conference, stand in front of the cameras, and implore every one of his followers to stand down.

Will he do it?

Being the narcissistic sociopath that he is, Trump probably will not do this. Later he will complain that his access to Twitter was cut off, denying him the ability to reach people. He’s the world’s most powerful man. He could call a presser and within half an hour all four major networks, plus every cable news channel, would televise it live.

People will die because of his silence this week. A political leader or two may be assassinated. Every death, every ounce of blood, is on Donald Trump’s tiny hands if he refuses to step up and tell his mob to stand down.