The Ghost Of Rosemary Woods And A Lovefest For The Man With The Fly
Rose Mary Woods is back, but this time she’s not working for Richard Nixon but is employed by that august sentinel of American government, the Secret Service.
Meanwhile, the House Republican lawmakers applauded former Vice President Mike Pence for his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, that cemented the presidential victory for Joe Biden, but none of these happy Republicans mentioned the elephant in the room, trump, and the fact that he tried to overthrow the government.
And in a final nugget of news, trump’s latest endorsement may be the Democrats biggest prize yet.
As they say, more on that in a few minutes but first there’s the matter of the Secret Service. Rosemary Woods, for those who were around then, was Nixon’s fiercely loyal personal secretary who inadvertently, innocently and unknowingly erased up to five minutes of the infamous 18 and a half minute gap of a June 20, 1972 audio tape, which coincidentally carried critical information about the Watergate scandal. Woods said at the time that she erased the tape when she stretched to simultaneously press controls several feet apart, gaining her the nickname, “Rose Mary Stretch.”
Fast forward to today when the Secret Service turned over just one, measly, teensy weensy text message to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by trump supporters. The committee had requested lots of texts to explain trump’s actions in the presidential limo when the Secret Service told him it was too dangerous to go to the Capitol when trump got wifty and tried to grab the steering wheel before he was restrained. At least that was the testimony of a key witness in the Jan. 6 probe but the committee wanted to see the actual Secret Service texts describing the moments. The panel also wants to know about trump’s actions before, during and after the insurrection and what better place to go than the very agency whose sworn duty is to protect and be with the president at all times, except maybe when he’s in the bathroom. But certainly the Secret Service was trump’s shadow during Jan. 6.
And all the House panel got was one lousy text leading one panel member to intone, “I smell a rat.” The one text turned over was a plea from then-Capitol Police officer Steven Sund asking for help which illuminated absolutely nothing.
The panel had subpoenaed the text records after a government watchdog reported that messages had been”erased.” The Secret Service has denied any foul play and said that some data was lost during a system migration, which is Secret Service lingo for “the dog ate my homework.” Even if there was the strange system migration, wouldn’t you think the Secret Service would have delayed the migration at least until the Jan. 6 investigation was over. Wouldn’t you think?
Agency spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said there were no “hidden messages” the agency was concealing or anything else officials were “holding out” from the panel. And we are to simply trust the good Guglielmi? Not me, especially given the fact that in a very unusual move, a top Secret Service agent had previously been transferred to trump’s personal staff. Adding insult to injury, that self-same Secret Service was ready to whisk away then-Vice President Mike Pence on the day of the attempted coup. Pence, however, politely told the Secret Service to beat feet while he moved on to the business in the Capitol of certifying the 2021 presidential election in favor of Joe Biden, much to the consternation and footstamping and temper tantrum by trump.
And does anyone remember those boxes of top secret documents that somehow made their way to Mar-a-Lago and some may even have disappeared, really.
So I say, my fellow Americans, do you believe the Secret Service is above reproach. Trump politicized the Department of Justice, the Department of Education, the State Department, the Department of Defense and apparently also had his dirty little hand in the Secret Service pants.
Lawmakers on the panel have said they are hopeful the Secret Service will be able to recover the information from the phones even though they were wiped and then they’ll thank the tooth fairy.
“I smell a rat,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the panel. “That seems like an awfully strange coincidence for those text messages to be banished into oblivion on two days where there was also the most violent insurrection against the union in our history, after the Civil War.”
So now, let’s look at the rousing reception for Pence, the former veep who bent over for trump’s every evil wish until Pence found religion and could take no more and refused to reject the presidential electors in favor of trump and showed what a supremely patriotic representative he is.
The occasion was a meeting of the conservative Republican Study Committee on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. The focus was on Pence’s actions presiding over the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6 to certify the Electoral College count from the 2020 election for Biden. Then-President Trump had pressured Pence to unilaterally reject Electoral College votes from certain states so that Trump would be found the winner. Trump had then and continues to falsely claim there was mass fraud in several states that led to his loss.
I’ll cut Pence some space because before he did his sworn duty, trump had called him names, said the two wouldn’t be friends anymore and said that Pence should be hung. But remember that the vice president has a symbolic duty to affirm the votes for the winner. He could legally do nothing differently.
Also, recall that on Jan. 6, 147 members of Congress voted to object to the electoral results. Those who voted to join trump and overturn our democracy included many members of the Republican Study Committee and its leader, Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind.
That would be the same Jim Banks who was one of 126 Republican members of the House to sign an amicus brief in support of a lawsuit filed at the Supreme Court contesting the results of the 2020 presidential election. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case. That would be the same Jim Banks who supported creation of a bipartisan commission to investigate the Capitol insurrection but then he changed his mind while also claiming that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was at fault for the insurrection and was using the commission to cover up for her.
Also, in October 2021, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., vice chair of the January 6 Select Committee, revealed that Banks had been sending letters to federal agencies, claiming to be the ranking member of that committee, even though he had been rejected from it. And then there was the promotion of Rachel Levine to admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service. Levine is transgender and Banks noted in his official Twitter account: “The title of first female four-star officer gets taken by a man.” Twitter prohibits “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals” and suspended Banks’ official account.
So I am a tad skeptical at the accolades that approached beatification of Pence at the Republican Study Committee meeting on Wednesday. As Pence began his comments, he was met with warm, loving applause for the great courage he showed on Jan. 6.
“He was congratulated for showing the courage that he did on January 6, and frankly, everyone in the room clapped, myself included,” said Rep. Dan Meuser, R-Pa. “It was, of course, what he should have done. I mean, it was the constitutional thing to do.”
Pence spoke about his “Freedom Agenda” policy platform, as he readies a likely run for the 2024 presidential nomination. Asked whether Trump was mentioned at all in the meeting, Meuser said, “not really.”
Which brings us to Daniel L. Cox, the trump-endorsed, little-known, right wing, Republican candidate who won Maryland’s gubernatorial primary election. It goes without saying that Cox is trumpy in every way and never fails to tell that to his supporters. The good thing is that analysts have reported that Cox or any other MAGAA devotee doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell to win although I remember many pundits said trump had zero chance to win in 2016. So much for pundits.
Last year, Cox arranged three buses to take constituents to the Jan. 6 rally that trump had promised would be “wild” and that became, an insurrection. While rioters were rioting and injuring police, Cox tweeted that Pence was a “traitor” for refusing to reject the certification of the election, something that trump had demanded and then said Pence should be hung.
The pundits are saying that trump shot the Republicans in the foot by backing the wingnut rather than the relatively, more moderate Republican Kelly M. Schulz. And that should make it likely that a Democrat will be elected governor in a state that is not in love with trump and voted for Biden in 2020. The Democratic Governors Association wanted Cox to win so badly that it spent $1 million for a television advertisement promoting him, in hopes of making it easier for a Democratic win in November.
On the issues, Cox has repeated conspiracy posts from QAnon and says there is no scientific consensus on climate change, evidently believing that the record heat waves in Europe and England are a hoax.
Speaking of hoaxes, as a member of the Maryland House of Delegates, Cox, an anti-vaxxer, sued to stop stay-at-home and mask mandates in the heat of the COVID-19 pandemic. Cox also tweeted the conspiracy theory linking the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the coronavirus pandemic.
Cox claims to have survived COVID-19 twice, because he took hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, which is used to treat parasites in livestock.
In February, Cox introduced articles of impeachment against Gov. Larry Hogan for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Hogan has been a strong trump critic and the impeachment went nowhere. Cox also said in the campaign that if elected to the House, he would move to end the Affordable Care Act.