Star witness

Perhaps there is no smoking gun as to law breaking but what is crystal clear is a total and reckless disregard for the country.

The January 6 House select committee has given us the pivotal dramatic and historical moment of its inquiry this week, with the testimony of a former aide to the Trump White House chief of staff.

Her name is Cassidy Hutchinson and her name will live in history as John Dean’s and Alexander Butterfield’s names echo from the Watergate hearings almost 50 years ago.

Dean turned on Richard Nixon and told us the president knew of the cover-up of the Watergate break-in (to Democratic national headquarters). Nixon knew.

Butterfield told the Senate select committee on Watergate that the president taped his Oval Office conversations.

So, Nixon knew. And there was a record. 

Together, these revelations were “the smoking gun.”

Nixon then had to go and, unlike Donald Trump when it was time to go, he went.

And we were told our “long national nightmare,” was finally over.

I don’t think anyone knows whether the country’s January 6 nightmare is over or is really just beginning.

Even Liz Cheney, the Sam Ervin of this moment, does not know.

For Mr. Trump looks like he is going to run again.

It is also possible that he will be charged criminally for a number of his actions related to January 6 and for trying to overturn the election, as well as his attempted coercion of Georgia officials, relative to the 2020 vote in that state.

He could even be elected president again.

And that WOULD be a nightmare -- of epic proportions.

That is the main thing we have learned in these careful and sober hearings and the main thing we learned from Ms. Hutchinson: How unfit Donald Trump is for public office. How deeply he disrespected his office and American laws and institutions. And how little he cared for law, order and life.

He cared only about himself and staying in power. And only these two things -- to the exclusion of the welfare and physical safety of all others. That included his own vice president, members of Congress, even his loyalists and supporters.

Yes, I know that there are many who will say, “We knew this all along. We have known all this for years.”

They didn’t know it. They felt it.

Now, we know it.

And those of us who felt that Trump represented a forgotten group of Americans who needed to be heard and seen; that he deserved a chance to try to govern (it was clear by the end of his term that Trump wasn’t interested); or that Trump hate was often over the top, must now admit that those who “felt” what we all now know, were right.

Trump was an existential threat not only to his own administration, but to the constitutional order. He remains a threat to liberty and democracy. He no longer pretends to believe in either. He believes only in raw power, and that includes violence if he wishes it.

So, did Cassidy Hutchinson provide a smoking gun?

Not in a narrow, legal sense, perhaps.

Free speech is the nearest thing to an absolute we have in this nation.

And it is very hard to prove someone, anyone, induced a riot.

Some will argue that Trump, in effect, yelled fire in a crowded theater; that he created the conditions for the January 6 uprising.

It’s a case that can be made. Let the lawyers argue. The greater crime is the damage done to the body politic.

The three important things we learned from Ms. Hutchinson were that:  A) The president knew that many in the pro-Trump crowd gathered for his speech that day were armed. B) He wanted them to march on the capitol anyway. And C) In fact he wanted to lead the crowd to the Capitol himself.

This is an extraordinary violation of responsibility by a public servant, of any kind, not alone a president.

It is the most extraordinary dereliction of responsibility in the history of the presidency.

The duty of a public servant is to care for the public good, beginning with public safety.

The duty of a president is to care for the country.

Trump did not consider the country.

Let’s play “what if” for a moment.

Suppose Trump had persuaded his Secret Service detail to drive him to the Capitol.

Suppose he had been able to lead the mob.

What then?

Would he have stopped them from crashing gates, bludgeoning police officers, breaking and climbing through windows of the Capitol, and setting up a hangman’s scaffolding with cries to hang Mike Pence?

Would he have tried to stop the violence?

Would he have gotten caught up in the riot himself and helped escalate the violence?

Or would he, once he saw it all unfolding, have told the Secret Service to get him out of there?

That seems most likely.

And yet, watching it all on TV back at the White House, in real time, Trump was not appalled. He was happy.

And, if we have been told the truth, he was fine with Mike Pence being lynched.

Or was he?

Does this guy think through anything he says or does? He calculates his personal risks and rewards. He then rolls the dice. But does he ever actually think?

Let’s consider a second “what if”: Suppose Pence, Pelosi, or another member of Congress had been killed that day.

Would Trump’s reaction have been any different?

Would Mitch McConnell have voted to impeach?

My guess is no, and yes.

No, because Trump is what the Spanish call an “hombre sinverguenza” -- a man without shame.

Shame is not in his makeup.

Many politicians, especially at the top, have sociopathic streaks. (Kennedy and Clinton did. Ike, Truman and Jerry Ford, notably, did not.)

But even Nixon, even Gary Hart, maybe even Spiro Agnew had some shame.

McConnell might have had some if a colleague had died. (As opposed to police officers.)

We now know that Trump has no personal, no political, no moral guardrails at all: Let the folks with guns in. The crowd will look bigger that way.  “They aren’t here to hurt me.”

Trump is more like Mussolini than Huey Long. He does not believe in “the people.” He believes in manipulating them and ruling them by strength -- the only thing he believes in other than his own wants and needs.

That is what we know now.

The nation’s last confrontation with a totally shameless man, armed with big lies, and scaring otherwise responsible politicians into silence, was Joe McCarthy.

He was riding high until a quiet lawyer from Boston, Joseph Welch, during another set of hearings even more years ago, asked him: “Have you no decency, sir? At long last, have you no sense of decency?”

“Tail Gunner Joe,” (a lie) didn’t. And Welch probably knew it. But that was the beginning of the end. For Welch had named Joe McCarthy to his face: A reckless and totally irresponsible man -- an hombre sinverguenza.

And everyone knew that someone had finally spoken truth to the bullyboy.

Ms. Hutchinson has named Mr. Trump. Hers is another kind of smoking gun.