It ignores the reasons why

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported that the Senate released a bipartisan report about the Capitol attack. The report looked at how the system failed to protect the building and those working inside. Sumner isn’t satisfied:

It shows that the effort to be bipartisan can render an entire project worthless. Because not only does the Senate report ignore the causes for the insurrection, it also ignores the reasons why the FBI was willing to overlook messages openly planning an insurrection, why the Capitol Police were willing to say that Trump supporters were an unlikely source of violence despite all the evidence to the contrary, and why the Pentagon twiddled its thumbs even as police were on the phone literally begging for help. The effort to generate a bipartisan report means that the Senate produced something that is shorn of both the reasons behind the insurgency and the motivations of those who failed to provide an appropriate response. Which means the bullet list of prescribed solutions are all but worthless ... except for those who want to close the case on Jan. 6 and pretend the Senate did something bipartisan. ... But because the report also draws a line around looking at motivations, the list of suggestions for improvement is about as valuable as a report from a doctor who says just “stop getting sick.” ... It completely ignores the fact that what happened on Jan. 6 was the intentional result of efforts carried out over a period of months, and that the violent assault on the Capitol was incited by Republicans as a whole, not just Trump.

In a separate post Sumner discussed what the report said and recommended for Congressional action. David Neiwert of Kos reported that though the Republicans are doing all they can to hide what happened before and during the Capitol attack, news keeps emerging. There’s more evidence that law enforcement, including the Capitol Police, had evidence the attackers would be violent. The Capitol Police are becoming demoralized over the obstruction of the Republicans. And arrests of attackers continue. Neiwert quoted a report by WKBW that quoted Aquino Gonell, one of those demoralized Capitol Police officers:

"They kept saying, 'Trump sent me. We won't listen to you. We are here to take over the Capitol, we're here to hang Mike Pence,'" Gonell said. "They thought we were there for them and we weren't, so they turned against us. It was very scary because I thought I was going to lose my life right there." The failure of a bill to establish a bipartisan commission to investigate the causes of the riot left him devastated and gave him a reason to speak out. "It hurts me that the country that I love, that I came in, that I have sacrificed so much for, doesn't care about us. They don't," Gonell said.

The nasty guy has been saying he will be reinstated in August. Some people call that “delusional.” John Stoehr and his Editorial Board quoted a bit from Charles Cooke of National Review:

I can attest, from speaking to an array of different sources, that Donald Trump does indeed believe quite genuinely that he ...will be “reinstated” to office this summer after “audits” of the 2020 elections in Arizona, Georgia, and a handful of other states have been completed. I can attest, too, that Trump is trying hard to recruit journalists, politicians, and other influential figures to promulgate this belief – not as a fundraising tool or an infantile bit of trolling or a trial balloon, but as fact.

Stoehr then discussed two types of rational. It is rational to agree on observed facts. However, the nasty guy is also behaving rationally, though in a different, anti-democratic, and dangerous way. His rational is based on whether you are for him or against him. So getting people to believe he’ll be “reinstated” is rational, even if it can’t happen. I did a search for “reinstated Trump” and got many hits. Of course, comments like that have been reported. There’s also a poll asking Republicans whether the nasty guy really can be reinstated and 29% said yes. So the way this could and will likely work, though I don’t remember who explained it, is the nasty guy keeps repeating the lie, the GOP takes up the cry (along with trying to overturn that handful of states), reinstatement doesn’t happen, the nasty guy claims he’s been cheated again, and his followers attack the Capitol (or some other building) again. I won’t guess on the chances of the second one succeeding.