it s serious, obviously, but the real crime is what it was intended to do, and that is to stop the transition of power, to disrupt, basically, the fundamental tenet of american democracy, that after an election, the loser leaves, the winner is sworn in. they tried to disrupt that. michael, if i could just say one final thing on all of this, as we focus on meadows role, you mentioned eastland, ellis, there is a whole question on who did what with the national guard, don t lose sight of the big picture, and that is trump himself. trump himself is the one who refused to admit defeat and vowed to do anything he could to overturn the results of the election. trump is the one who saw what was happening on january 6, saw his own supporters go into the capitol building and refuse to even after the pleadings of his son refused to come out and call on them to stop until
director of national intelligence, the top intelligence official in the country. meadows was doing all of this. the president was doing all of this. and i think that that is that s what i put forward in my book betrayal. this is not a one-off event. this is not the president who decided spontaneously to go and attack the capitol. this wasn t even just a riot at the capitol. that s the petty crime. it s serious, obviously, but the real crime is what it was intended to do, and that is to stop the transition of power, to disrupt, basically, the fundamental tenet of american democracy, that after an election, the loser leaves, the winner is sworn in. they tried to disrupt that. michael, if i could just say one final thing on all of this, as we focus on meadows role, you mentioned eastland, ellis, there is a whole question on who did what with the national guard, don t lose sight of the big picture, and that is trump himself.