the president s national security advisor, jake sullivan. but first for our ongoing coverage we are joined by helene cooper, pentagon correspondent for the new york times, an msnbc contributor, former top state department official rick stengel, now also an msnbc political analyst and paul rieckhoff is here, founder of veterans of america and host of the podcast independent americans. helene, i start with you. if there s any question as to whether or not this president and this white house cease the criticism of this decision, i think it was answered by the president going right at this very sort of specific line of attack that you hear frankly from the right and the left. he talked about this, quote, we shoulda, coulda maintained a small force and not taken on any casualties. they felt it was important to knock that down. what did you make of the specifics that he had and the attempt to knock back the critics? hi, nicolle, thanks for having me. it was a clear effort to kn
very start of the hearing burying any notion peddled by republicans loyal to trump that the insurrection was not violent or a tourist visit or not an insurrection at all. we have to warn you now that these images are disturbing. lock the shields! lock them together! lock them together! we need fresh patriots to run! he needs a break! jimmy, get him to the back. get him to the back. get him to the back. let s get some fresh faces on the front. the officers who were on the front lines of the fight to defend the capitol that day told the committee in stark and clear detail about what they faced that day, their fears that they would be murdered by the attackers and the trauma that haunts them to this day. on january 6, for the first time i was more afraid to work at the capitol than my entire deployment to iraq. the rioters called me traitor. a disgrace. and shouted that i, i, an army veteran and a police officer, should be executed. after order had finally been resto
officials and to compel their testimony and document production. we are at the beginning of the beginning of the very first investigation into how and why the united states capitol fell to a violent mob on january 6th. today s vote wasn t supposed to happen at all. the fevered dreams of the ex-president of fraud in the 2020 election should have been broken, rebuked, reversed after that attack of january 6. a bipartisan commission should have approved to begin investigating how it was trump supporters overtook the capitol and sent republican and democratic lawmakers as well as the vice president of the united states of america running for their lives. these images will live forever, and they will be used against us forever by our adversaries. not only do they fail to bring the gop to its senses in the wake of the deadly insurrection, the gop has doubled down on loyalty to the liar in chief, the lies about election fraud, and lies about the horrors of that day. and so here we a
or any of the republicans who voted for the commission to her select committee? politico has some new reporting on what they call pelosi s curveball. speaker nancy pelosi surprised washington when her office announced monday that she was open to appointing a republican to fill one of her party s spots on the select committee to investigate january 6th. a pelosi-appointed republican would make it harder for gop leaders to attack the panel s investigation as a partisan witch hunt. if democrats decide to subpoena house minority leader, kevin mccarthy, for instance, they ll be able to portray the move as bipartisan. the one variable, republicans blocking the commission seem not to have considered is the horror being revealed by the ongoing investigation into the insurrectionists themselves. the crimes that republicans don t want probed are heinous and directly in line with calls to attack our democracy and to treat reporter as the enemy of the people by the ex-president. the was
campaign that incited the deadly insurrection and used the executive branch agencies to carry out a coup attempt. documents released by the oversight committee revealed trump sent an e-mail through an aide the day bill barr departed the doj, seeking assistance in his effort to throw the election results. from new york times an hour before, the president began pressuring the eventual replacement to have the justice department take up his false claims. he sent as e-mail via his assistant to the acting ag. the same claim said a federal judge thrown out a week earlier in a law fight by one of mr. trump s personal lawyers. most of the correspondence also occurred when mr. rosen and his top deputies realized that one of their peers had plotted with mr. trump to first oust mr. rosen and then to try to use federal law enforcement to force georgia to overturn either election results. these people, they ran the justice department. we have now spent the last several weeks with the k