#GoodMorningDC your daily briefing into power center Wahington DC is here. Another insurrection could be coming, security experts predict.
Good morning, DC.
Impeachment, the sequel, starts today. Pelosi is putting new pressure on Mike Pence to change his ‘no’ in response to the 25th Amendment, or else.
By now, all major media have confirmed the story Good Morning DC published on Friday morning about the strategy to use impeachment in order to pressure Trump to resign. Will Trump ask Mike Pence to issue him a pardon in order to save himself?
Trump laid low in the White House this weekend, without any contact with VP Pence. The pressure on him to resign increased in the face of impeachment. The goal of the Democrats is to stop Trump’s return to office, as it is becoming more likely that he will form the Trump party that will splinter the GOP.
Republicans Murkowski and Pat Toomey agree that Trump needs to be out. The GOP insider told Good Morning DC that, as more information comes out on the failed insurrection, more senators will join their colleagues in calling for Trump’s removal.
Pelosi told 60 Minutes on Sunday that Trump was “a deranged, unhinged, dangerous President of the United States,” adding that he has done something “so serious that there should be a prosecution against him.”
This morning, Melania issued her letter to Americans, admitting that she was “disappointed and disheartened with what happened last week.” She added that she finds it “shameful that surrounding these tragic events there has been salacious gossip, unwarranted personal attacks, and false misleading accusations on me – from people who are looking to be relevant and have an agenda. This time is solely about healing our country and its citizens. It should not be used for personal gain.”
“Make no mistake about it, I absolutely condemn the violence that has occurred on our Nation’s Capitol. Violence is never acceptable,” she stated.
A lot happened over the weekend. First and foremost, people are scared of going back to the Hill, and many journalists who were inside the Capitol are experiencing an after-shock.
Daniel Gleick, staffer at Capitol Hill, said that it feels “insane that we’ll be going back to work with the same people who incited and, in some cases, may have helped organize a deadly fascist attack on us. Like, I walk by these people in the hallway. What am I supposed to do with that?” he tweeted.
Rep Adam Kinzinger said, “We were very close to having members of the Congress killed.”
As for what comes next, brace for a possibility of things getting worse ahead of and on Inauguration Day. A banner calling for an “armed march on Capitol Hill” on January 17th appeared on Parler, and it has raised credible concerns, security experts told Good Morning DC. There have been calls on Parler for people who were involved in riots to enter their name by Tuesday this week so Trump can give them pardon before he gets impeached, but, in lack of communication with President Trump, it is unclear if he approved the announcement.
Congressman Jason Crown released a readout of the phone call with McCarthy suggesting that the DoD is aware of new security threats by the domestic bad actors.
Memo Crown issued confirmation that Good Morning DC published on Friday that the US Capitol Police refused assistance before and during the attack on the US Capitol.
Arnold Schwarzenegger released a poignant video saying that, “Wednesday was the Day of Broken Glass right here in the United States. The broken glass was in the windows of the United States Capitol, but the mob did not just shatter the windows of the Capitol. It has shattered the ideals we took for granted. They did not just break down the doors of the building that housed American democracy. They trampled the very principles on which our country was founded.”
Trump has been removed from Twitter. In one of his final tweets, he said that he won’t attend the inauguration, a development those who know him well expected.
The legal argument is that a private company cannot violate the First Amendment. However, Twitter went a step further by removing the statement the Trump Team posted, sent to the White House press corps. On social media, many people are celebrating that Trump has been silenced, but the measures open up a question of the need for a regulatory framework around social networks.
Big Tech is now a superstate– unelected and unchecked. This approach will have consequences in the grand scheme of things, as many authoritarians will use this as a case-in-point to silence dissidents.
There must be a regulatory framework around social networks with a clear set of rules for them to follow. They are making editorial decisions now in plain sight, but were they ever neutral? No, they were not. They were ranking content, and they used algorithms.
I am not the only one to find Twitter halt of Trump problematic. Britain is already rising concerns and since this morning Angela Merkel does too.
“The fundamental right to freedom of opinion is a fundamental right of elementary importance, and this fundamental right can be interfered with, but through the law and within the framework defined by the legislature, not according to the decision of the management of social media platforms”, Merkel’s spokesperson stated this morning.
While social networks are clamping down on users, Harry and Meghan are quitting social media altogether in a bold move toward their progressive agenda in America, Sunday Times learnt. How can one shut down an Instagram account with more than 10 million followers, voluntarily? The Duke and Duchess are onto something, and Good Morning DC predicts that this new movement will grow in numbers, in what I see as the return to old-fashioned emails and online events for developing communities.
Another point to think about is the decentralization of the internet, which will make it much harder for security experts to track bad actors. In the absence of Parler, the move to encrypted channels of communication are much harder to monitor, such as Telegram, the same way terrorist movements are when they go underground. What should be taken into account is that Trump has both the money and the resources to make his own social network and host servers outside of the US.
Failed insurrection on January 6th may only be one instance where the state was tested. If the theories on terrorist decision-making are applied here, we should not exclude such a scenario.
The paradigm shifted, and the world is entering into more uncertainty than ever before. With the pandemic, the economy damaged, and political violence sweeping America, reasons for concern only grow. North Korea is testing the United States during a time where America is focused on internal issues. Kim Jong Un called America the “main enemy” of North Korea.
Hope Hicks is making an exit from the White House. Why’d she leave? “Do not read too much into it,” a source who knows her well-told Good Morning DC. “People already knew they were leaving the White House; many already have new jobs lined up and wanted to take the two weeks off.” Source also shared his insight that one should not forget that Hope is a friend of the family and that Trump treats her as her daughter. “I like Hope. She is a nice young lady and a hard worker,” he said. Another one told Good Morning DC that “Hope is Trump’s crutch.” Commenting on the two’s complicated relationship, he observed that Trump sometimes “treats Hope like a puppy and sometimes like his slave.”
What DC insiders agree now is that “all these people are unemployed” To that effect, The Lincoln Project is making a black list, an endeavor they started after the 2020 election, only to take it to the next level now.
Friends make the worst enemies, said Frank Underwood.
Trump’s former fixer, Micheal Cohen, has a “Mea Culpa” podcast he is broadcasting from his Park Avenue apartment and wants to dismantle Trump. He was the first one to issue a warning before he went to jail that Trump will hold onto power and refuse to concede. For some reason, Washington DC often fails to act on an early warning.
Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, another friend-turned-frenemy, in a column for The Blaze, accused Melania of complicity. “There’s blood on her hands,” she said.
DC bus stops now feature signs posted by the FBI seeking information about participants in the Capitol insurrection, Jim Acosta posted this weekend with a photo receipt. Face recognition software is doing its job. Never underestimate the power of surveillance.
A New COVID variant has surfaced on the East Coast. The first case has been identified in Long Island, NYC. Vaccine distribution and availability has to be accelerated, Joe Biden agrees.
In the UK, the number of infections hit a staggering 68,053, with 81% new variant cases in London. The British government wants to delay the recommended second dose of vaccine schedules in order to make more people get the first one. The third vaccine produced by the US firm Moderna has been approved.
While the UK is ramping up the pandemic measures in order for the NHS to hold up, the Downing Street family bubble is richer for one more inhabitant. Carrie Symond’s mom, Josephine McAfee, moved into No.10 to help with a newborn. A Spokesman for No.10 declined to comment on the claims in the Sunday Telegraph stating that McAfee is a “private citizen.”
Speaking of COVID-19 bubbles and the impossibility of socializing, the Duchess of Cambridge celebrated her 39th birthday with her family circle, at home. The Royal Family posted pictures on Twitter wishing her a happy birthday to mark the occasion.
Madrid fell into a snow fight Saturday evening. While Americans usually go indoors during blizzards, Spaniards went onto the streets. They were snowballing so much that the police had to intervene to break them up.
One Planet Summit starts today, and it will be virtual. Macron will be presiding.
Finally, on the side of politics-meets-fashion, the Vogue cover with Kamala Harris has been revealed. Not only the timing is off, but also the styling of President-Elect Harris does not look like a Vogue cover at all.
The Washington DC power center is formed to talk to itself in their lingo everyone on the inside understands. The outside world not so much, neither does power center DC understand the world outside its imagined border.
That’s a wrap for this Monday morning. America is not yet out of the woods.”Stay safe” has been a frequent message the journalists in DC have been getting in the past four days. Is Trump going rogue? Ten days have never felt longer in one of the most challenging post-election transfers of power. American democracy is at stake. If America falls, the world collapses. That can’t happen.
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Good Morning DC, your daily briefing into power center Wahington DC is here. Good Morning DC takes you to the heart of the stories that matter. Get the most important stories of the day through the eyes of the editor-in-chief, Ksenija Pavlovic Mcateer. Delivered to your inbox every morning Monday to Friday. Send tips to goodmorningdc@thepavlovictoday.com