Republicans enabled Trump. Then, a few strangled him
07 January 2021
It is an ironic,poetic ending to the raucous reign of Donald J. Trump: Enabled — and enabling — Republicans put the final knives in their beloved, besieged, beaten president.
The big picture: There are no heroes here — just a few people who watched the system bend, but in the end did not allow it to fully break. Only in time will we learn the reward or consequences of their actions.
- It was often conservative judges appointed by Trump who rejected his desperate lawsuits to overturn the election results state by state.
- It was Trump appointees on the Supreme Court, who he assumed would do his bidding, who rejected his pleas for Supreme salvation.
- It was the Georgia governor he almost single-handedly helped put in office, and Trump supporters below him, who refused his unprecedented pressure to flip the state his way.
- It was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who turned a blind eye and silent mouth to countless Trump actions he privately ridiculed, who took to the Senate floor to insist that Congress certify President-elect Biden's victory.
- It was Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a key Trump ally on the Hill and a 2024 contender, who loudly condemned what Trump is doing — a sign that some believe Trump, as ex-president, won't be the scary political threat he hopes to be.
- It was scores of Republicans, most of whom sucked up to Trump for four-plus years, who voted against final pleas to reject the election of Joe Biden. (At 3 a.m., the House voted 282-138 against an objection to Pennsylvania's electoral votes; the Senate shut down the same objection, 92-7, just after midnight.)
- And it was his own vice president, Mike Pence, who will go down in history as one of the most loyal supplicants to serve in his office, who rejected intense pressure to violate the Constitution to deny Biden his office.
Go deeper: Republicans consider drastic options to stop Trump
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.