The texts released by the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 show that the White House, Republicans in Congress, and Donald Trump Jr. were all terrified about the insurgents breaching the Capitol. Some were terrified for how it would cost them politically. Some for how the insurgents might harm them physically. Right wing pundits, hoping to make the best of embarrassing and incriminating information, have hurried to claim that, if Fox News and congressional Republicans were screaming to make it stops, they couldn’t have been in on the insurgency. However, the latest releases drop several more puzzle pieces into place. The picture of how Donald Trump and the Republican Party planned to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 election and install Trump as dictator in everything but name still isn’t quite complete. But what’s there is frightening in both its depth and breadth. It shows that they had the means of keeping Trump in power, a supposed motivation for their actions, and that they viewed Jan. 6 as an opportunity to put their plans into effect. Only not everyone was playing from the same book, and some of them forgot to synchronize their watches. Read more