Year: 2021
Biden Reads Staff the Riot Act
“I want to thank your families for the sacrifices, but I’m not joking when I say this. If you are ever working with me and I hear you treat another colleague with disrespect, talk down to someone, I promise you I will fire you on the spot. On the spot. No ifs, ands or buts.”
— President Joe Biden, quoted by ABC News, swearing in his senior staff.
Trump Impeachment: Three Days and Done?
3 days
Playbook: “We knew Democrats and Republicans were ready to turn the page on Trump ASAP — we just didn’t realize how quickly. We’ve heard from multiple Hill sources that lawmakers have privately discussed the possibility of a three-day impeachment trial for Trump, which would be the fastest of any such procedure for a president. (Past presidential impeachments have ranged from as short as 21 days to as long as 83.) Of course, Trump is an EX-president, so ….”
Trump’s Send-Off a Whimper, Not a Bang
“A large space was built for an audience that the White House had invited to see the president off. But for a man obsessed with crowd size, only about 300 people showed up, filling roughly a third of the standing area. … For several days, aides had tried to corral officials to come to the departure, and to bring guests. But several who remained working until the president’s final day in office said they were worn out and deeply angry over his behavior since Election Day, as he spread falsehoods about the race being stolen from him, overshadowing whatever substantive achievements they might remember. Some of his aides who had been with him the longest said they did not even watch the send-off on television.”
— New York Times
Proud Boys Have Abandoned Trump
“As Mr. Trump departed the White House on Wednesday, the Proud Boys, once among his staunchest supporters, have also started leaving his side. In dozens of conversations on social media sites like Gab and Telegram, members of the group have begun calling Mr. Trump a ‘shill’ and ‘extraordinarily weak,’ according to messages reviewed by The New York Times. They have also urged supporters to stop attending rallies and protests held for Mr. Trump or the Republican Party.”
— New York Times
The End He Earned
Trump was four years of storm and strife,
With crimes large and small his term was rife.
With a last fake simper,
Not wth a bang, but a whimper,
The 45th President said, “Have a good life.”
Why Society Won’t Reject Javanka — Yet
“There is a myth around that Jared and Ivanka will be rejected socially. The rich are never rejected — until they go to prison or lose their money.”
— Tina Brown, quoted by Town & Country.
QAnon Rejiggering to Make Biden Trump’s Tool
“Followers of QAnon, the pro-Trump conspiracy theory, have spent weeks anticipating that Wednesday would be the ‘Great Awakening’ — a day, long foretold in QAnon prophecy, when top Democrats would be arrested for running a global sex trafficking ring and President Trump would seize a second term in office. … But as President Biden took office and Mr. Trump landed in Florida, with no mass arrests in sight, some believers struggled to harmonize the falsehoods with the inauguration on their TVs. … Some QAnon believers tried to rejigger their theories to accommodate a transfer of power to Mr. Biden. Several large QAnon groups discussed on Wednesday the possibility that they had been wrong about Mr. Biden, and that the incoming president was actually part of Mr. Trump’s effort to take down the global cabal.”
— New York Times
Amanda Gorman’s Inauguration Poem: ‘The Hill We Climb’
Mr. President, Dr. Biden, Madame Vice-President, Mr. Emhoff, Americans and the world,
When day comes we ask ourselves,
Where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry,
a sea we must wade
We braved the belly of the beast
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace
And the norms and notions
of what just is
Isn’t always just-ice.
And yet the dawn is ours
before we knew it
Somehow we do it
Somehow we weathered and witnessed
a nation that isn’t broken
but simply unfinished […]
