Since the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021, Donald Trump’s biggest enablers have blown a lot of hot air about how the events of that day were in no way the then-president’s fault and how the MAGA coup at the Capitol wasn’t nearly as bad as the mainstream media has made it out to be. Now, The Washington Post reports that some of Trump’s most enthusiastic cheerleaders were frantically texting then-chief of staff Mark Meadows and practically begging that he find a way to get his boss to make it all stop.
On Monday night, Liz Cheney—vice chair of the Jan. 6 House Select Committee and one of the few Republicans to regularly call Trump and his cronies out on their bullsh*t—read aloud from a series of increasingly desperate texts that were fired off to Meadows in the midst of the attack on the Capitol, urging him to convince the then-president to step in and do something. Among the senders of those messages were some of Trump’s most loyal Fox News hosts, including Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Brian Kilmeade.
“According to the records, multiple Fox News hosts knew the president needed to act immediately,” Cheney said during the evening hearing of the House select committee, which unanimously voted to hold Meadows in contempt after he ghosted them and their subpoenas… but only after already providing them with thousands of smoking guns in the form of documents and communications relating to the Capitol riots, including the texts that could ultimately send him to jail.
Liz Cheney reads texts from Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Brian Kilmeade, and Donald Trump Jr. urging former President Trump to act while he sat around and did nothing for hours during the insurrection pic.twitter.com/jkk7KhxF0s
— Acyn (@Acyn) December 14, 2021
Ingraham, who apparently believed Trump had a legacy to protect, texted Meadows that “The president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.”
Kilmeade’s message was much shorter and to-the-point: “Please, get him on TV. Destroying everything you have accomplished.”
Hannity tried, too, asking Meadows, “Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol.”
Even Donald Trump Jr., who no one has ever accused of being the sharpest knife in the drawer, could see that what was happening was not good—for the country or his dad. But he, too, texted Meadows, insisting that “He’s got to condemn this sh*t ASAP. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough.”
In the nearly one year since that deadly day, many of those same Fox News personalities have largely treated the Capitol insurrection as a non-event—so much so that back in July, Hannity’s Fox News colleague Geraldo Rivera even outright accused him of “gaslighting” America.
Dan Bongino, Geraldo Rivera, and Sean Hannity have a heated argument about the Jan 6 riot. pic.twitter.com/scxNDpRr4n
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) July 28, 2021
As The Washington Post noted, “The hearing was not carried on Fox News on Monday evening. Representatives for the network have not yet responded to a request for comment about the texts.”
(Via The Washington Post)