Watching Trump

It might be difficult, but necessary

The Congressional Hearing to consider Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense was contentious yesterday. The Democrats did their best to try to make it clear that he is not qualified for the job, on many fronts. We’ll see.

Michele Obama is skipping Trump’s Inauguration.

Speaker Mike Johnson ordered the flags on Capitol Hill be fully raised for Trump’s Inauguration. They should still be half staff for the mourning of President Jimmy Carter. Can Johnson just do that? I guess we need to pick our battles, but this strikes me as wrong.

Special Counsel Jack Smith said, just before his departure from the Justice Department (he is resigning before Trump takes office), that had Trump not won the election, he would have been convicted for his attempts to overthrow the government on January 6th. His lengthy report on his finding is this case was released yesterday.

Journalist Jennifer Rubin left the Washington Post this week, as have many of her colleagues. She announced that she and former White House ethics lawyer Norm Eisen have started a new media outlet called The Contrarian. According to Heather Cox Richardson, joining them is “a gold-star list of journalists and commentators who have stood against the rise of Trump and the MAGA Republicans, many of whom have…