Ketchup on the White House wall, blood on the steps of the Capitol

Trump couldn't sit down to eat his lunch without committing a crime

We always knew he was a bully and a baby, but testimony today from Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to Mark Meadows, about Trump’s plate-throwing tantrums in the Oval Office dining room was what they call news.  Hutchinson was testifying about the day in early December of 2020 that the AP news hit the wires with its interview of Attorney General William Barr, who went blatantly on the record that the Department of Justice had investigated dozens of charges of election fraud without finding any evidence sufficient to overturn the results of the election.

Hutchinson testified that she heard “noise” from the opposite end of the hall near the Oval Office.  When she walked down the hall, she found a White House valet in the dining room changing the tablecloth.  He pointed at the wall next to the fireplace mantle and television screen.  "I first noticed there was ketchup dripping down the wall and there was a shattered porcelain plate on the floor," she said. "The valet had articulated that the president was extremely angry at the Attorney General's AP interview and had thrown his lunch against the wall."

Had Trump been known to have previously thrown plates at the wall?  Yes, she said, going on to describe several other times she had seen broken porcelain in the Oval Office dining room, as well as times when he had “flipped” the table cloth, spilling plates and glasses and silverware on the floor.

It was not the biggest revelation of the day’s previously unscheduled hearing by the 1/6 Committee, but it may have been the most telling.  Basically what Hutchinson did was confirm our suspicion that Trump was the Harvey Weinstein of American presidents – a screaming, tantrum-throwing sexual abuser who occupied the Oval Office for four years and had the nation’s nuclear codes within arm’s reach the entire time.  

Two other revelations from today’s hearing led the news:  first, that Meadows, Giuliani and other top White House officials or hangers-on knew in advance that violence was likely to break out at the Capitol on January 6.  There was testimony that discussions to that effect had taken place as far back as December of 2020.  As January 6 got closer, the talk in the White House grew darker.  Chief of Staff Meadows told his aide that he thought “things might get real bad” on January 6. 

Which probably explains why Meadows was unconcerned on the morning of the 6th when security officials told Meadows that people in the crowd for Trump’s rally were armed and were wearing combat vests and helmets. 

When Trump himself was informed that the Secret Service was confiscating weapons from people going through the metal detectors (referred to as “mags”) for the rally, Hutchinson remembered him exploding with profanity.  "’I don't f-in' care that they have weapons.’” she quoted Trump as saying.  "They're not here to hurt me. Take the f-in' mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here.”

This was while Trump was still in the White House before leaving in the presidential limousine (“The Beast”) for the rally on the Ellipse.  Hutchinson described efforts by White House counsel Pat Cippollone and his deputy to have speech writers take aggressive language out of the text for Trump’s rally speech, without success.  Listening to Hutchinson’s testimony, it became absolutely clear that Trump not only set out to incite his crowd on the Ellipse to attack the Capitol, he knew they were armed with clubs, flag poles that had spears attached, brass knuckles, and knives, because he was told all of those types of weapons had already been confiscated by the Secret Service, and handguns and AR-15 style rifles because the Capitol Police had reported seeing those weapons in the crowd on the Ellipse outside the security barriers.

And then Trump gave the order to “take the fucking mags away,” and “let my people in.  They can march to the Capitol from here.” 

“Here” was the site of his rally, only a couple hundred yards from the White House.

There was more – Trump wanted his armored limousine to take him to the Capitol after the speech and when told by his Secret Service agent that was not possible and they were returning to the West Wing, Trump lunged for the steering wheel.  When his personal protection agent grabbed Trump’s wrist he made another lunge for the area of the man’s “clavicle,” which in case you’ve forgotten your anatomy, is at the base of the front of the neck.

And then there was the now-familiar news that Trump thought Mike Pence “deserved” to be hanged, and that the crowd invading the Capitol and screaming for Pence’s neck wasn’t “doing anything wrong.”

Nixon told David Frost “if the president does it, it’s legal,” which you might call a proactive defense for law breaking by the man occupying the highest office of the land.

Trump took the other tack, that nothing he or his MAGA crowds did or wanted to do or thought or said was wrong, from racism to antisemitism to violence to murder to strong-arming a foreign nation into helping him win an election to planning and executing a coup to keep himself in power. 

Even throwing his lunch plate against the wall was willful destruction of government property.  Trump couldn’t sit down and have a burger for lunch without committing a crime.

Throw the book at him.  They’re sending Proud Boys to prison for breaking windows in the seat of our government, the Capitol. 

Trump broke the government itself.  Charge him. Try him. Convict him. Send him to jail.