Cassidy Hutchinson is a new household name.
At this week’s hastily called sixth public January 6 Committee hearing, it was a strong, independent minded young woman who stepped up to lay out a massive amount of incriminating evidence based on what was happening in real time from her vantage point inside the White House on the day of the January 6 assault on the nation’s capital.
All the hearings to date have outdone themselves with stunning, documented evidence of the greatest assault on democracy in the U.S. since the Civil War.
These days’ hearings will be emblazoned in the U.S. history books for time immemorial. Newly minted heroes are being forged daily, and also, ones who will be remembered as mewling, treasonous criminals, the very lowest of the low in the eyes of an entire nation and world.
Cassidy Hutchinson is such a hero. Her former boss, Mark Meadows, is such a criminal, stooping down to the ranks of Gen. Michael Flynn, who was shown on record pleading “The Fifth” at this week’s hearing when asked the question, “Do you believe in the lawful transfer of power” of U.S. presidents? How truly stunning!
Hutchinson should become a role model for an entire generation of young Americans emulating her patriotism and courage, as well as her intellect and talent.
In fact, it has been a triumvirate of young, accomplished women who, it’s turning out, are playing such central roles in the January 6 hearings.
With their invaluable input, the hearings are slowly reaching down and cleansing the deeply corrupted moral wells of our culture and people through the impact of these hearings.
It was noted on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show on MSNBC late this Tuesday night that, while Hutchinson may have felt alone describing to the committee what she saw and heard with her own eyes in the West Wing of the White House on January 6, 2021, she was being buoyed by two important colleagues in the room, Olivia Troye, the former aide to Vice President Mike Pence who had testified before the committee earlier, and January 6 committee member U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney. Staunch conservatives close to Hutchinson for a long time leading up to this, both were also motivated by a profound commitment to their country and were deeply troubled by what Trump and his sycophants were up to.
Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, also on the O’Donnell show that night, echoed a similar sentiment, augmented by her psychological training to diagnose Trump as “seriously psychologically disordered.”
These historic hearings are defined not by politics, but existentially by far deeper sentiments related to factors such as integrity, honesty, a commitment to the truth, and personal character.
Truth and democracy are inseparable, and the bonds of empathy empowering these women had nothing to do with relatively superficial policy matters.
By contrast, the pathetic case of how Trump built his whole organized crime edifice on an ability to compromise people and cheat them.
He not only lacked personal character, he saw it as his enemy to the extent he encountered it.
The loyalty he demanded was not only to himself but against any other factors, like honesty, compassion or, for that matter, truth itself.
Indeed, it’s Trump’s special contempt for some of his most loyal followers, as seen in his enthusiasm for the hanging of Mike Pence on January 6, that should warn off his loyalists to steer clear of him.
It’s why he failed to issue pardons for two of his closest followers, Meadows and Giuliani.
Then there’s Gen. Flynn, who pleaded the “Fifth” (against self-incrimination) multiple times to the January 6 committee, even when only asked if he favored the “peaceful transition of power.”
Late night TV funny man Stephen Colbert got the studio audience at the Ed Sullivan Theater to sing the entire National Anthem with only the words, “The fifth, the fifth, the fifth.”
Recall that Flynn was a dinner guest of Vladimir Putin in Moscow at a meeting with a table full of U.S. agents of Putin, as the original Steele Dossier (remember that?) reported.
We await the full exposure of Trump’s role as an agent of a hostile foreign power.
