NBC News
By Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Ben Kamisar, Bridget Bowman and Alexandra Marquez
WASHINGTON — If it’s Monday … The upcoming Jan. 6 hearing will focus on then-President Donald Trump’s involvement in the failed scheme to push slates of alternate electors. … Larry Summers says his best guess is that an economic recession is coming. … Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen counters that a recession is not inevitable. … It’s one day until Tuesday’s runoffs in Alabama and Georgia. … Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, launches a new ad. … And it’s the observed federal holiday for Juneteenth.
But first: Last week, the Jan. 6 committee made its case that frump tried to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election results.
Then. Trump essentially confirmed that in a speech the very next day.
“Mike Pence had a chance to be great. He had a chance to be, frankly, historic,” Trump told the Faith and Freedom Coalition on Friday in Nashville. “But Mike did not have the courage.”
More Trump: “Mike Pence had absolutely no choice but to be a human conveyor belt. He’s a human conveyor belt.”
Yet, as we learned last week, Trump’s lawyers knew that blocking certification of the Electoral College results wasn’t legal, and Trump knew he was putting Pence’s life in danger when he tweeted his vice president lacked the “courage” to overturn the election.
As one of us put it on Sunday, Trump’s “Mike did not have the courage. … He’s a human conveyor belt” remarks in Nashville were akin to Jack Nicholson’s character admitting he ordered the “Code Red” in “A Few Good Men.”
“He’s essentially saying, ‘Yeah, I did it, and I’ll do it again,’ which is what we have been contending all along,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said on “Meet the Press.”
Richard Nixon tried to cover up the Watergate break-in, which took place 50 years ago this month.
But for Trump and Jan. 6? It’s mostly been out in the open…
