The media spent years pretending Trump could magically pardon his co-conspirators, consequence-free, at any time, even though nothing works that way. Now the media is pretending the GOP can magically filibuster, consequence-free, at any time. Nothing works that way. It gets old.

Please stop asking me what happens if Mike Pence calls for a "ten day window" or whatever. NOTHING happens. Nothing a fucking thing. He doesn't have that ability. It would be like me calling for giraffes to grow wings. Please stop asking me about obviously imaginary things.

Those of you who insist on fretting and panicking over imaginary bullshit are becoming a real liability to our side. You're ensuring that those of us who want to fight and win important battles, are instead stuck babysitting your panicky asses. PLEASE STOP. You're hurting us.

Some of you panickers have become such a gullible and pathetic joke, even Ted Cruz is laughing at you now. He knows he can't magically overturn the election with imaginary procedures. He's laughing his ass off at you for being gullible enough to fall for it. You're the joke now.

You fucking panickers are doing REAL HARM to our side. You make us weak. You hand the republicans leverage over us that they don't have. You derail our agenda. You make sure we get nowhere. You're my enemy. You always have been. Please go away, panickers, I detest you.

I do not want people in my audience who go around searching for imaginary things to panic over. I just don't. I never have. I never will. Sorry. That kind of shit makes me want to vomit. I will never be a babysitter for people who think it's cute to panic. Makes me nauseated.

No, Mike Pence can't magically do anything on January 6th. No, Louie Gohment can't force the courts to give Pence magic powers. Trump has literally zero chance of magically overturning the election. Stop panicking over imaginary things. This is getting incredibly boring.

There won’t be a civil war. No one will pull off a coup. There won’t be martial law. None of these things are real.

It’s over. But the more clear it becomes that it’s over, the fantasizers on Trump’s side, and the panickers on our side, become more hallucinatory about it.

We have a pandemic, people dying, an economic crisis, people starving, and a runoff election that’s for all the marbles. Yet you’re going to focus on IMAGINARY doomsday scenarios? None of what’s going on is real enough for you? You have to go invent more bad things? Come on.

Those of us who have fought so hard for four years, deserve better than to have our agenda derailed by the doomsday panickers on our side. They don’t care about winning, they’re just addicted to the adrenaline rush of telling themselves they’re going to lose.

In fact the panickers on our side, and the fantasizers on Trump’s side, deserve each other. Both completely removed from reality. Neither interested in helping their own side. Just a shared interest in hallucinating over laugh out loud imaginary scenarios. And of no use to anyone

Everyone calm down. While we don’t know why witnesses weren’t called, we know that the Democrats didn’t “cave.” They’re not hapless idiots. They’re savvy fighters, and they must have had a damn good reason for this. Stop blindly attacking them and let this play out.

For insurance, the DC Attorney General let it be known last night that he’s looking to criminally charge Trump for the insurrection. That’s infinitely more important than impeachment. Perhaps he asked the Democrats not to screw up his prosecution by calling his witnesses.

It’s also possible that one or more of the witnesses changed their story, and therefore it would have backfired.

There are all kinds of plausible explanations for what just happened. “Democrats stupidly caved” is NOT one of them, because these Democrats are NOT stupid or cavers.

We really, really, really need to learn to avoid jumping straight into the “all hope is lost” and “Democrats just stupidly caved” routines. Neither of those things ever ends up being true. When we fatalistically yell that stuff, WE are the ones (unwittingly) causing harm.

We deserve answers as to what happened today, but we’ll get them soon enough.

I warned you from day one not to let the media suck you into the fictional notion that the impeachment trial was crucial, and that he’s “getting away with it all” if he’s not convicted in it.

It's trendy to suggest that Trump's attempt at stealing the election has finished off what was left of our democracy. But after everything we've been through in the past four years, I just don't buy that his endgame has been any more harmful than the rest of what he's done to us.

First of all, Trump DID manage to rig the 2016 election. The media largely swept that inconvenient fact under the rug when the evidence started to emerge shortly after he "won" because they were too excited at the ratings that a Trump presidency would give them.

But the reality is that Trump's successful theft of the 2016 election was obviously more harmful to the sanctity of our democracy than his failed theft of the 2020 election. It's just that the media now wants to get ratings out of his failed 2020 attempt.

Trump has spent four years systematically chewing at the fabric of every aspect of our democracy. We don't even know what our democracy is going to look like after this. His tantrum about losing, and zero-chance attempt at overturning it, is just a footnote at the end.

We've all known for four years now that if Trump lost the 2020 election, he'd try to overturn it by any illegal means possible. If you were paying attention, you also knew that if he got blown out, he would have zero chance of overturning it. This isn't some gasp-worthy surprise.

Since everyone is still talking about how successful of an evil genius henchman Bill Barr was, let's catalog all the times he corruptly tried to help Trump but fell flat on his face:

Barr tried to get the case against Michael Flynn thrown out, but this effort failed entirely. Trump ended up having to pardon Flynn, to clean up Barr's failure.

Barr tried to get Roger Stone's prison sentence reduced to the minimum, but Stone ended up getting the multi-year sentence he was always going to get. Trump had to commute Stone's sentence, to clean up Barr's failure.

After Michael Cohen was let out on house arrest due to the pandemic, Barr tried throwing him back in prison to prevent him from publishing his anti-Trump book. But a judge quickly freed Cohen, who succeeded in publishing his book.

Barr tried to install his own guy as head of the SDNY, presumably to stop the arrest of Steve Bannon. But Barr blew it, the SDNY remained in proper hands, and Bannon ended up getting arrested.

Trump has left the White House.

God what a lovely sentence to type. I might do it again.

Trump has left the White House.

Lovely. I didn't know fingers on keys could feel that good.

Is there a more beautiful sentence? I suspect not.

THIS: It's a little late, but here is the final White House Coronavirus Task Force report from the Trump administration. It features some lessons learned from the federal officials on the panel, many that speak directly to the situation in

- Georgia is back to 6th in the country for new cases in the week leading up to 1.17 (not long ago we were doing better than nearly every other state)
- 5th in the country for test positivity
- 97 percent of all counties in the state in the "red zone"

2/n

It's the recommendations that are the most interesting (we know things are bad here).

"Mask mandates work," it reads. "Any indoor space where masks cannot be worn ... must be substantially curtailed or closed."

This rec has been here before, but not so bluntly.

3/n

3/n

"This virus can be mitigated and community spread can be curtailed, but action needs to be taken before an increase in hospitalizations is seen," it continues. " it needs to be more comprehensive and longer than the summer mitigation actions."

4/n

Then, finally: "Georgia is still experiencing widespread community spread and needs to accelerate mitigation to prevent ongoing fatalities."

This final one is a message that we've seen before, too, though again, not in so direct terms.

5/n

The 1776 Commission Report has been removed. Not to worry, I downloaded a copy.