TUESDAY: Scribe gives voice to a gloomy thought!

TUESDAY, JANUARY 6, 2026

Charlie Pierce gets it right: The president continues to rant and yell about how the 2020 election was stolen. Or at least, so says Mediaite in this new report:

‘Crooked as Hell!’ Trump Goes on Rigged Election Rant on January 6 Anniversary

President Donald Trump spoke Tuesday at the House Republican retreat in Washington, D.C. and reiterated his long-held and widely debunked claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Trump made the remarks on the fifth anniversary of the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol, which was fueled by his claims of voter fraud as rioters tried to stop the certification of the election.

And so on from there. You can see videotape of Trump's remarks at that link.

Scarily, we probably tilt something like 60-40 toward a disturbing thought, Scarily, we tilt a bit toward the view that the sitting president actually believes the claims he makes during those unchanging rants.

At any rate, through a succession of errors and weaknesses, this is the sitting president we the people have chosen. For the next three years, his judgment on the global stage will be serving as our judgment, which brings us to the closing remark in yesterday's blog post for Esquire by Charlie Pierce.

We chatted with Charlie long ago about our contention that player disqualification on personal fouls is the worst rule in team sports. Those were simpler times back then. The days even seemed longer then, as Harper Lee observed.

Today, we're not sure that we agree with the basic premise of Pierce's blog post. Headline included, his piece started like this—but in the beginning, right there in his headline, Pierce prefigured its gloomy end:

Jack Smith Found Plenty of Damning Evidence Against Trump. If Only That Mattered Now.

This was going to lead the blog on Monday until the president decided to grab the president of Venezuela, his wife, and the country’s oil. (And no, it’s not “our” oil if it’s underneath Venezuela. Dinosaurs did not choose where to die.) On New Year’s Eve, the Republicans decided to release the video—and a transcript—of Jack Smith’s deposition before the House Judiciary Committee that took place in December. In it, Smith demonstrated the kind of implacability that would have made a formidable prosecution if Merrick Garland had been able to get off the dime...

There are a number of highlights....[Smith] ably defended his investigation, including the subpoenas for the toll records on the telephones of certain members of Congress, including Jordan’s. Ultimately, though, Smith was quite clear about what his investigators actually found. In reply to a question about whether there was a political agenda behind his investigation, Smith made it quite plain why he did what he did and how he determined its course...

Many others have said that Smith found plenty of evidence in support of his indictments of Trump. With respect to the January 6 indictment, we're still not sure we agree.

Unless the reporting has been crazily wrong, it seems clear that the former president mishandled classified material at Mar-a-Lago in ways which went well beyond the kinds of misbehavior for which other people have been convicted of crimes. But with respect to the claim that Trump engaged in criminal conduct with respect to his ludicrous behavior between Election Day and January 6, we remain unsure--unsure that he actually committed a crime in the course of his ludicrous conduct.

More on that ages and ages hence! For today, we turn to the gloomy final rumination Charlie prefigured tin his headline. As his blog post ended, Brother Pierce said this:

Jack Smith Found Plenty of Damning Evidence Against Trump. If Only That Mattered Now.

[...]

And almost five years [after January 6], Trump launched an invasion and occupation of another country. This poisonous tree bears considerable fruit. The entire extent of the American government has been repurposed into a private instrument of vengeance and a vehicle for private enrichment. And it may already be too far gone.

If you hit a paywall at that link, you can also click here.

The American government [imperfect as it always has been] "may already be too far gone?" We agree with that provisional sense of gloom and despair. 

A baldly disordered man is in charge of that government. For better or worse, our mainstream press corps still hasn't found a way to describe what's right there before them. 

(In fairness, it isn't clear that some such declaration would have helped at any point in the past ten years. Some such accurate declaration may even have made matters worse!)

The president's judgment will serve as our judgment over the course of the next three years. "It may already be too [late]?"

In our view, Pierce gets it right with that closing remark.