The GA election call most people think of is the Raffensperger call which broke (with accurate audio) 1/3. Capitol-storming was 1/6. The incorrectly-quoted (deservingly corrected) story was on 1/9 about a separate GA call. Didn't really shape narrative
The report on the Trump/Raffensperger call, with audio, was a bombshell and shaped the narrative. It was totally accurate.
The (now-corrected) 1/9 report on Trump's call with another GA official was more of a follow-up. Oh, he did a similar thing in this other call too.
Trump was indeed doing a similar thing in this separate call, but the exact quotes the Post's source (a state official) attributed to Trump were wrong.
Substantively, "find the fraud" vs. find "dishonesty" in Fulton seems immaterial. "National hero" seems more off.
Again, if you use quotation marks, you gotta get your quotes right. But no, this doesn't fundamentally change our understanding of what Trump was saying and doing at the time.
(Note that Trump did in fact use the "find" language with Raffensperger repeatedly.)
Trump is muddying the timeline of what happened.
Again, the major "phone call" re: GA voter fraud Trump had with a state official was with Raffensperger. We got the full transcript and audio of that at the time. It was accurate.
WaPo has corrected a story re: a separate call.
Trump's savvy about the fact that most people will only vaguely remember the details and many will just see "Georgia + Trump phone call + correction" and say, "wow, I guess he really got a bad rap."
He did not get a bad rap. This is what he told GA's secretary of state
Listening to the full call I now see a closer analog to the incorrect "national hero" quote.
Trump tells the official, “When the right answer comes out, you’ll be praised.”
1) Dem opposition to reform may be broader than Manchin and Sinema. But many you'd expect to be skeptics are on board or open. And if you win over Manchin and Sinema, you've probably won over everybody else
"Talking filibuster" rules change intuitively feels right to a lot of people, but I doubt it would practically play out in the way its adherents hope
The devil's in the details, I guess, but if doing "shifts" are allowed it would be easy for the 50 Rs to trade off shifts on a talking filibuster. And they'd get laudatory coverage on Fox and conservative media outlets for doing so.
"Require 40 votes to block a bill, not 60 to advance a bill" is similarly unimpressive. There are 50 Republicans! They will manage to do that easily.
Collins/Murkowski question to Trump’s team: “Exactly when did President Trump learn of the breach of the Capitol? What specific actions did he take to bring the rioting to the end and when did he take them? Please be as detailed as possible.”
Trump attorney blusters, gives a non-answer. Cites Trump's tweets only. Says the real issue is that the House hasn't investigated this enough (?)
The answer to the "what was Trump doing" question from reporting or secondhand sources seems to be — he was watching it all on TV. He was happy that it was happening. He resisted urgings from staff to condemn the mob.
Where are the excuses? Their behavior was inexcusable. But there was a popular narrative on here based on a few examples that they were mostly rich, which seems inaccurate.
This does not of course mean that the rioters were all desperately poor either. There was a mix of people with different backgrounds, some well-off, a substantial amount seem to have had significant money troubles.
So at the heart of the Summers op-ed is the political assumption that if you spend a ton on stimulus now then inevitably deficit mania will kick in and Congress will get cold feet on doing anything more, killing the rest of Biden's agenda.
In 2009 this sort of is what happened. Progressives often frame the stimulus mistake as going "too small." But at the time there was an assumption in the White House that if they needed more stimulus later, they could go back and get it from Congress. That proved untrue.
But...
Congress is different now. In '09 the constraint was a caucus of deficit-worrying Democrats + Republicans.
There are few D deficit worriers left, and hardly anyone expects GOP support for Biden's agenda. A second bill will be reconciliation again.
This is Manchin's ultimate trump card against any pressure Dems might bring to bear on him. He really does have the sole power to throw control of the Senate back to Republicans.
Jim Jeffords did this during our last 50-50 Senate in '01, flipping R to D
Jeffords ditched the GOP in '01 because he was unhappy with how the Bush Admin was treating him.
Another hugely consequential R to D Senate switch, Specter in '09, occurred because of pressure from the right. Specter's switch gave Dems 60 votes and allowed Obamacare to pass
Oh I certainly don't think he's anywhere close to doing it. But that's in part because Dem leaders have done well tending to his interests. And they're not doing stuff like threatening his gavel or using hardball tactics on him like some on here want