 This is Harold Pacius. We're on the air again with another edition of Pacius on the News. Some of you who watch regularly are accustomed to seeing me interview somebody, a person who can comment on the news and in many cases has participated in making news. Tonight, we don't have a guest. I'm gonna do this solo, but we have more news than usual. So Pacius on the News is gonna focus on the news. And of course, we all know what the news is. The news out of Washington, I was going to say that began on January 6th at the Trump rally, but really began, I was going to say again, the day after his election when he said he didn't lose, but it actually began long before that when he conditioned everybody and essentially said what he was going to do if he did lose, which is to say he won. For months, he's been saying, I cannot lose. I cannot lose. If somebody says, I lost the election, then it's a rigged election. It's a fraud. And of course, his followers who are many, I believed it, 70% of all enrolled Republican voters across the country believe it. And we're off to the races in a disaster for our, or could have been a disaster for our American democratic system. So I'm gonna do some reading. I'm gonna, because we don't have a dialogue, I'm gonna create a dialogue. I'm gonna read a few things that others have said. I'm gonna say some things myself. It's too bad we don't have it set up where you and the audience can participate, but maybe we'll do that another time. But I'm going to begin with something that I received in the mail. This is not a new story, but this is a statement, an email from Judge James T. Giles, who's a retired United States District Court judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, which is the Philadelphia side of Pennsylvania. Judge Giles writes, it remains to be seen if Donald J. Trump in his individual capacity is charged with a crime state or federal. He means when he's a private citizen. Right now, however, he is absolutely guilty as president of all Americans, of an impeachable, quote, high crime or misdemeanor, end quote, which does not have to be a statutory offense applicable to persons held responsible as individuals. He in his capacity as president, along with others of like mind, knowingly used and encouraged a mass assemblage of thousands of deluded people, displaying flags and symbols of hate and seditious intent to go to the Capitol and employ such unbridled action as they then found necessary to achieve their objective. Colin, the purpose, to prevent a representative government from functioning as required by the Constitution. Simple as that. Further, says Judge Giles, by his deliberate inaction, knowing of a violent effort to impede government, he ratified sedition. His is not a matter of protected free speech. I subscribe to what Judge Giles says as a lawyer. It makes sense to me. I thought it might be well to begin this evening's discussion with a little history. Those of you who have watched this program quite a bit know that I'm a big fan of history. And I believe we do learn valuable lessons from history. History isn't taught as much as it used to be in the public schools these days, but it is, I think, critical for citizens who wanna be discerning, knowledgeable, and understand what the government is doing. I have a large library, not the library that you see behind me is small in comparison to another room which is filled with books. I'm not the greatest reader. I'm a little slow and sometimes I skip around, don't read everything, but I'm interested in most of it is biographical and historical. I have maybe 10 volumes on Nazi Germany. I have some of the best stuff written. I have Albert Spears autobiography, the Nazi's autobiography where he tries to kind of go easy on himself. But lately I've been looking at a two volume work by a German journalist, Volker Ulrich, who writes for Dispiegel and is also a historian. So this was published in Germany, in German, and translated to English. This is the first volume. I also have the second volume. And the first volume is Ascent, Hitler's Ascent. And his date of his birth, 1889 to 1939, which was actually the beginning, the invasion of Western Europe, as opposed to Eastern Europe. And it's fascinating stuff. And I thought I'd read just a few excerpts from it. This chapter begins with a quote from Hitler. There's a lot of quotes in here. It's wonderfully footnoted and a lot of direct source material. Here's the quote. It's from Hitler. It is the miracle of our age that you found me among so many millions, Hitler proclaimed at the Nuremberg Party Conference on September 3rd, 1936, quoting again, and that I found you is Germany's great fortune. With these words, Hitler sought to suggest a mystical unity between himself as Führer and his followers. In a speech to his party's political directors two days earlier, he had already struck a pseudo religious tone, quote, once says Hitler in the days of yore, you heard the voice of a man and it touched your hearts. It awakened you and you followed it. When we meet here, we are suffused with wonder at our coming together. Not all of you can see me because the crowd was so grand at this rally. And I cannot see all of you, but I can feel you and you feel me. It takes a certain kind of person to say that and to think that about themselves. The author goes on to say such messianic rhetoric appealed to the desire of Hitler's followers who looked up to him as their supposed savior with an unprecedented willingness to believe. Much of the evidence suggests that Hitler also saw himself as such and believed what he told his followers. No one says the author could have foreseen how widespread the cultish worship of Hitler would become just six months after the beginning of his rule in Germany. The cultish worship of the Fuhrer was by no means just the product of clever campaign of manipulation. On the contrary, ethnic comrades, that's what Hitler called them, ethnic comrades, white Aryans, non-Jewish Christians. Ethnic comrades, male and female, fell over themselves to exalt Hitler, projecting all their hopes and desires under the figure of the Fuhrer and thereby divorcing their image of him even further from reality. The propagandistic staging of the Hitler myth and the eagerness of the masses to endorse and subjugate themselves to it encouraged one another. It goes on, I may read a little while from it, but it goes on and it's an incredible story of how popular, how devoted his followers were, how his device of rallies created such excitement and devotion as the author reports and delirium, people were nearly delirious. History helps us size up people, sometimes retrospectively because it's history, but all of us are obliged or at least would be helped to have the ability to size up people, whether it's people calling us on the phone with a scam and understanding that you're being scammed, people lying to us and having the ability to understand when you're being lied to, sizing up people. History does it, but all of us, maybe not all of us, but most of us have the innate ability to properly size up people we are dealing with. Hitler, it says in all of the biographies of Hitler was a malevolent person, he was malevolent, maybe looking forward or into the present. We see leaders about whom it may be said are malevolent. Hitler, it is said, was quote, a phenomenon, end quote, a phenomenon. We too, in the present and looking forward will encounter phenomenons. Hitler was quote, the German form of revolutionary, end quote. And as we look forward or in the present, we may recognize an American form of revolutionary. It is said about Germany in the 1930s that social factors, quote, accelerated Hitler's ascent. And perhaps in the present or in the future we will observe social factors that can accelerate such a political rise. It is said in all of these biographies that I have that Hitler had innate ability to instantly analyze and exploit situations. It is instinct for a leader to be able to do that. It does not take grand IQ or intelligence, instinct to instantly analyze and exploit situations. And Hitler because of that also had the ability to excite the masses. And finally, in these histories that I've read and maybe some of you have read, we see, we learn that establishment conservatives in Germany in 1932 looking for a way to put together a majority to ensure continued power, decided that they needed to have a coalition and they thought they were co-opting Hitler for their own purposes. Credit him with this. He reversed that notion. So now things have come to a head in this country and we have now the second impeachment of Donald Trump. I think the best place to start is with the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach the Republican president. Why? It's important to examine their motives. If one watched the speeches on the House floor yesterday from the 95% of the Republican members of Congress who voted against impeachment, we understand what their motives are. But it's extremely important to look at these 10, who they are and why they voted to impeach him. Because it wasn't because they're Democrats. It wasn't because they're against the Republicans. They are Republicans. Those, that large number of Republican congressmen who spoke pretty much all said the same thing. The Democrats, they say, are trying to embarrass Trump. They imposed him from the start. They imposed him from the start. They didn't want him to be president. This is their way of getting back, they said. Common themes. One of the things that I want to mention at this time was Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz didn't want to pass judgment on the president. He said, we need an audit. That's what he said. And people, I know people said, that's not a bad idea. What's wrong with auditing the election? That sounds, that seems to make sense. We're just, all we want is a commission to have an audit. And they can do it in the next 10 days, said Cruz. This, he said, after audit, after audit, after audit, state by state took place in order for each state to certify the results. Audit courts, every court, federal courts of appeal, the federal district courts, a hundred judges, a large number of them, Republican, many appointed by Donald Trump. They audited. They heard cases and they rejected every last one of them. And yet after all of this, Senator Cruz said, we need an audit. Everybody who's been paying attention knows that is BS. Clearly. Who can fail to see it for what it is. And we saw much of the same thing yesterday on the House for. So what about these 10? Liz Cheney. Now many of those people who spoke against impeachment yesterday, those Republicans want to get rid of Liz Cheney. She's the third ranking person. On in the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives. She called it. Remember that she, she's not one of these people who has a democratic agenda who wants to get rid of the Republicans who sees the Republicans as the enemy. She is one. She's the third ranking leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives. So what could her motives be? Well, here's what she said. She called it a vote of conscience. A vote of conscience. There's an unusual proposition for a politician in Congress, a vote of conscience. She said, quote. She wants to be on the right side of history. And make most mistake, make no mistake. All of us who've been paying attention to politics and government and history in our lifetimes. We know that history does render a judgment. And history will render a judgment. About the people who defended. Who defended the conduct of the president of the United States. And then she said, and you make up your mind whether this is. You think the truth. She had no reason to lie. Only bad things could happen to her. For voting for impeachment. Only bad things from her party. Criticism potential removal from her, her office as a third ranking member. She said, the president of the United States. Summoned this mob. Assembled the mob. And lit the flame of this attack. Period. She says everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the president. Now. She's onto something there that nobody else seems to be talking about much. She said, he summoned this mob. He did indeed. Because if you've been reading the newspapers over the past month. Donald Chay Trump. Has been talking about this. Assemblage. This mob scene. For weeks and weeks. He's been tweeting, don't forget January 6th in Washington. He's been urging all his followers to come to Washington. He organized the meeting. He organized the protest. Those are facts. Moreover. Make one other observation. In the weeks to come. There will be a very thorough investigation. Of how this happened. In our country. We will be. Sworn to tell the truth under oath. Documents will be obtained by subpoena. And particularly. Important. Is that people in the White House. Will no longer have executive privilege. And they can be summoned. By Congress. Put under oath. And the questions. And the questions will. Be many. And varied. But among the questions will be those directed to determine. To what extent the president of the United States or those working for him. Communicated with others. To organize and to make more effective the organization. Of this mob scene. That's going to happen. And a lot of stuff that I don't know. And you don't know. Is going to come out. We are going to learn a whole lot more. Than what we've already learned in the last week. You can count on it. Moreover. Some of it will be voluntary. Because in politics. And I know I've been there. When the ship is sinking. The rats jump. And for most of those people. Working for Donald Trump in the White House. They like most political age. Now look at history. And think about history. And they want to appear to have been on the right side of history. So many books will be written. There will be more books. And I think about Donald J. Trump's. Four years in office. Than about any other president. In American history. Count on it. Book after book after book. And those people who work for him. Will talk. Because they want to affect. How they are depicted in the book. And so so many of them. And I've seen them before in other administrations. But there'll be nothing like what we're going to see here. So many of those people. Will look at this as an opportunity to demonstrate to the public. I tried to stop him. I tried to talk sense to him. I tried to do the right thing. That's how they want to be depicted in the book. And they will talk. No question about it. You know, I, I worked for. President Johnson. And I think. One important distinction between Johnson and Trump. And there are endless distinctions. But one important one is that Johnson had been around Washington. His whole career. So. He was. I suppose the Trumpists would say part of the swamp. He was in member of the House of Representatives, the Senate, vice president and president. They've been there most of his adult life. And they've been there for a long time. They've been there for a long time. They've been there for a long time. How the place worked. Trump didn't. And one of the things he knew is that everybody talks in Washington. Everybody talks. When he became president. He inherited the Kennedy staff. Many of them didn't like him. Lyndon Johnson knew. That if he did anything untoward, if. Whatever he did. It would be reported. It would be leaked. He knew that. And you never read very much. About any. You never read about serious ethical problems with Johnson. He might have had his ethical issues previously. In the Senate in the house. But not when he was president. He had a big problem. The war. But no ethical problems. Because he knew. They would be reported. But he knew. The current president. Apparently that doesn't think so because he's always been in his office. In New York. And in his family. All powerful. In Washington. There's certain. Restraints on that. So. Liz Cheney. Good for her. Another. Of the. Group of 10 who voted to impeach. Adam Kinsinger. He's instructive to. What did he have to gain. Was he. He disliked the Republicans. Is he what Trump calls a Rhino Republican in name only. I don't think so. Go on Wikipedia. You can read a lot. About Adam Kinsinger. Who. Voted to impeach the Republican president. He was elected. In 2010. The Republican Tea Party wave. That's how he got to office. He's pro gun. He favors no restrictions. On the. Carriage of concealed weapons. Including across state lines. He's for repeal. And replacing. Of Obamacare. That's a great phrase. I love it repeal and replace. We have had four years. Of Republican leadership in this country. Not again. I have many good friends and Republicans. And sometimes I like what Republicans do better than. I like what Democrats do. But this. This is a sham. This repeal and replace Obamacare. Replace with what. You would have thought that somebody, some Republican senator. Or our Republican president. Who presided over. A huge government. Would have been come. Come up with a proposal. For replace. After four years of talking. Nothing. Not a peep. Lift service. Zero substance. It was a sham. Weren't telling the truth. They didn't have anything to replace Obamacare with. Act Adam Kissinger. He also opposed Dodd Frank. The. Regulatory statute. To regulate banks. And Wall Street activities. Those who are small investors. Have no problem. But anyway, Republicans were opposed to it. Adam Kissinger. Wanted to penalize. So-called sanctuary cities. That's not. A rhino position. He opposes. The. Regulatory statute. To regulate banks. And Wall Street activities. He opposes. Use of federal funds for abortion. He believes. Marijuana. Should be banned and criminalized. He voted against. The gay rights bill. Now is he afraid of. Defeat. What did motivate him to vote for. Voting against Trump and to vote. For impeachment. Maybe he's. Maybe he's in a district where he just squeaks by. No, that's not true. He's run five times. He gets between 60 and 70% of the vote. Each time. In his district. Not long ago. He said. The president has become. Unmoored. Not just from his duty. Unmoored. Not just from his. From his. Duty. But even his path. And he has been. Removed from reality. The reality itself. What motivates him to say that. I'd say he calls him the way he sees him. And he's not afraid to. And he's not afraid to think of the fear. These members. Of the Republican caucus have. That. Donald Trump. To whom 70% of the Republican voters are devoted to. To the Republican caucus. If he goes after you, he will destroy you. We've seen that time and time and again. Very destructive. So some of them fear for their future. For their political future. Kissinger goes on to say, look. When you have the president of the United States. In sight. And send. A mob attack on Congress. That is nothing short. Of an insurrection. Is he hallucinating? Is something wrong with him mentally. Coming to that conclusion. Or could. Most rational people. Come to that conclusion. In short. Is he telling the truth? He says. Most people. Can look at that. What the president has done at what happened. At that rally. And no. KNOW. And no, not guess. Not speculating. And no. The president. Has both built. The foundation. And executed the command. To do it. Even Kevin McCarthy. He said. The enormously partisan. Leader. Of the Republicans in the house of representatives. The leader. Of all those folks who state. Who stood up yesterday and said they oppose impeachment. Because this is just a bunch of Democrats. Trying to get even. Even Kevin McCarthy. Had history in his mind. Worried about what history would say about him. He said. Donald Trump. Is to blame. For what happened. With the assault. On the capital of the United States. He said it. He said it. And what did Donald Trump say. These are facts. These are quotes, you know, one of the. One of the things we have less of these days when we have these debates over politics is what somebody said. You know, I mean, everybody now records things with their camera. We have a recording and videos. Of most every public statement that every politician makes. Well, what are you going to say? I didn't say it. Oh, Trump says that. I mean, Trump will say something and then it'll be. A video. Somebody would be on camera. And. And then the very next day say I didn't say that. And he knows this is the tough part. He knows that millions of Americans will believe him. When he says, I didn't say. What that video says, I said. Disaffecting, you know it. You know this happens. So what did Donald Trump have to do with. That rally that. Ended up the way it did. Well, first of all, as I said previously, he organized it, come out about that. And he said these things. He said this to the people who were there with their clubs, with their trump flags, with their confederate flags. Stop right there. What do you think they carried that symbol with them for? What's that mean? Anybody have any doubt what the confederate flag symbol is for? It's for the last time that people said we won't stand for it. We're going after our government and they succeeded. And it's a racial symbol. No doubt about that. We see it in some places in rural Maine. I was driving up in the Tobago area yesterday. I saw the confederate flag and I know what they meant. And I know what they were trying to tell me about themselves. Proud of it. Very proud of it. So Trump said we won this election, we won it by a landslide. People believe that. Those people in that mob, they believe that he won it by a landslide. He said at the rally, we will stop the steal. That's the slogan, stop the steal. He knows it's this slogan. We will stop the steal. Those are fighting words with that crowd. He said we will never give up. We will never concede. It doesn't happen. That's what he said to them. But he is a bit of a coward because two or three days ago he did concede. He said Biden will be inaugurated. He talked about the incoming administration. So he really didn't mean it when he said we will never concede. It doesn't happen. He said you will have an illegitimate president if Biden is inaugurated. Illegitimate. Which presidents have been illegitimate? He might have been against them. He might wish that they weren't president. But illegitimate. Biden, he says, and one other. He used to say when Obama was elected, he said he was illegitimate because he was a foreigner. He was a Kenyan and he didn't qualify for the presidency. So now Trump has gotten both of them as illegitimate. He said if you, he said to these people, if you don't fight like hell, you won't have a country anymore. Those are tough words. You're going to lose your country. Man, you can see those guys with those flags and weapons getting fired up. They want to have a country. Now, here's the president of the United States, the most important person in the world. Tell them you won't have a country anymore unless you do what? Fight. Fight. And then he says we, this is the quote, we, we are going to the Capitol, said the president of the United States to this steamed up crowd. This crowd he incited, we are going to the Capitol. And what's the purpose of him inciting them to go to the Capitol? To stop the counting of the electoral votes. This is what we do in our democracy. We go through this process. He wanted to stop it. We know, how do we know he wanted to stop it? Oh, well, he called every member of Congress he could get hold of, say, you know, you got to do this for me. He went to his own vice president. He said help me out. Give me a, you know, help me stop this to the people in charge of voting in Arizona and in Georgia. He called on the phone and said help me out to the guy in Georgia, the Republican secretary of state. He said, get me some, get me some votes. And he told him exactly how many you'd like him to get. This is not made up. These are facts. So there is no doubt. Anybody who has watched what's happened over the last four years knows that Donald Trump is an expert on throwing gasoline onto fires, inciting people, inciting division. It reminds me of yesterday, the other thing in these speeches that these Republicans gave to defend him were the need for unity. We have to have unity, they said. In the name of unity, do not impeach this man. Unbelievable. That's unbelievable that somebody could say that with a straight face about a man who was devoted to disunity, who tried to divide, who used every cultural tool available to divide people. Used to say it all the time. He talked about scumbag Democrats. I happened to be a Democrat. I took offense. He's my president. He calls me a scumbag. Do you think these congressmen who are worried about unity, were worried about unity two weeks ago when they said to all of the people who voted for Joe Biden, including many Republicans, they said to them, it's the fake. It's a fraud. Your candidate did not win. That's designed to bring about unity. When in every other election, the loser has conceded in a gracious way and said, one country, we stand together and we hope to work together to make this a better country, not this guy and not these congressmen, not these Republican congressmen who gave substance to the lie, tried to give substance to the lie. Now, unity, come on, come on. Seriously, are we that bad? Are we that gone? Are we that delusion? So it is important to understand what these Republicans were talking about yesterday. The ones who voted to impeach. Things have gotten pretty bad in this country in terms of truth and seeing the same thing. When this assault was occurring and being televised on January 6th, I emailed a guy who I don't know well, but I like, he's a terrific writer. He's a very smart guy. He's very conservative, but I thought, I know other conservative people, and I think the way to deal with this is to find common ground, to talk to each other, because there are some things where, you know, I think we can be together in the middle. I have no doubt about that. So I emailed him and I said, have you seen what's on TV and what do you think? And he quickly returned my, he sent me an email back and he said, unfortunate, period. That was it about what was going on at the Capitol. And then went on for a paragraph about Black Lives Matter, riots in Seattle and Portland, Oregon, property destruction. All things actually happened during the Black Lives Matter protest. And then of course you have to, if you're a thoughtful fellow, you think about, okay, is there a distinction between a mob assault on the Capitol of the United States of America and some bad guys lefties who broke windows and started fires in Seattle or Portland, Oregon? That's false equivalency. That means you really don't care about what happened in the Capitol because what's really important is that Black Lives Matter is a bad thing for our country. That's what the real problem is, they think. The next day I called my oldest friend, a guy almost like a brother to me, another conservative. And what did he want to talk about? Black Lives Matter protests last summer. That's what we want to talk about. So it runs deep in this country, this division. And it's cultural. People, if you get into a discussion about Black Lives Matter, people say to me, at least, it's racist. Blacks are racist. And those who support Black Lives Matter are racist. I don't believe that. I understand why people say that, but I don't believe that. So now we're going to, you know, we've tried everything in the last week. They've suggested that these were anti-Trump people who infiltrated the assault on the Capitol. And I wouldn't be a bit surprised if, at some point, somebody is not embarrassed enough to say that there are Hillary or Obama implications in that assault, that one or the other or maybe both of them were involved in the assault on the Capitol. One other thing I want to talk about is rule of law. A lot of people left, right, center talk about how important rule of law is. I know that my close friend, who I mentioned just a moment ago when you talk about Black Lives Matter, protests, and he's a good guy, a really good guy, a smart guy. He says he's guided by rule of law. That's what's important to him, is rule of law. And I think I've thought about that. In his judgment, he is truly guided by his allegiance to the rule of law principle. And the example, I think, is Black Lives Matter protests, and particularly those that get out of hand. But you would think a rule of law person, and many people across the country would say rule if they believe in rule of law, and also are devoted. Some cases, not my friend, but in some cases, fanatically devoted. Fanatically, I use the word advisedly, devoted to the President of the United States. You would think that there would not be supporters of a President who said, accurately, accurately, I could shoot somebody dead on Fifth Avenue, and my supporters would not desert me. How many times has he been proven absolutely right? He knows. I do not understand. I do not understand why 70% of Republicans polled after January 6th even support Donald Trump. I do believe in the rule of law, and they claim they do too. But there can be no rule of law. It can be no rule of law if lies are accepted. There can be no rule of law, frankly, if people do not understand what is a lie and what is the truth. If they are totally confused about which is which, that erodes the rule of law. There can be no rule of law if evidence is ignored. Evidence, as opposed to conspiracy theories. Evidence, do not we know what evidence is? Many people have called for jury duty, so they see the process, process that I have been involved in in my career. They see the process where evidence is brought forth. It is challenged. It is substantiated. It is corroborated. It is evidence. It is facts, not conspiracy theories. They have had that experience with the American legal system. Yet, Kellyanne Conway, the president's assistant, said it is a matter of alternative facts. Imagine we have a trial in the superior court in Cumberland County. The defendant, after the prosecution rests and has introduced all of its evidence, had experienced cross-examination and it rests. Then the defense says, we have alternative facts and not only quote alternative facts, they are theories. Doesn't anybody believe, doesn't anybody who buys the lies, who ignores the evidence, don't they understand that that goes to the very root of the legal system that protects them? I just don't understand it. I was trained professionally that words are important. You can tell a lot from words. You can tell about a person's intentions. You can tell about a person's proclivities based on their words. Truth can be determined through examination of those words, questions about those words, reason, and logic. And so that I said writes well and a nice fellow and very conservative. He wrote an op-ed piece defending Trump before the election, urging people to vote for him, because among other things he said you don't have to love him. He said I do. He does love him, he said in this op-ed piece, but he said you don't pay attention to his words. Don't ignore what he says. Ignore what the president says. Ignore evidence. Words have meaning, not apparently for this guy. And he's a good fellow, but I don't understand it. He says don't pay attention to what the president says. If somebody cries fire in a crowded theater, those are just words, mere words. Don't worry. So there's a lot to digest. We could go on for a long time. I do want to add one other thing, because one of the things that I've been involved in over the years is public diplomacy. I was chairman of the United States Commission on Public Diplomacy for a number of years. And I am concerned about what other countries think about us. And I tell you why, because I've traveled all over the world meeting with people and governments in every corner of the world. And the United States, for many, was a shining city on the hill. They actually believed we were better, that we were exceptional. And they don't know, they don't know. A fellow who I've met a few times, Richard Haas, who worked, was a Republican, who worked in the Bush State Department, wrote this, and I'll end with this. From the beginning, the essence of the Trump foreign policy has been disruption of arrangements and policies that largely served the United States well for three quarters of a century. President Donald Trump's abrupt withdrawal from longstanding agreements and organizations, his attacks on allies, his embrace of authoritarian rulers, and disregard of human rights violations, his habit of announcing policy changes on Twitter with little or no consultation. All of this, I explained, would result in a marked decline in U.S. influence to the benefit of China, Iran, and Russia, and the detriment of global efforts to address climate change, infectious disease, nuclear proliferation, cyber threats. But the damage wrought by the events in Washington on January 6, the lawlessness and violence at the U.S. Capitol and the refusal by Trump and dozens of Republican members of Congress to accept the results of the November presidential election will be even greater, greater effect on U.S. foreign policy as well as U.S. democracy. We have gone from present at the disruption to present at the destruction. What took place last week was a distinctly American failure, but the consequences go far beyond American shores. A post-American world, one no longer defined by U.S. primacy, is coming sooner than generally expected, less because of the inevitable rise of others than because of what the United States has done to itself. Folks, we did it in four years. Unlike Richard Haas, I think we can come back, but we can't come back if a significant number of people, 70 percent of the Republican party, think there is not a problem. Thank you very much.