 And Trump asked us to come. He personally asked for us to come to DC that day. I know why I was there and that's because he called me there. But I remember Donald Trump telling people to be there. Basically, yeah, he asked for us to come to DC. Big things are gonna happen. What got me interested, he said, I have something very important to say on January 6th or something like that. Well, the first of seven hearings by the select committee on January 6th just concluded. And I wanted to share my immediate thoughts, having just watched it. It's still fresh on my mind. And I wanted to give you some key takeaways. And before I say anything, before you hear my commentary or anyone else's commentary, I just want to highly recommend that you watch this yourself. Don't take it from someone else. Watch it yourself. I think this is really important. And genuinely, I believe that this is a turning point for democracy. Either we go forward and protect democracy, or we don't do anything about what we witnessed and we potentially see democracy and very, very soon in this country. And I don't believe that that's hyperbole. I think that after having just watched all of that, if Donald Trump takes power again, it's evident that he's not going to give up that power. And that's the one thing that really kept going through my head. After seeing the footage again, a really long montage about the way this attack was very deliberate and planned by the Oathkeepers and the Proud Boys. What was evident is if the people in power, if Donald Trump are not held accountable, this will happen again. And the next time, they're going to be successful. Now, before I tell you what I think the outcome should be, which I think is probably pretty obvious, the main takeaway for me from this whole hearing is that it is now abundantly clear that January 6th would not have happened had it not been for Donald Trump inciting it. Trump directly incited that insurrection on the Capitol. They planned everything around Donald Trump's words. And the individuals who were conducting this hearing did not mince words. They used words such as sedition. They said Trump knew that he lost this election. He told people, specifically justice department officials, after William Barr had resigned, and these were the individuals who replaced Barr, I believe, just say that the election was corrupt. So this was very deliberately an attempt for Donald Trump to remain in power unconstitutionally. And I know that most of my viewers already know that. But I feel like this is really the first time where the American people are seeing a cohesive narrative. You're not just seeing a clip here or a clip there or a tweet from Trump here or there. You're seeing it all together in chronological order. And it's evident Trump did this. Now, I want to jump ahead for a moment because they shared a little bit of a preview of what's to come on June 13th, which is when part two of the seven-part hearing resumes. And individuals who showed up said very clearly, Trump invited us. That's why we're here. They were reading Trump's tweets during the insurrection. They were there because of Donald Trump. And because Trump failed to overturn the election via the courts, this was the culmination of his effort to steal the election, January 6th. And that's specifically the way that they worded it in this hearing. Now, there were multiple people around Donald Trump, people within the White House who were threatening to resign, people who were trying to talk sense into Donald Trump. William Barr is saying the claims of fraud are bullshit. The fact that this voting machine is rigged is complete bullshit. And these are individuals who, in theory, should want to help Donald Trump because they want to stay in power too, obviously, but they lost the election. So everyone seemingly is trying to talk sense into Donald Trump. And even though he knew that he lost, this is what they say, I'm assuming that they're going to at least provide us with some more information about why he said he knew. According to them, did he say that he knew? We're not necessarily sure. Did he buy into his own delusions? It's hard to say. But they claim that he knew. And you have to base that on what people are saying. Ivanka Trump, they shared a portion of her testimony where she talked to Bill Barr and she said she believed him. So Trump knew what he was doing. Trump was trying to get people to go to the Capitol to steal the election. Now, there's very specific ways that Trump incited violence. For example, the debate with Joe Biden when he refused to denounce white supremacist groups who were supporting him and he said stand back and stand by. They pointed out how membership for the Proud Boys tripled, tripled. There was evidence of the Oathkeeper leader and the Proud Boy leader, Enrique Tario, basically meeting together. We haven't seen this footage before, but they were meeting together. I don't know if it was the day before January 6th or prior to January 6th, a couple of weeks or so, but they planned this attack, trying to look for weaknesses in the Capitol building. You know, Trump, they played his speech about how Mike Pence, he can save us. He can stop all of this. I hope he does the right thing. If he doesn't, I'm going to be very disappointed, you know, that led to the crowd chanting, hang Mike Pence. And Trump said, and we already knew about this, but Trump said that well, maybe they should hang Mike Pence. Maybe he deserves it, something to that effect. So, I mean, none of this is particularly shocking to me, but it truly is powerful, I think, to see it all put together like this. I think that the people who put together this hearing, as much as I love almost all of them, I think they did a good job here. I have to commend them for that, because they did put it in very plain terms for the American people. This is not about partisan affiliation. This is not about if you supported Trump or Biden. I hate both of them, not equally, but I don't like both of them as an individual, right? But this is literally about American democracy. Out of all the presidents we've had, there has been one that has tried to stay in power illegally and against the will of the American people. And that's Donald Trump. And they kind of stated that at the very beginning, because that's really important. So, you know, there's there's a lot watching it take place, watching the attacks, how violent it was. It really was shocking. But the main thing that I couldn't shake from my mind was this has to end in Donald Trump being in prison. Now, the select committee can't, you know, prosecute Donald Trump themselves. They can only make a recommendation. But if this leads to no accountability after they just presented everything very clearly, then I promise you democracy is not long for this world. Because either Donald Trump will run again, win and actually stay in power after learning where he failed in 2020, or someone else who's more strategically savvy, who's smarter than Trump, will do what he couldn't do. It's a turning point either as a country, we come together, put aside our differences on other issues and acknowledge that on this narrow area, we at least believe that we've got to have a democracy. I don't like Republicans. Republicans don't like me. But if we both lose our collective ability to at least influence our leaders, I get that, you know, our democracy functionally doesn't work anymore. It's an oligarchy. But if we don't even have the capacity to choose our leaders, our country as we know it is dead. So what we need is just a minimal understanding as every single American. Are we going to protect democracy and acknowledge that even if they don't go our way sometimes, even if we hate the people in power, are we at least going to maintain our ability to choose our leaders? Now, to me, this question will be answered based on whether or not Trump goes to prison. Now, unfortunately, I don't think our institutions are strong enough to lead to the prosecution of the former president. But everything that they're showing us here, I mean, it makes it very clear that there was a grave threat to democracy. Trump was a threat to democracy and still is. So if nothing comes of this, if we get all of this information and our leaders do nothing, all hope is gone. Democracy is dead. And this is part one of seven. So by the end of it, who knows how we'll all feel. But if nothing happens, I think that Vash put it best on Twitter. He said, you know, if nothing happens, this is just a preview of what they're going to do to us again. Sure, we're looking back, but they're going to do this to us again. And the next time they're going to successfully pull off a coup. Now, the worrying part is this is all, you know, we're learning about this again or reliving it, I should say, in the context of Trump trying to remake the Republican Party in his own image. Trying to oust individuals who don't believe that the election was stolen, who won't buy into his lies. You have individuals in state legislatures trying to do everything in their power to have control over the election process. Take it away from local officials, put it in the hands of state legislatures, give them the authority to appoint their own rogue electors. And the hearing is going to get to that as well. The reason why I think this one is so important is because they lay out the outline, what to expect from these seven hearings. But what we're seeing right now is I think the lead up to either the death of our democracy or saving our democracy. That's not to say that America is going to be a stable country. But if this does not lead to every single American and these hearings do not lead to every single American taking democracy itself seriously and just establishing at a bare minimum. Our right and committing to our right to maintain the right to have a democracy that we have right now at least then we're doomed. So, you know, this hearing was really, really powerful. The videos were powerful. I think it was presented in an important way. Sometimes you can cut out some of the fluff I think and maybe if they condensed it down to four segments instead of seven and did it back to back to back. I think that that would probably be more powerful, but it's really damning. It's really, really damning. And if Trump does not land in prison as a result of this, if he's not prosecuted and jailed because of this, he's going to run and win. And that's the end of democracy in the United States. And if you don't believe me, then watch the hearing. And I feel like you'd have to come to that conclusion if you're a serious person, if you're watching it objectively, putting aside your biases because it's not about Trump or Biden. It's about democracy itself.