The Daily Fuckup

By Jan. 10, 2021, the fight in Washington was no longer about whether the Capitol attack was a grave breach of the line. It was. The immediate question was how House Democrats would respond, and how quickly they could turn outrage into a formal case against Donald Trump.

On that Sunday, Democrats were preparing a second impeachment effort and publicly signaling that Trump’s conduct after the election and before the assault would be central to their argument. But the impeachment article itself had not yet been introduced. That happened on Jan. 11, and the House voted on it two days later, on Jan. 13.

The case was built around a simple claim: Trump had spent weeks telling supporters the election was stolen, despite no evidence that it was, and that pressure campaign helped set the stage for the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress. When the mob breached the Capitol, Democrats said, the president had not merely failed to stop it fast enough. He had helped create the conditions for it.

That was the political reality on Jan. 10. The formal machinery of impeachment had not started yet, but the direction was clear. Democrats were moving to make Trump’s role in the attack part of the public record before he left office, and to force every member of Congress to take a side.

Republicans were not all in the same place. Some were beginning to break with Trump after the attack. Others were still looking for a way to defend him or avoid a direct rupture. But the old assumption that the party would automatically close ranks around him had already started to crack.

The next three days would settle the matter procedurally. Jan. 11 brought the article. Jan. 13 brought the vote. Jan. 10 was the day the push was taking shape, and the political break with Trump was already visible.