This is the last Jim-written Morning Jolt until June 20. Expect Alexandra DeSanctis and Isaac Schorr to step in for me next week. On the menu today, the House’s January 6 Committee holds its first prime-time public hearing and lays out how Trump cheered on the chaos on Capitol Hill; the new inflation numbers are really, really bad — again — as the country faces the psychological threshold of $5 per gallon gas.
What Should the Consequence for January 6 Be?
On a Thursday night in early summer, the House of Representatives’ January 6 Committee held a prime-time hearing, hoping to seize the public’s attention and get it to focus upon terrible events 519 days ago and put those events, and what the consequences for them ought to be, front and center in the public’s mind.
By and large, the committee told us what we already knew: Donald Trump simply could not accept any scenario in which he legitimately lost the 2020 election; he was — and judging by the furious statement he issued last night, still is — in an all-consuming state of intractable psychological denial. He immediately concluded that Biden’s win was illegitimate, with no evidence, and set about doing everything possible to disrupt the transfer of power. He wouldn’t listen to any evidence or facts, even when those facts were presented by longtime allies, and he would listen to anyone who told him what he wanted to hear, no matter how self-evidently unhinged they were. (This is not a habit Trump has since shed; think of his recent endorsement of Emerald Robinson’s column arguing that Georgia governor Brian Kemp’s 50-point victory in Georgia’s GOP primary was the result of voter fraud.)
Wyoming representative Liz Cheney reminded viewers that President Trump never expressed any disapproval of the bloody riot on Capitol Hill that day; in fact, he justified it, and contended on Twitter that lawmakers on Capitol Hill deserved it: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long.”
And she said that in subsequent hearings, the committee would lay out that President Trump wanted chaos on Capitol Hill:
“As you will see in the hearings to come, President Trump believed his supporters at the Capitol, and I quote, ‘were doing what they should be doing.’ This is what he told his staff as they pleaded with him to call off the mob, to instruct his supporters to leave.
“Over a series of hearings in the coming weeks, you will hear testimony, live and on video, from more than a half dozen former White House staff in the Trump administration, all of whom were in the West Wing of the White House on January 6th. You will hear testimony that:
“‘The President didn’t really want to put anything out,’ calling off the riot or asking his supporters to leave. You will hear that President Trump was yelling, and ‘really angry at advisors who told him he needed to be doing something more.’
“And, aware of the rioters’ chants to ‘hang Mike Pence,’ the President responded with this sentiment, ‘maybe our supporters have the right idea.’
“Mike Pence ‘deserves’ it. You will hear evidence that President Trump refused for hours to do what his staff, his family, and many of his other advisors begged him to do: immediately instruct his supporters to stand down and evacuate the Capitol.”
If the committee’s message of last night was, as Politico contends, that January 6 was really all about one person, it raises the question of just what the U.S. Department of Justice is doing about it. If the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys and QAnon Shaman are all comparably small potatoes and minor supporting characters in the narrative of events, shouldn’t the toughest consequences be reserved for the person who set all these terrible events in motion?
Congressional Democrats are asking that question as well. The current contention is that Donald Trump led an insurrection against his own government, attempted to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, and brought violence and bloodshed to the legislative branch — but somehow, he did all of that without violating any U.S. laws.
If a U.S. president tries to disrupt the actions of another branch of government through brute force and the direction of enraged mob violence, is the proper consequence a prime-time congressional hearing where various lawmakers and witnesses denounce him? Or is the proper consequence charging him with a crime?
May Was the Worst Month for U.S. Inflation Since 1981
Wednesday morning, I wrote that the updated inflation numbers due to be out on Friday would quickly overtake the January 6 hearing in the news cycle, and that “We don’t know precisely what the national inflation numbers for May will be, but we can all sense they’re not going to be good.” The consensus was that the inflation rate would at least dip a few percentage points to 8.2 percent.
Moments ago, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released the update:
The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 1.0 percent in May on a seasonally adjusted basis after rising 0.3 percent in April. . . . Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 8.6 percent before seasonal adjustment.
The increase was broad-based, with the indexes for shelter, gasoline, and food being the largest contributors. After declining in April, the energy index rose 3.9 percent over the month with the gasoline index rising 4.1 percent and the other major component indexes also increasing. The food index rose 1.2 percent in May as the food at home index increased 1.4 percent.
The index for all items less food and energy rose 0.6 percent in May, the same increase as in April. While almost all major components increased over the month, the largest contributors were the indexes for shelter, airline fares, used cars and trucks, and new vehicles. The indexes for medical care, household furnishings and operations, recreation, and apparel also increased in May.
May’s 8.6 percent inflation is the highest since December 1981, when inflation was 8.922 percent.
This morning’s news is depressing and infuriating enough, but we should also note that not every economy-watcher is convinced inflation already peaked:
Mohamed El-Erian, who almost a year ago accurately forecast that elevated US inflation would be persistent, says it hasn’t peaked.
The closely followed bond-market strategist agrees with monthly consensus estimates for May’s consumer price index to be reported on Friday, but told Bloomberg Television’s The Open on Thursday that “what worries me is that the June month-on-month print will be worse than the May month-on-month print. Those who boldly said inflation has peaked and is coming down may have to change their minds.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me if we see a headline print higher than 8.5%,” though “not as early as next month,” said El-Erian, 63. “Because the drivers of inflation are broadening. At the headline level, energy prices are going up month-on-month quite dramatically. We see pressure on shelter and food. It’s way too early to say inflation has peaked.”
Oh, and this morning, after the May numbers were released, Mohamed El-Erian added that, “If the first 10 days of June are anything to go by, the next monthly measure would be higher.”
Meanwhile, at Your Local Gas Station . . .
GasBuddy says the national average price of gas in the U.S. surpassed $5 per gallon Tuesday for the first time ever; AAA says gas is averaging $4.98 per gallon nationwide, and the Energy Information Agency says the national average was $4.87 per gallon as of June 6. (The EIA updates its national average once a week.)
I think Kevin accurately observes how significantly higher gas prices can annoy you, even if you’re doing well enough that you can afford it without major changes to your lifestyle:
One rich person I know confesses to paying no attention at all to the price of gasoline: “What am I going to do? Not fill up my car?” And as Hannity himself conceded during his rant, the price of gasoline will have no effect on his day-to-day life. But he remembers a time in his life when he was living paycheck to paycheck, when doubling the cost of filling up the car he drove to work would have meant cutting back somewhere else in the household budget. I don’t think he’s alone in that — I think it probably is a pretty common sentiment. I feel it, too: 2022 Kevin isn’t terribly inconvenienced by the price of gasoline, but he is a little bit miffed on behalf of 1998 Kevin, who was broke. (How broke? Ford Escort-with-185,000-miles-on-it broke.)
If you’re an incumbent who’s betting that abortion or gun control or the January 6 hearings will be a bigger issue in the November midterm elections than inflation and gas prices, you might as well start cleaning out your office now.
ADDENDUM: Over in the Corner, Jerry Hendrix, a senior fellow at the Sagamore Institute and a retired Navy captain, lays out why Ed Harris’s character — the grumpy rear admiral Chester “Hammer” Cain, who argues that the days of pilots are over and drones are the inevitable evolution of aerial combat — is the real hero of Top Gun: Maverick.