UNFIT: Conservative media outlet drops support of Trump as a “disgrace”
After Cassidy Hutchinson’s powerful testimony before the House Select Committee investigating January 6th last week, the conservative media outlet The Washington Examiner is calling ex-president Donald Trump a “disgrace,” saying the twice-impeached former guy is “unfit to be anywhere near power ever again,” continuing Trump’s downward spiral out of conservative media’s good graces.
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The conservative Washington Examiner: “Trump is a disgrace. No one should think otherwise, much less support him. The testimony ought to ring the death knell for Trump’s political career. He’s unstable, unmoored, and heedless of his sworn duty. Trump is unfit to be near power.” pic.twitter.com/yWB2tn9PyE
— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) June 29, 2022
Hutchinson’s testimony – both compelling and shocking – gave the public an insider account of the events of January 6th. As a senior aide to then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, the 26-year-old was literally in the room where it happened.
Though Trump and his allies tried to discredit the former intern-turned White House official, The Examiner described Hutchinson as “a conservative Trumpist true believer and a tremendously credible one at that.” Going on to say:
“What Hutchinson relayed was disturbing. She gave believable accounts of White House awareness that the planned Jan. 6 rally could turn violent. She repeated testimony that Trump not only knew that then-Vice President Mike Pence’s life had been credibly threatened that day but also that he was somewhere between uncaring and actually approving of Pence’s danger.”
While Hutchinson dropped many bombshells in her public testimony, it was her description of an alleged altercation between her former boss and Trump’s head of security, Robert Engel, that got America’s attention. According to Hutchinson, Trump was so enraged that Engel refused to take him to the Capitol to “march” with his supporters, he tried to grab the steering wheel and lunged at the secret service agent.
This painted Trump, in the words of The Examiner, as “unstable, unmoored and absolutely heedless of his sworn duty to effectuate a peaceful transition of presidential power.”
Despite not-so-veiled threats insinuating that she needed to be a “team player,” Hutchinson reached out to Trump’s former communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin to put her back in touch with the Select committee. Represented by a Trumpworld attorney during her previous interviews, Hutchinson told Griffin there was “more she wanted to share.” After Griffin connected Hutchinson with Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), the former aide dropped her Trump-connected legal team and testified publicly.
As Trump teases a 2024 announcement of another run for the presidency, it seems his once-loyal conservative media outlets are now less than enthusiastic. They are jumping off the Trump train before it goes completely off the tracks. As far as The Examiner goes, they’re looking at other options, and when it comes to Trump “No one should think otherwise, much less support him, ever again.”
Original reporting by The Washington Examiner and by Josephine Harvey at Huffpost
Follow Ty Ross on Twitter @cooltxchick
