Hearing the texts read aloud at this late date in the year does provide a sense of clarity. Many of Trump’s lies before this seemed to have little cost at all. Many of them had been brazened out until they produced a kind of success. The lies that Trump told that day to that crowd had produced this specific, televised disaster. Unfortunately, it was a predicted disaster. But almost everyone knew it was wrong while it was happening. It took effort to forget…

There is a kind of partisan kick-reflex that is surely active in many people reading this. The reflex kicks: The Left is at war with the Right. It kicks again: Stop punching to your right. It kicks again: Stop trying to police the Right and stop trying to make it respectable to the Left.

But it’s not them I care about. It’s simply the truth. Treating Trump like a baby whose feelings had to be coddled at the end resulted in Ashli Babbitt’s getting shot as she tried to break into Congress against a lawful order to desist. He could no more Stop the Steal than make Mexico pay for the wall. But, pay for his actions? Some people did.