Sun: Will He Build a Golden Dome? Who Will Pay For It?

I'm Not Sure This is a Bombshell

According to a bombshell report from ABC News, one of Donald Trump's closest advisers has described the former president's actions behind the scenes during the Jan. 6 insurrection to investigators working for special counsel Jack Smith.

The report states that senior adviser Dan Scavino, who refused to talk to the House select committee investigating the riot at the Capitol, has been more forthcoming with Smith's probe and detailed Trump's reactions as he watched the violence unfold on TV.

According to the report, "Sources said Scavino told Smith's investigators that as the violence began to escalate that day, Trump 'was just not interested' in doing more to stop it," adding, "Sources also said former Trump aide Nick Luna told federal investigators that when Trump was informed that then-Vice President Mike Pence had to be rushed to a secure location, Trump responded, 'So what?' —which sources said Luna saw as an unexpected willingness by Trump to let potential harm come to a longtime loyalist."

The report adds that former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, ex-White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his former deputy, Pat Philbin, have also provided testimony.

This is a Bombshell

When You Negotiate a Deal with Pure Evil You Get Neville Chamberlain's Munich Agreement

Donald Trump at an Iowa rally on Saturday suggested that the existence of slavery, instead of culminating in the Civil War, should have been "negotiated."

Trump recently hit Nikki Haley with a new insult, saying that he thought “slavery is sort of the obvious answer" to the question about the purpose of the Civil War that tripped Haley up at an event. Now, at a rally, Trump had his own controversial take on the Civil War and how it could've been stopped.

He started off by saying he found the Civil War "fascinating," and added that he's "so attracted to seeing it."

"So many mistakes were made. See there is something that I think could have been negotiated, to be honest with you," Trump said, suggesting that slavery, the issue he previously acknowledged was the start of the bloody internal U.S. fight, could have been solved without any bloodshed.

"I think you could've negotiated that," he added. "But I think it's, you know Abraham Lincoln of course, if he'd negotiated it, we probably wouldn't even know who Abraham Lincoln was."

The comments immediately set the internet on fire, with Columnist Bill Kristol, who founded The Bulwark, posting on social media, "Trump on the Civil War. Worth watching because it’s revealing."

"Trump rambles on about how the situation could have been negotiated," the conservative commentator wrote Saturday. "But the one word Trump never utters is slavery. It never occurs to Trump that the fact the war ended slavery is…important."

"OMG!! As a historian, his utter ignorance of history and off the charts stupidity drives me extra crazy," an account called Spiro's Ghost posted in response to Trump's comments. "So we could have *negotiated slavery*, eh? Everything within his damaged brain is transactional."

Mark Maxwell, political editor at KSDK News, made an important note for context.

"Slavery was negotiated in the Missouri Compromise, which gave way to the Kansas-Nebraska Act," he wrote. "That’s what Lincoln was talking about when he said, 'this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free,' and the Union 'will become all one thing, or all the other.'"

The QOP in Michigan in Disarray

Mark Forton, chairman of the Macomb County Republican Party, said he has long been a supporter of tate party chair, Kristina Karamo and still admires her, but he ultimately concluded she has to be removed because of the people around her. "We have an election in 2024 and up until now the state party hasn't addressed any part of it," Forton said.

But the special meeting of the state party's governing committee had already been declared null and void by Karamo and her supporters. Karamo, who took office 11 months ago, said the meeting at a hall in western Oakland County was not convened in accordance with the party's bylaws. She did not attend Saturday's session and pointed to an authorized special state committee meeting, set for Jan. 13. [...]

So for now, Saturday's action signals further strife and disarray and possibly another in a long list of lawsuits in a party riven by divisions as its power has cratered in Michigan. Just before the 2018 election, the GOP controlled both chambers of the state Legislature plus the offices of governor, attorney general, and secretary of state. After the 2022 election, that full control was held by Michigan Democrats.

Who Won the Week?

The federal appeals court that gave the green light to a California law that bans the carrying of guns in most public places

Green energy milestones, as wind turbines from 2 offshore wind farm sites off Massachusetts send juice to the U.S. power grid for the first time

Israel's Supreme Court, for striking down Netanyahu's authoritarian power grab that would prevent judges from overruling government decisions by declaring them unreasonable

Folks living in the 22 states where the minimum wage went up on January 1st

The flight crew and passengers who helped everyone make it out of Japan Airlines Flight 516 alive after it collided with another plane and caught fire at the airport in Tokyo

U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Locher, for blocking parts of a new Iowa education law that bans books and imposes "don’t say gay" restrictions in the classroom

13-year-old Oklahoman Willis Gibson, the first human gamer to reach level 157 of the video game Tetris since its release in 1984

Illinois, which became the first state to enforce a law to outlaw book bans