Donald Trump does not become president of a country by accident, although there has inarguably been a strong slapstick element to it. A country would first have to be depraved enough to produce a Donald Trump in the first place, and then it would have to go on getting progressively sicker in ways that permitted him to rise, through one egregious public idiocy after another and from one act of casual defilement to the next, to the sort of prominence that would make that presidential campaign possible. It would have to be sick in ways that would make it such that long before he inexorably won his party’s nomination and then the nation’s highest office, nearly every American knew his name. The country would have to be distracted and defeated and deluded enough to believe that this qualified him, and even qualified him in unique ways. It would have conflated not just who Trump appeared to be on TV with who he really was, but its own governance with unusually slow-moving TV programming.

Pence and Trump reportedly met on Wednesday morning, before Trump left to whip his supporters up into a violent rage, and it did not go well.

Spanish dictator Francisco Franco's family has finally been evicted from the summer palace it has occupied since 1938. The handover shows how Spain is starting to confront its past — but also points to the vast real estate and business power that still lies in the hands of Franco's supporters.

Among the speakers addressing the raucous crowd was Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney and face of his failed legal effort to challenge the election results in court. The former New York mayor walked on stage to “Macho Man” before calling on Trump supporters to settle the dispute over the election via “trial by combat.” Giuliani then assured the thousands of protesters that he was “willing to stake my reputation,” on the existence of election-altering fraud at play, ignoring the fact that such unfounded claims have repeatedly been laughed out of court. “And if we are wrong we will be made fools of,” Giuliani continued, as if that ship had not already sailed.

NEW YORK (AP) — A woman who wrongly accused a Black teenager of stealing her phone and tackled him while being filmed at a New York City hotel apologized but defended her actions in a television interview.

“The legacy of the Trump administration is going to be that the president sparked an insurrection and people died.”

Some Democrats are more afraid of backlash than they are concerned with making government work for people. Even the prospect of the government cutting Americans no-strings-attached $2,000 checks seemed, as 2020 ended, to send certain moderates and liberals into a state of mild panic, as they imagined the funds falling into undeserving hands.

Twitter, the president’s preferred megaphone, cited “the risk of further incitement for violence.”

Three New York Times journalists were at the Capitol when it was breached. Here’s how they experienced it.

The economic recovery is backtracking, and women — particularly women of color — are bearing the brunt of the job losses.

The astroturfed #StoptheSteal group that drew thousands of Trumpists to the Washington, D.C. rally on Wednesday that turned into a violent insurrection at the Capitol has strong ties with the influential Christian Right Council for National Policy.

The day after pro-Trump rioters forced their way into the Capitol building to take selfies and smear shit on the walls, the people responsible for cleaning up other people’s messes on the Hill were back on the job, using leaf blowers to collect trash and sliding mops across the floors. The wreckage included pieces of broken office furniture that Capitol workers wheeled out in carts. Photographs of a jumble of apparently disassembled desks were circulated online.

President Donald Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani both mistakenly made calls to Republican Sen. Mike Lee as deadly riots were unfolding at the US Capitol earlier this week, a spokesman for the senator confirmed to CNN -- calls that were intended for another GOP senator the White House was frantically trying to convince to delay the counting of Electoral College votes.

Increasingly isolated, the president has lashed out at loyalists like Newsmax’s Chris Ruddy—“I could move your audience in a heartbeat”—and had to be pushed by advisers and allies, including Lindsey Graham, to call Thursday for a “smooth” transition as 25th Amendment and impeachment talk intensifies.

Read to the end for a good tweet about memes

A West Virginia Republican state lawmaker who recorded himself storming the US Capitol during a deadly riot there earlier this week is facing a criminal charge, US officials announced Friday. Derrick Evans, a member of the West Virginia House of Delegates, has been charged in a criminal complaint with entering a restricted area and entering the US Capitol, said Ken Kohl, a top official in the US attorney's office for Washington. The complaint will be made publicly available later Friday. Evans' lawyer, John Bryan, told CNN he hasn't yet seen the complaint and declined to provide any comment on the charge. The charge comes as federal authorities begin to arrest and bring charges against some of the scores of people who participated in the riot at the Capitol on Wednesday, which was incited in part by President Donald Trump and resulted in the deaths of five people, including a US Capitol Police officer.

Federal authorities have arrested Proud Boy Hawaii founder and alt-right media personality Nick Ochs in connection with the deadly pro-Trump rampage through the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. In an indictment unsealed in D.C. District Court, Ochs—who promotes his extremist opinions online as part of the “Murder the Media” podcasting and Youtube crew—is charged with trespassing into a restricted building. Attempts to reach him were not immediately successful, and it was unclear if he had an attorney. Multiple photos of Ochs partaking in the mayhem appeared online and in the press during and after the attack on the Capitol—including a selfie Ochs shared on his Twitter account smoking a cigarette in the building.

Security video obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive under a public records request clearly shows Rep. Mike Nearman, a Republican from Independence, open two doors to the Capitol during a Dec. 21 special legislative session, allowing violent demonstrators who were protesting immediately outside the door to illegally enter the building. Oregon’s Capitol was and is closed to the public due to the pandemic, although journalists are allowed inside to report on proceedings and the meetings are streamed live and archived online. The demonstrators, many of whom were unmasked and some of whom carried rifles, objected to the state’s coronavirus restrictions and sought to disrupt the session underway. State troopers and Salem police ultimately prevented them from entering the building’s rotunda or reaching the House or Senate chambers, but not before some of the rioters allegedly sprayed six troopers with a chemical substance that was reportedly pepper spray. The video shows spray being deployed. Some demonstrators physically attacked journalists who were reporting on the event. At least one person was arrested after trying to enter the Capitol by breaking the window in a door. People also gained entrance without breaking in — and this security footage shows exactly how. At least two people have so far been arrested on charges related to the breach on the morning of Dec. 21. House Speaker Tina Kotek said on Thursday that legislative leaders were exploring how they could sanction any lawmaker who aided rioters in forcing their way into the Capitol on Dec. 21. Oregon State Police are investigating the incident, she said.

Flynn and Powell both met with Trump at the White House in recent weeks as part of efforts to overturn the election results.

Meanwhile, crucially, the same evening, after the Capitol was cleared, the legislators moved back under heavy military presence and… many of them proceeded to vote to throw out the results of the election. Eight GOP senators and 138 GOP representatives (65% of the GOP caucus in the House) still objected to the electoral votes being certified.  Stay with me because that’s the most important part. That’s the reason why this matters so much: not just because of how outrageous it is to have thousands of people overrun our Capitol, but because they had allies who shared their objective, strong allies, at every level of government from the executive to the legislative.