Rep. Brian Mast is a craven, repulsive liar, however we will nonetheless reply his query

During the impeachment vote, Mast was one in every of many House Republicans trying to straddle the skinny line of claiming to be outraged by final week’s armed rebel in opposition to Congress whereas nonetheless insisting that Donald Trump’s position in inciting tried murders was not impeachable as a result of causes. The argument was insincere, lie-based, and about what you’ll count on from one of many traitors who himself egged on violence with hoax claims of election flaws that didn’t exist.

Indeed, Mast was a kind of lawmakers to rise in problem to the counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6 instantly earlier than a mob entered the constructing with the intent of capturing or murdering those that wouldn’t signal on to the identical Trump-promoted false claims. There is a direct line between Mast’s lies and a number of deaths, and between Mast’s lies and the now-broken chain of “peaceful transition of power” that lasted from the Civil War till the time Brian Mast was elected to Congress. He is a seditionist, and was earlier than the violence started.

One of Mast’s pillars of argument was that you could possibly not pin the armed rebel on Trump as a result of there was no proof Trump did the factor everybody within the nation noticed him doing: “Has any one of those individuals who brought violence to this Capitol been brought here to answer if they did that because of our president?” He mentioned this very smugly, like a silly particular person believing themselves to be the primary in historical past to note that the solar and moon seemed to be roughly the identical measurement, and waited for a response that he knew wouldn’t come as a result of speeches on the ground of Congress don’t usually comply with a call-and-response format.

Here ya go, sport. Video of the insurrectionists asserting that they had been “invited” into the constructing by Donald Trump.

We executed right here? Yeah, most likely.

There’s not going to be the wholesale expulsion of seditionists and traitors chargeable for these deaths as a result of the House Republican caucus is a group of criminals who absolutely intend to immunize one another even for rebel—they’ll purge the non-seditionists like (shudder) Liz Cheney and elevate essentially the most vocal promotors of the occasion’s democracy-attacking lies to ever-higher positions. That’s too dangerous, however it doesn’t absolve them of the provably false claims that led to murders and now to regulation enforcement warnings of a brand new doable period of conservative-stoked terrorism. They are nonetheless the rebel’s ringleaders, and it falls on all the remainder of us to deal with them with the suitable quantity of contempt and disgust for the remainder of their lives.

Rep. Brian Mast, your hoaxes and lies led to an try in your colleagues’ lives. You are a traitor to your nation. And you might be in crowded firm.