The big purge.

Trump fans ditch Twitter en masse after president’s suspension

Trump superfans are heading for the exits.

Just hours after President Trump was permanently banned from Twitter, his diehards on the platform vowed they would move on as well.

“Goodbye Twitter” trended during the early morning hours Saturday as people continued to come to grips with the leader of the free world being deplatformed.

“Goodbye Twitter friends. See you @parler,” said one user, citing a more pro free speech social media alternative to Twitter that is popular with conservatives.

“I’m a small MAGA account and I have lost 400 followers in 3 days. Goodbye Twitter. You don’t want me, I don’t want you. I’m at Parler @snakeoil. I hope PATRIOTS will come join me! ❤Flag of United States.” said another unhappy user.

omg, his Parler handle is ‘snakeoil’. You can’t make this stuff up.

big, precipitous drop has come in recent hours,” said conservative columnist Byron York.

Ryan Fournier, founder of Students for Trump, said he was off by 60,000 over a three day period.

In a statement, Twitter confirmed they are also purging accounts without verified ID information, which is likely adding to the exit count.

I’m going to try this, lol.

How to dress yourself happy, one feelgood outfit at a time

by wearing bright colours you project an energy and warmth into the world that gets reflected back. The sunshine of a yellow cardigan beams back at you, not only from the mirror, but from the faces of people who smile when they see you. The enforced isolation of the past year has made many of us feel we have become invisible beyond our domestic set-up. Wearing a bright red coat next time you go for a walk is one way to combat that.

I know that I love seeing someone rocking a cheery and/or interesting outfit. It’s time for me to give back a little!

Biden, who ran on unity, now leads a party furious at GOP

Biden, speaking to reporters in Wilmington, Del., essentially offered a divided response, calling some Republicans “shameful” and praising others for their “enormous integrity.” He said his goal of bipartisanship is, if anything, more achievable after Wednesday’s assault on the Capitol, citing Republicans like Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who he said has talked to him in disgust about the rioters.

“I think it makes my job easier,” Biden said. “We must unify the country.”

Biden’s tone was at odds with the fury voiced by many Democrats, especially on Capitol Hill, whose frustration during four years of Trump’s presidency boiled over after a pro-Trump mob broke into their hallways and offices.

While Biden excoriated Cruz, he stopped short of calling on him to resign, saying instead that he and others should be “flat beaten next time they run.” And his message for the GOP more broadly was more conciliatory, though he suggested that the party can and should change.

“We need a Republican Party,” he said. “We need an opposition that is principled and strong.” Biden also praised those who he said have “enormous integrity,” including Romney, who has denounced the election challenges in blunt terms.

In Capital, a G.O.P. Crisis. At the R.N.C. Meeting, a Trump Celebration.

AMELIA ISLAND, Fla. — In Washington, Republicans were dealing with a burgeoning crisis in their ranks, with high-profile resignations and bitter infighting over how to deal with an erratic and isolated president. But at the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting on Friday, most party members were operating in a parallel universe.

In a chandelier-adorned ballroom at the seaside Ritz-Carlton here, there was no mention of President Trump’s disruption of the coronavirus relief package or his phone call to the Georgia secretary of state demanding that he help steal the election, both of which contributed to Republicans’ losing control of the Senate.

And while the R.N.C. chair, Ronna McDaniel, condemned the attack on the Capitol, neither she nor any other speaker so much as publicly hinted at Mr. Trump’s role in inciting a mob assault on America’s seat of government.

Even as the president faces a possible second impeachment proceeding, this collective exercise in gaze aversion was not the most striking part of the meeting. More revealing was the reason for the silence from the stage: Party members, one after another, said in interviews that the president did not bear any blame for the violence at the Capitol and indicated that they wanted him to continue to play a leading role in the party.

“I surely embrace President Trump,” said Michele Fiore, the committeewoman from Nevada, where Republicans have lost two Senate races and the governorship since 2016. Ms. Fiore, who was sporting a Trump-emblazoned vest, said the president was “absolutely” a positive force in the party.

The fealty to Mr. Trump was made plain on Friday when the state chairs and the committeemen and women who make up the R.N.C.’s governing board unanimously re-elected Ms. McDaniel, Mr. Trump’s handpicked chair. They also reappointed her co-chair, Tommy Hicks, who was first appointed to his post because of his friendship with the president’s eldest son.

Will a tug of war develop between the establishement neocons vs. the Trump family?

Mr. Trump is the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over the loss of the White House, the House and the Senate in a single term and will be the first since Andrew Johnson to boycott his successor’s inauguration. That hasn’t yet fazed the Republican rank and file.

Privately, a group of Republican officials, mostly those from the pre-Trump establishment wing of the party, said that they were appalled by the president’s conduct and that Ms. McDaniel had been candid about the party’s difficulties behind closed doors.

These Republicans predicted with more hope than confidence that once Mr. Trump was out of office, the ardor for him in the conservative base would cool.

Yet for now, the flames still burn.

Mitch McConnell outlines what a second Trump impeachment trial might look like

With the likely second impeachment of President Donald Trump looming, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell circulated a memo to GOP senators on Friday detailing the timeline for a potential impeachment trial.

Any impeachment proceedings would begin in the House of Representatives, but should the House vote to impeach, as it likely would due to its Democratic majority, action would then move to the Senate for a trial.

According to the memo, which was obtained by the Washington Post, a Senate impeachment trial would likely begin no sooner than the week after next, on January 19 (a Tuesday) — which means a trial could overlap with President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20, and conclude only after Trump is no longer president.

Some Democrats, however, have argued that McConnell’s timeline is a deliberate slow-rolling of the impeachment process.

It pains me to quote Adam Schiff, but here goes:

“Mitch McConnell is the master of the Senate rules, for well or for ill — and it has been for ill,” Schiff said Friday. “Here he is saying essentially he will drag this out. If Mitch McConnell wants to move with expedition, he knows how to do it. And if he doesn’t, then he will bear the responsibility for whatever dangerous acts this president commits.”

And some Democrats believe the trial process could stymie the earliest days of the incoming Biden administration. An impeachment trial takes automatic precedence over other business on the Senate floor until its conclusion, and thus could push back Senate confirmation of Biden’s Cabinet after he takes office.

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, expressed concern about that possibility Friday.

“We have to put our government together quickly — that’s the most important thing we should do,” he said, according to the Washington Post. “We don’t need any more political theater.”

Biden, for his part, has declined to weigh in on whether he believes Trump should again be impeached.

“That’s a decision for the Congress to make,” he said Friday.