'Is this America?'

That sentiment was echoed by more than one House impeachment manager on the second day of the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, as they argued that the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 was the result of Trump's distorted version of it. It is reported that the ex-president was displeased by yesterday's proceedings. If that's the case, today's must have been even more dispiriting for him, as the managers, including Reps. Jamie Raskin, Joaquin Castro, and Ted Lieu, skillfully built a damning case against him, weaving in incendiary video clips, police audio, security footage, and screencaps of his own tweets. "This attack never would have happened but for Donald Trump," an emotional Rep. Madeleine Dean concluded simply.

• — "This was never about one speech." Rep. Eric Swalwell pointed out that Trump repeatedly called the 2020 presidential election "rigged" beginning six months before the election. He conditioned his supporters to believe that the only way he would lose the election was through widespread fraud. His supporters accepted that lie and, at Trump's urging, fought to reclaim the country from those who had perpetrated this alleged fraud against them, believing it was their patriotic duty.
   
• — "The violence was foreseeable." Del. Stacey Plaskett of the U.S. Virgin Islands demonstrated that Trump was fully aware that his incitement could result in violence. After exhausting non-violent means to overturn the election, through lawsuits and strong-arm tactics against state officials, Trump turned to his followers, who openly and loudly treated the event on Jan. 6 as a war. Their previous violent actions were praised by Trump—never condemned.
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• — "They were doing what he wanted them to do." Rep. Joe Neguse argued that Trump not only incited the attack, but had numerous opportunities to stop the attack and didn't take them, directly endangering Vice President Mike Pence and almost the entire U.S. federal government. Three hours later, he told the attackers he loved them and to leave in peace. How many lives would have been saved, Neguse mused, if Trump had ordered them to "stop the attack" with as much vehemence as he told them to "stop the steal." —CBS News
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  — Georgia on my mind. In building their argument, the impeachment managers presented Trump's attempts to overturn Georgia's election results as evidence of his campaign to thwart democracy. Almost simultaneously, prosecutors in Fulton Co., Ga., formally initiated a criminal investigation into Trump's phone call to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which he pressured him to "find" enough votes to help him reverse his loss. —The New York Times

What to do about Rudy?

New York federal prosecutors investigating Rudy Giuliani's activities in Ukraine raised the prospect of seeking a search warrant late last year for the ex-president's lawyer's communications. They were met with resistance from some Justice Department officials, who said a search warrant would be an "extraordinary step." Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen ultimately decided not to make a final decision because there would soon be a change in administrations. The matter remains open, and any decision going forward now rests with the Biden Administration. Stay tuned. —CNN

MORE: Justice Department directs Trump-appointed U.S. attorneys to leave —The New York Times

Rubin: Hope for electoral reform

"[A]t the state level, ordinary voters who found early voting or vote-by-mail convenient may be annoyed to learn that lawmakers want to make it harder for them to vote. Voting rights advocates, state legislators, and governors around the country are going to battle over such measures. With the closely divided Congress likely tied up with the pandemic and the economy, a good deal of the action will be at the state and even county levels. The result will determine just how much additional damage the Republican Party can do to our electoral system." —Jennifer Rubin in The Washington Post

Jennifer Rubin is an attorney and political opinion columnist at The Washington Post.

MORE: What absentee voting looked like in all 50 states —FiveThirtyEight

WHO: COVID-19 likely not from lab leak

After a four-week mission to Wuhan, China, the original center of the coronavirus pandemic, officials from the World Health Organization have preliminarily concluded that the virus that causes COVID-19 most likely jumped from one species to another before entering the human population—such as from a bat to a small mammal that then infected a person—and is highly unlikely to have leaked from a laboratory. "Did we change dramatically the picture we had beforehand? I don't think so," said Peter Ben Embarek, a Danish food-safety expert who spoke on behalf of the WHO delegation. "Did we improve our understanding? Did we add details to that picture? Absolutely." —The Wall Street Journal

MORE: Biden backs House Democrats' proposed threshold for COVID-19 checks —The Hill

Boot: Right-wing media keeps on keeping on

"[W]hile Trump is on trial, his media enablers are free to continue lying and inciting hatred—which is likely to result in more violence in the future. (And they are.) There will always be an audience for extremism, and it only takes 1.2% of the population (4 million people) watching a cable show to make it into a huge hit. The only real check on the behavior of the right-wing media is a sense of social responsibility on the part of their executives and boards. Which means that there is no check at all." —Max Boot in The Washington Post

Max Boot is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. 

MORE: Kent Harrington: Disinformation deconstructs democracy: Is the news up to covering the story? —Media Village

Focus on the insurrectionists

A leader of the far-right Oath Keepers militia group, who helped organize a ring of fellow extremists in the attack at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, has held a top-secret government security clearance since 1979 and worked as a section chief for the FBI from 2009 to 2010, after retiring from the Navy. Thomas Caldwell also ran a consulting firm that did classified work for the U.S. government, his lawyer said. Needless to say, most of the insurrectionists didn't have such high-level connections, but many share some other commonalities. —Politico

• — They're entitled. One insurrectionist requested only organic food in prison (he got it). Another asked to travel to Mexico for a work-related retreat (she was granted permission). Now, another man charged in the insurrection has requested to travel to Peru. He told the court in a filing yesterday that his fiancé currently lives there, and he is seeking permission to travel there to get married. His filing suggests that he has already scheduled and booked the flight. He's likely Peru-bound. —Insider
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• — They have money problems. Nearly 60% of the insurrectionists facing charges showed signs of prior financial troubles, including bankruptcies, notices of eviction or foreclosure, or unpaid taxes, often at rates higher than that of the general public. The financial problems are revealing because they offer clues for understanding why the insurrectionists—many with professional careers and few with violent criminal histories—were willing to participate in an attack in which the president painted himself and his supporters as undeserving victims. —The Washington Post
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• — They blame Trump. Or at least some of them do. In court documents and public statements, many insurrectionists who've been criminally charged argue that they were merely doing what the commander-in-chief had asked them to do. "You have to understand the cult mentality," attorney Clint Broden, who represents one of the insurrectionists, said. "They prey on vulnerable victims and give them a sense of purpose. In this case, Trump convinced his cult followers that they were working to preserve democracy." —USA Today

Darby: Don't laugh off QAnon

"If a person is already primed to accept conspiracy theories, the descent from strange beliefs to overtly hateful ones can happen particularly fast, which is why the post-inauguration period is so scary. QAnon's many followers thought that a 'storm' was coming—a reckoning that would destroy the 'pedophile cabal' once and for all. When that didn't happen on Jan. 20, acolytes were left asking why. Some realized their grievous error in judgment; others doubled down in their zealotry. Another cohort was left to seek a new dogma. They are easy prey for extremist hucksters eager to sell them a new lie. Already, researchers are noting chatter among white supremacists geared toward recruiting QAnon's low-hanging, disillusioned fruit." —Seyward Darby in The Atlantic

Seyward Darby is the editor-in-chief of The Atavist Magazine and the author of "Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism."

I just read the congressional staff's letter to their bosses, and it has added so much to my/our position on what took place on Jan. 6. It truly is time for all of those politicians that continue to support Trump, the lies, and the conspiracy theories to be removed from our Congress. —Kerry S., California

As I was reading about the disinformation war, a thought that continues to surface in my mind is the need for reporting to reveal original source materials, much like a dissertation must. We are in an age where performing our own fact checks has become paramount, and linking to original sources would greatly facilitate that, and IMHO, boost the credibility of the report. —Taylor J., Idaho

The views expressed in "What's Your Take?" are submitted by readers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff or the Stand Up Republic Foundation.