The 24 hours Alex Jones and Trump collided

It was a tough 24 hours for bullies, liars, thieves, hypocrites, traitors.

In an interval spanning Wednesday and Thursday, Alex Jones was hit with $965 million in damages and a House committee voted to subpoena Trump.

The Jones verdict came in a Connecticut defamation action filed by Sandy Hook families. In a similar trial (but with fewer plaintiffs) in Texas, Jones was hit for a “mere” $50 million. Obviously, the cost of lying in Connecticut is out of control. I blame Ned Lamont. No wonder so many liars are moving to Florida.

Jones will now begin the time-honored dance of avoiding monetary damages. Step-step-duck-pivothide. The plaintiffs will not collect anything close to the jury awards, but, when drifting off to sleep at night, it Is pleasant to imagine Jones eking out a meager existence as a carnival attraction.

As for Trump, any decent fortune teller would have told him to avoid the number 9 on Thursday. The Supreme Court voted 9-0 not to give him any help in the case of the classified documents he stole and stashed at Mar-a-Lago, and then the House Jan. 6 committee voted 9-0 to subpoena him after showing a highlight reel of his associates taking more fifths than Ulysses S. Grant stocking a battlefield tent.

Actually, one of the major fifth-takers in the Jan. 6 committee’s depositions was Jones, a walking throughline of American dysfunction.

Trump will probably fight the subpoena, although there are no guarantees. Ross Garber, who has represented more officials facing impeachment than probably any lawyer in American history, once told me that his first task usually involves talking his client out of testifying. Successful politicians want to take the stand, believing their silver tongues will help them dodge a silver bullet.

There are also no guarantees that the subpoena vote won’t backfire during the next two weeks, functioning as a turnout engine for Trump devotees. The committee had to know that when it voted on Thursday, but its members insist on clinging to the idea that a head of state who tries to steal an election by unleashing a violent mob on Congress should face some kind of consequences.

And not just a violent mob.

An incontinent mob. One thing we learned on Thursday is that Speaker Nancy Pelosi does not like it when you make a dookie in the hall of the House.

In never-before-seen footage, Pelosi complains about “defecation” by the rioters and, in a separate clip, says it may take time to clean up the “poo poo” the insurrectionists were leaving “literally and figuratively” around the Capitol.

Pelosi is a cool customer. You watch her in those Jan. 6 clips shown Thursday, with Ostrogoths swarming the building and demanding specifically that she be handed over to them. She’s on the phone to governors and cabinet members, asking for cops and troops, and she sounds like she’s calling Bergdorf Goodman to see if that jacket she likes is available in a different color.

In one clip an aide explains to her and Majority Whip James Clyburn that

Pelosi is a cool customer. You watch her in those Jan. 6 clips shown Thursday, with Ostrogoths swarming the building and demanding specifically that she be handed over to them. She’s on the phone to governors and cabinet members, asking for cops and troops, and she sounds like she’s calling Bergdorf Goodman to see if that jacket she likes is available in a different color.

House members are putting on gas masks in expectation of a breach, and Pelosi says, “Do you believe this?” in pretty much the tone used by those of us who were watching at home and in no danger of being torn limb from limb.

The scariest reveal from Thursday may not have happened at the committee hearing. Freedom of Information requests unearthed what appears to be an email sent to then Associate Deputy FBI Director Paul Abbate. The sender’s name is redacted, but the contents suggest an author within the bureau.

The email, written one week after the riot, describes “first-hand and second-hand” conversations within the bureau indicating that a “sizable” percentage of staffers sympathize with the rioters. The writer also claims that Black agents have turned down SWAT assignments, saying they don’t believe some of the white agents will have their backs.

The email pairs uncomfortably with Secret Service messages unveiled at the Thursday hearing that show agents chatting about the large crowd of armed protestors hanging around just outside the line of metal detectors on Jan. 6.

One of the lingering mysteries of the invasion is how so much advance intelligence could result in so few precautions being taken, and it’s beginning to look like part of the problem was that, to some eyes within the national security establishment, the attack seemed more like a justified blowing-off of steam than like a dire threat to democracy.

None of this will matter on Election Day. Threats to democracy are nothing compared to the rising price of Ore-Ida frozen hash browns.

This is especially true for Alex Jones who, if there’s any justice in the world, will spend the next decade clipping coupons and watching for sales.