Today is Friday, July 8, 2022. As I was putting on the finishing touches of my blog last night, I heard the awful news about former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe being assassinated on Friday, at the age of 67, during a campaign rally in the city of Nara as the former towering figure in Japanese politics was delivering a campaign speech to a small crowd before a lone gunman fired a homemade weapon into the body of Abe, thus mortally wounding him. The news of Abe’s assassination sent shockwaves throughout the world. In an opinion piece by Frida Ghitis for CNN, she offers analysis about Abe’s assassination and its impact on the world. Her piece is entitled “Opinion: Abe’s assassination came like a thunderbolt.”

Ghitis writes that such violence is rare in a country like Japan. She writes that his killing “adds to the sense of an unstable world in crisis – in which democracies, in particular, appear to be under siege.” She notes that the assassination of the longest serving prime minister has occurred at a time when violence, including political violence (thank Donald Dumpf for this), is surging right here in the dis-United States; when Ukraine is fighting for its survival against invading forces from an increasingly antidemocratic, aggressive Russia. It also comes just hours after the resignation of Britain’s prime minister, a key player in support for Ukraine, with no successor in place. Now comes this shattering moment.

The assassin was identified as unemployed, 41-year-old Tetsuya Yamagami, who approached Abe in front of a railway station in the city of Nara and fired away. There is no motive as of yet to the killing of Abe. Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi, Abe’s younger brother, called the shooting an “attack on democracy.” Across social media in Japan, the slogan “We want democracy, not violence,” started trending almost immediately. This reaction came after just one killing in this country of 125 million people.

The contrast with our country is just jaw-dropping and here are some of those statistics. In 2018, Japan reported a grand total of nine – nine – deaths from firearms. That year, the U.S. suffered 39,740 firearm deaths, according to public health data from the University of Sydney’s School of Public Health.

What is extremely ironic about the death of Abe is that The Japan Times was planning to write an editorial decrying America’s gun violence today. Instead, it wrote about Abe’s assassination, noting how in a democracy, “the murder of a former prime minister is an attack on us all.” Just as ironic, the editorial noted: “the reason Japan has no gun violence is largely due to the country’s strict gun control laws, written by America’s occupation forces after World War II.”

The murder of Abe cast the politician in a reflective light, as he did not shy away from taking controversial positions, which enjoyed strong support alongside bitter criticism both at home and abroad. He had very tense relations with China and very close ones with us. If you recall, only days after Dumpf was elected president in 2016, Abe traveled to New York to become the first foreign leader to meet the Orange Menace at Trump Tower in New York. That was a bad move, in my opinion.

Relations with the United States continued to improve, with an eye to jointly confronting potential threats from China and North Korea. In a statement today, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken praised Abe as an “extraordinary partner” who took US-Japanese relations to “new heights.” French President Emmanuel Macron called him a “a great prime minister . . . who worked to bring balance to the world.”

China, however was no fan of the assassinated leader. The country was not happy with Abe’s published op-ed in the Los Angeles Times in April in which he argued that, after the invasion of Ukraine, “The time has come for the US to make clear that it will defend Taiwan against any attempted Chinese invasion.” Despite its displeasure with Abe’s behavior as prime minister, a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, Zhao Lijian, expressed condolences and said, “We are shocked by the unexpected incident. Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had contributed to the improvement and growth of China-Japan relations.”

It is now Japan that joins a growing number of democracies facing turbulence. Witness the killings in Oslo, Sweden, during Pride month. Witness the mass shooting in Copenhagen on July 3, 2022, at a shopping mall where three people were killed by a lone gunman. This mass shooting was the first in Denmark since the 2015 Copenhagen shootings. “We’re living in a time of political polarization, social restlessness, and growing violence,” Ghitis writes. Even pacifist, nearly gunless Japan has experienced it. The killing of Abe in a remote city in Japan sends reverberations throughout this uneasy world.

In Dumpf World, White House counsel Pat Cipollone has finished an interview lasting almost eight hours with members of the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection. It was expected that Cipollone would have been asked about what he witnessed in the waning days of Dumpf’s administration when the former president and his henchmen tried to overturn the election. The interview was recorded on video and could be used at upcoming hearings, including one on Tuesday, about how the violent mob came together and what the role of extremist groups like the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, and the Oath Keepers in the whole sordid affair was. This new development is covered in an online CNN article by Annie Grayer, Zachary Cohen, and Ryan Nobles entitled “Pat Cipollone concludes closed-door meeting with January 6 committee.”

The former White House counsel’s appearance is the result of months of negotiations between his lawyers and the January 6 panel about what topics can be discussed. He had previously met with the committee informally in April.

Other witnesses have placed Cipollone in the thick of the action as he was with the former president as he watched the Capitol riot unfold on television from a dining room off the Oval Office, according to two sources familiar with the panel’s investigation. Cipollone could help shed light on the demagogue’s state of mind (does he have one?) as the violence was occurring.

One member of the committee who agreed to comment on Cipollone’s testimony, California Rep. Zoe Lofgren, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on The Situation Room today that in his testimony, he “did not contradict the testimony of other witnesses, and I think we did learn a few things which we will be rolling out in hearings to come.”

Here Lofgren was coy about whether Cipollone did corroborate the testimony of others like Cassidy Hutchinson who testified to that effect. She did say that Cipollone was candid with the committee and was careful in his answers, which made her believe in his veracity.

The importance of having Cipollone testify to the committee is underscored by the counsel being present during a key Oval Office meeting held on January 3, 2021, when Dumpf was considering replacing Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen with DOJ environmental lawyer Jeffrey Clark, because Clark, unlike Rosen, was willing to use the powers of federal law enforcement to back his baseless claims of election fraud.

In that crucial meeting, Rosen and Cipollone discredited Clark’s credentials for the job and categorically dismissed a draft letter Clark had written that falsely claimed the Department of Justice had found evidence of election fraud.

It is Rosen’s deputy Richard Donoghue who testified in an earlier committee hearing that Cipollone said of the drafted letter in that meeting, “that letter that this guy wants to send, that letter is a murder-suicide pact. It’s going to damage everyone who touches it. And we should have nothing to do with that letter. I don’t ever want to see that letter again.”

According to Cassidy Hutchinson, it was Cipollone who was against Dumpf calling on his supporters to march to the Capitol in his speech on the morning of the 6th and was particularly opposed to Dumpf joining his supporters at the Capitol. We all know how that turned out – with Hutchinson’s second-hand testimony detailing Dumpf trying to choke his Secret Service detail and demanding that he be driven to the Capitol.

Hutchinson said that Cipollone told her on January 3, “We need to make sure that this doesn’t happen, this would be legally a terrible idea for us. We have serious legal concerns if we go to the Capitol that day.”

When the violence erupted at the Capitol, Cipollone marched into the office of Dumpf’s former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, according to Hutchinson, and demanded they talk to Dumpf about doing something to intervene. We all know where that went. Nowhere!

Here Meadows informed Cipollone that the former president didn’t want to do anything to curb the violence and Cipollone said something to the effect of Mark, “something needs to be done, or people are going to die, the blood’s going to be on your fucking hands.”

It was reputedly Cipollone who wanted Dumpf to say that the rioters should be prosecuted and should be described as violent in his January 7, 2021, speech, but these lines did not make into the final version of the speech Dumpf delivered. The reason this language was supposed to be included, according to Hutchinson, was that there was “a large concern of the 25th amendment potentially being invoked.”

Before Cipollone agreed to sit down for an almost-eight-hour meeting with the committee probing the January 6, 2021, siege, GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, who serves as vice chairwoman of the panel, said this at the close of the fourth hearing on June 21. She said, “We think the American people deserve to hear from Mr. Cipollone personally. He should appear before this Committee, and we are working to secure his testimony.” And now he has! We can only conjecture what new information Mr. Cipollone provided the January 6 committee today.

Have a great weekend.

Stay safe and be well.