Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. It's Friday, December 17th. I'm Nyla Boudou.

Today, for our last podcast of the year, we turn the mic over to you to share your best moments of 2021.

But first, the year in politics, with Mike Allen, Margaret Taliv, and Alexi McCammand, is today's one big thing.

On Fridays on Axios today, we often wrap up the week in political news.

Well, since this is the last Friday of the show for this year, before our team takes some time off, we thought we'd go big and a little longer than normal and wrap up the entire year, with three of our favorite Axios political voices.

Co-founder Mike Allen, managing editor for Politics, Margaret Taliv, and political reporter Alexi McCammand.

Good morning, and welcome.

Thanks, Nyla. Great to be here. Thank you.

And Nyla, congratulations on an awesome year for Axios today.

Thank you. Mike, let's start with you. If we go back to the very start of this year, I'm just thinking about the photo of the year that you were just talking about this week.

And it was from January 6th. It was of the Capitol insurrection, and we're still talking about it.

In December, how had did that shape this year in politics?

Spoiler alert. It's also going to shape all of next year. Strong indications. The 1-6 committee will go all the way past the midterms.

But why shaping conversation? It matters. I think that in the moment, we were sure is this the 9-11 for Margaret's daughter.

And increasingly, it definitely was a 9-11 for democracy. And it's one of those situations where we just keep horning more.

It does fundamentally matter whether Americans believe that their vote counts and that a vote has to stand, whether or not you disagree with it.

And the revelations of this committee, the text messages among President Trump's closest advisors on that January 6th day, some of the other documents.

This is not just a political probe. This is a substantive connecting of the dots to help Americans understand for now and for history.

What happened on that day and how we got to that point?

Yeah, so we're told that the chief of staff at the end of the Trump administration, Mark Meadows, turned over 9,000 documents.

What have we seen like six of them or something? There's much more to come, including a text that we've seen from another member of Congress that says,

Mark Meadows, check your signal. Now, anyone in journalism knows what that means. It's like the old pick up the phone, right? Like you're trying to lose your paper trail.

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