Nearly two years ago, during the afternoon and evening of Jan. 6, 2020, I spent 10 hours watching events unfold on television that it never occurred to me I would ever see – a boiling, brawling assault on the U.S. capitol building. And the assault came from thousands of my fellow Americans.
How did we come to this? What does it mean, gingerly stepping off into a hazy future, yet all the while marching rapidly to the Nov. 8 general election, now less than three weeks away?
Last Thursday, I again watched about three hours of the 10th televised public hearing by the U.S. House of Representatives’ select committee investigating those January 2020 events. I added another six or so hours of channel- hopping for the news coverage and commentary. I wanted to pick up any new details and trends from different perspectives and to check conclusions.
There was a time not all that long ago when people coyly griped about not being able to tell the difference between Democrats and Republicans. Oh, no problem now today, what with the proliferation of cable news channels targeting specific audiences (and with a solid core audience comes ratings which affect revenues, but also little potential for growth).
“Niche journalism,” they call it. “Preaching to the choir,” I call it. I stuck with three – Fox, MSNBC, and CNN – to try to cover the waterfront.
Spoiler Alert #1: Donald Trump is in a heap of trouble. A mountain of trouble. A mountain of legal trouble, potentially including criminal legal trouble.
And it doesn’t stop with the federal fallout from Jan. 6. There is New York looking at suggested shady business practices. There is a Fulton County grand jury looking at his call to “find 10,870 votes” in Georgia’s 2020 election. And there is the Department of Justice trying to take back documents, including classified documents, that Trump took to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
During the hearing, Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney summed up the assault as a “pre-meditated plot,” finally triggered when Trump sent a text message condemning his vice president, Mike Pence, for cowardice. There are no guarantees that the right people and structures will be in place to stop such an event “next time,” she said.
“There is no evidence President Trump was duped or irrational,” she went on. “We cannot stop at the foot soldiers,” a reference to the 900-plus rioters arrested so far – and possibly the planners and enablers later.
The committee’s staff has taken 1,000 sworn depositions, with 30 taking the 5th Amendment to avoid answering questions.
California Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren summarized the committee’s evidence for the planning for Trump to claim victory early on election night. It included a demand to stop the counting (which could have led to a declaration of martial law and the military confiscating ballot boxes across the country).
The committee has emails of such plans on Oct. 31, a week before the election, as well as some indications as early as July. There is video of Steve Bannon’s Jan. 5 broadcast predicting “all hell” breaking loose the next day. “Strap in,” he said. Another Bannon video had him predicting Trump would make an early-evening claim of victory on election night.
Spoiler Alert #2: What news outlet you watch – and how it defines the news – goes a long way toward determining how you view such events.
At 4 p.m., Fox led with stories about the stock market, inflation, interest rates, and the likelihood of rising heating costs.
Later it was Venezuelans at the border, the court case involving the Steele dossier, and the political impact of the Saudis cutting oil production.
“The Five” show mentioned the Jan. 6 hearing, jumping on its timing 26 days before the mid-term election and characterizing it as a “kangaroo court.”
Tucker Carlson began his show with an attack on a favorite target, New York Rep. Alexandra O. Cortez, aka AOC.
Closer to 9 p.m., Sean Hannity noted the hearing, characterizing it as a “pre-ordained circus.” “We are not going to spend time on this,” he said. “The Democrats are hell-bent on abandoning American independence.” The two times I checked CNN in the late afternoon, they were in the midst of commercial breaks. Later, guest Bob Woodward would say, “It is something our grandchildren are going to ask, ‘What the hell was going on?’” Meanwhile, MSNBC devoted virtually all the evening to dissecting the finer points of the hearing. Nicolle Wallace called it “an open-andshut case.” Former assistant attorney general Mary McCord noted that in 2016 Trump had no drafted acceptance speech and that in 2020 he had no drafted concession speech.
Spoiler Alert #3: It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.
New issues are emerging, including the performances of the Secret Service and the FBI. Stay tuned.