Footage was aired of testimony by former US Attorney General Bill Barr saying he had repeatedly told the former president that he had lost the election and his claims of fraud were wrong.
We can’t live in a world where the incumbent administration stays in power based on its view, unsupported by specific evidence, that there was fraud in the election
, said the former attorney general.
The hearing also featured a recording of testimony by Ivanka Trump, the ex-president’s daughter, saying she accepted
Mr Barr’s rejection of her father’s conspiracy theory.
And there was an audible gasp in the committee room as Ms Cheney read an account that claimed Mr Trump, when told the rioters were chanting for Vice President Mike Pence to be hanged for refusing to block the election results, suggested that he deserves it
.
Mr Thompson, the committee’s chairman and a Mississippi lawmaker, told the hearing: Jan 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup, a brazen attempt, as one writer put it shortly after Jan 6, to overthrow the government.
The violence was no accident. It was Trump’s last stand.
Ms Cheney, the vice-chair of the committee and a Wyoming congresswoman, said: Those who invaded our Capitol and battled law enforcement for hours were motivated by what President Trump had told them: that the election was stolen and that he was the rightful president.
President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack.
Jude SheerinI can’t say I have followed these proceedings too closely, but one thing struck me as I listened to a podcast on the subject: the emphasis on how well the ‘narrative’ of the hearing was laid out for the public. The idea instantly grated me; presentation does matter naturally, but if you’re relying solely on presentation to make a case… you’ve already lost. The public has a short memory, and Trump has always relied on his ability to spin a better – or more outrageous – story to shift public attention and get himself out of trouble.
The only outcome that could have a lasting impact on American political life would be a criminal indictment against Donald Trump for seeking to overturn the 2020 election results – a consequence just as unprecedented as his actions. Without criminal prosecution, I find it unlikely that these hearings will influence voting in the upcoming congressional elections in November, and Trump would be free to label them ‘a political witch hunt’ again and again.
And yet they’re still out there doing it. The Times’s coverage of the Jan 6th committee? It’s about a “narrative” with “characters”. As if they were reading a novel. Watching a Marvel Movie. This isn’t fiction. It’s reality. Are these people morons? Idiots? Creeps? What is this, a grad school seminar, where the professor might give you extra credit for analyzing a nonfiction event like it was fiction? Is it one of those annoying prizes for arty fiction books nobody reads? It’s none of that. This is coverage of the worst crisis a rich democracy has had since the Nazis overthrew the Weimar Regime.
Covering it like it’s fiction isn’t just a disgrace — it’s how Jan 6th happened.
How much clearer could the link be? You see, when even the Times is pretending like the Jan 6th Commitee is fiction, to be covered like a Netflix thriller, or comic-book movie, then of course half of America can believe the Big Lies. Because you too are treating reality that way.
Umair Haque
People might be tempted to ask why should we here in Europe care about this internal turmoil in American politics. But having our most important ally – and frankly our provider of military security – turning autocratic could endanger the peace and prosperity built up in the wake of the Second World War. Trump has repeatedly questioned American commitment to defending Europe, a problem made more pressing by the Russian attack on Ukraine. A new Republican President with autocratic and nationalistic leaning might start reducing troop deployments, no matter the state of the Ukraine front – or he might start making demands on European leaders in exchange for US protection (easier to do now, when Europe started importing more natural gas from the US to counterbalance the dependence on Russian supplies).
This is a point where I very much agree with France and Macron’s insistence on European strategic autonomy, although the closer alignment with the US under President Biden makes this increasingly unlikely. Hopefully Russian aggression will be enough to convince European leaders to invest more in defense and cooperation – whether that will be enough, we’ll have to wait and see…
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