At last some of the Congressional hearings on the January 6 insurrection will be televised—tonight starting at 8 p.m. Eastern Time. All the major networks will carry them.
For a quick guide to what you can expect, see this article in the NYT (click below):
An excerpt:
The New York Times will provide live video of the hearing at nytimes.com along with live discussion and analysis from Times reporters. All of the major broadcast networks plan to carry the hearing live, as do the major cable news networks, with the exception of Fox News.
What will the hearing cover?
Committee leaders have indicated that the focus on Thursday will be on presenting a complete timeline of the riot, beginning with the 2020 election and extending through the riot itself and its aftermath.
Democrats involved in the investigation have said the evidence they present will connect the dots between the monthslong campaign that President Donald J. Trump and his allies waged to discredit the outcome of the election and the effort by rioters on Jan. 6 to disrupt the congressional certification of the results.
The hearing is also likely to highlight the involvement of the Proud Boys, the far-right group whose members played a critical role in the storming of the Capitol. The committee said the witnesses at the session would include Nick Quested, a documentary filmmaker who was embedded with the group in the run-up to Jan. 6, and Caroline Edwards, a Capitol Police officer who was injured at the start of the violence.
There will be more hearings to come, with the next announced one on Monday at 10 a.m. They might be boring, but I expect moments of fireworks.
There are supposed to be a lot of blockbusters still to be revealed. I hope they haven’t oversold it. These hearings will also be unlike the Mueller and impeachment ones in that we won’t have the GOP flamethrowers trying to disrupt and distract the proceedings.
Many of the pundits have weighed in on what the committee has to do, and not do, in order to have any chance of swaying voters. Some want it to be a broad referendum on Trump but most urge the committee to focus on the Jan 6th event and activities directly associated with it. The latter seems to make more sense to me. It will be interesting to see whether they are able to pull it off.
The GOP politicians and their mass media servants are attempting to ignore the hearings or dismiss them as being Democrat fever dreams. My theory is that once they start naming names, reading emails, etc. they will be forced to react. Their reactions will tell GOP voters that the insurrection was a big deal and that there’s an ongoing threat to our democracy. My fingers are crossed.
Why is “swaying voters” part of the mandate of a committee of inquiry trying to get to the bottom of wrongdoing that was billed as an existential threat to the republic? So the process really is partisan, like impeachment?
(Asking innocently. For a friend.)
The GOP have shown very little interest in finding the truth and holding the perpetrators accountable. Instead, they have waged a disinformation campaign that attempts to cast the committee’s hearings as a strictly partisan thing. They had a chance to participate but didn’t take it seriously. The hearings are made partisan by the GOP’s actions.
Perhaps you are thinking that I’m prejudging what the hearing is intended to show, rather than letting the evidence presented in the “trial” be the only source of judgement. Of course, we already know a lot about what happened on Jan 6th and what Trump and his cronies attempted to do. They are still at it. Most of the GOP voters have been told by Fox News and their politicians to ignore the hearings. My hope is that the hearings will show the truth and it will penetrate voters’ thoughts.
These hearings are no more or less partisan than impeachment. In a perfect world, all parties would be interested in the truth. We are far away from that perfect world.
Thanks. Sounds pretty partisan to me, regardless of whose fault that is. Honestly my friend was open in principle to being convinced otherwise.
The Capitol trespassing was unambigiously confined to the Republican side, and was not in any way (that we know of) affecting both sides. Let’s assume overly charitably that none of the Republican politicians were involved. They could have gotten ontop of this, swiftly and firmly, and told their insurrectionist, anti-democratic, tea-party, conspirational, and fascist wing that they are not welcome, don’t represent the values of America nor the GOP, and therefore should go f**k themselves. Or this is what actual democratic parties would do, when radical elements give them a bad name. Even the more cynical ones would get in front of investigations, just to contain the damage in their self-interest.
But the Republicans didn’t. And this lays bare what everyone knows: The Republican Party is insurrectionist, anti-democratic, tea-party, conspirational, and fascist. They have made it partisan all on their own, and are on track to make a peaceful transfer of power through elections difficult, if not impossible.
They have doubled down, dug into narratives that the election was stolen (all dubious elections in recent memory went in favour of Republicans, who are masters of shady tactics, including projection). They made voting more difficult with a slew of laws, rallied behind Trump who unifies extremist fringes (which each project something else into him). He should not be allowed on the ballot, because he has shown that he doesn’t intend to accept the rules of a game into which he is invited to play a major part. The Democrats with Biden are the real (old school) Republicans, a status quo party, with for-profit politics for the already rich. Insofar as there are ‘decent’ conservatives still left on the Republican side, they are spooked by woke fringes, and they are kept ignorant about the “Jews with space lasers” (also armed, and afraid of illuminati lizards running the Deep State out of a pizzaria) type of GOP lunatic mainstream.
It’s not really clear what you expect? Paradoxically, in the USA, trialing party-entrenched fascists for treason and banning such elements is just an alternative path towards a one-party rule of the other party, as summarised when Democrat evangelists urged to “Vote Blue No Matter Who” to save democracy.
I was with you until that last part. Dems have no chance at all at abolishing the GOP and achieving one-party rule. The best they can hope for is for more GOP politicians to reject Trumpism. There’s no mechanism to ban a party, though they may be able to ban a few individuals by sending them to prison. I haven’t heard anyone saying “Vote Blue No Matter Who” but I’m sure they are out there. Still, the world would have to change radically before we should start fearing this.
The committee must really be trying to milk the ratings if they’ve waited until now to release information linking Trump to the riot. I hope it’s not a “who shot JR” finale, and we have to wait until September to find out. If the committee had it, they would have released it as soon as they got it. My prediction is lots of speechifying and hand-wringing, and no news.
The Black Knight couldn’t’ve said it better. 🙂
You gonna actually tune in tonight, DrB?
I think that I’ll go with the Lightning at the Rangers, and read about The Show in the a.m. paper
The committee must think they have a good story to tell. They’ve hired:
How much did the Dems care about the small businesses destroyed during the summer of 2020?
In my view those businesses are just as important as the capitol.
After tolerating riots all summer, we are suddenly supposed to get all concerned about this particular riot?
Riots, arson and looting suck. I assume that most people were dismayed and perhaps even horrified over the summer of 2020. I know I was. However, Jan 6 does not appear to have been a random riot. Will the Committee illuminate the who, the how and the why? I don’t know about you, but my curiosity is piqued, to say the least.
Nah, why be concerned about an attempt to overthrow our Constitution by violence?
This particular riot had the goal of ending democracy in the United States, so yes it’s an important one.
And yes small businesses are important too. Many failed in 2020 because they were not adequately supported by government agencies (read Trump administration) during the depths of the pandemic.
For the first time in U.S. history, we did not have a peaceful transfer of power. The events of January 6th were an attempted coup on a legal process to certify the results of the general election in November 2020. Trump and his enablers were promoting lies and violating what the U.S. Constitution requires in an effort to remain in office beyond the expiration of his term. Anyone with an ounce of respect for democracy and the rule of law should be horrified by Trump’s actions, and the actions of the rioters and others committing sedition against the United States.
I was in high school when the Watergate hearings were taking place, and during free periods, groups of the more politically aware students (and I was one of the ringleaders) commandeered empty classrooms so we could watch the broadcasts. When one of the more authoritarian teachers busted us the principal took our side, saying it was a better education in current events than we could get in his classroom. Eventually, one classroom was set aside as a viewing room where anyone with free time could sit and watch the proceedings.
Good for you, your teachers and administrators. That was indeed something worth encouraging high school students to witness.
I think CSPAN is the only network that doesn’t bleep profanity. I have a feeling there’s going to be a lot of profanity, and I want to hear it. I’m recording the hearings, so will watch later.
I’ll be watching on CSPAN, Mark, ’cause I like to hear the swears (like to say ’em sometimes, too). 🙂
I mean, don’t get me wrong, man; it’s not like foul language, loose talk, and bent humor are second nature to me.
They’re much more like first nature.
Shocking! /s
First nature for me as well. 🙂
I’ve been watching on MSNBC (I like Rachel Maddow), and they haven’t been bleeping
Someone, somewhere (be it at your ISP, or your upstream news provider, or at one or more of the TLAgencies, or all of the above) will be taking note of who tunes in. It may be illegal, but if you choose who and when to ask forgiveness from, asking for permission (or even “enabling legislation”) earlier really doesn’t matter.
In related news, Michigan Republican candidate for governor
for his role in the Jan 6 insurrection.
I appreciate that it’s all political, but how else do you confront this kind of assault on the republic? This wouldn’t be happening if our Republican leaders had confronted it earlier.
Dr. Coyne, sorry you missed the show. I encourage you to at least watch Lynne Cheney’s presentation. The rest is important but she basically gave the audience a fantastic summary of what they intend to show in detail. Virtually all the morning-after pundits are saying that she was definitely the star of the show and that the presentation, to use Trump’s favorite word, was perfect.
Oops! Obviously I meant LIZ Cheney.
David French of the Atlantic has an interesting take on the hearings:
The January 6 Hearings Could Change Republican Minds
https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/the-third-rail/62a3496595033600218a4dbb/january-6-committee-hearings-trump-republicans/
While those of us on the Left view the Trump voters as impenetrable, French says that most of them are simply ignorant of the facts and would be very interested in hearing them. The biggest barrier to that happening is Fox News. If true, it is better than the alternative, which is that all Trump voters are informed and still like Trump better.