Opinion Finally, the dam is breaking against Trump
The Jan. 6 committee has fundamentally altered public perceptions of Trump’s role in the violence at the Capitol.
It has increased the likelihood that he will be prosecuted for his efforts — from Election Day to Jan. 7, 2021 — to overthrow the outcome of a free election. It has made the attack on our democracy a central issue in this fall’s midterm elections, and will keep it there with the September hearings the committee announced.
It has also weakened Trump’s political position, within his party and with the broader electorate.
The committee lived up to the promise made at the outset by Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) that its evidence would demonstrate that the Jan. 6 attack was the “culmination of an attempted coup,” not the work of an out-of-control crowd. The riot was of a piece with Trump’s creation of slates of fake electors, pressure on GOP legislatures to throw out valid election results and even a request to a Republican election official in Georgia to “find” votes for him that didn’t exist.
Trump harbored hopes that the mayhem would block or delay Congress’s certification of his defeat, as Thursday’s hearing made clear. He was prepared to endanger the life of his vice president, Mike Pence, for refusing to act illegally in obstructing Joe Biden’s victory. Against the counsel of aides and family members, Trump let the criminal assault — by a horde he knew was armed — continue for hours. He did not (grudgingly) call off the invaders until it was clear his stratagem had failed.
The committee’s presentation also showed that Republican politicians could pay a significant long-term price for staying loyal to Trump.
Trump’s mastery of the Republican Party has been underscored by the reluctance of leaders who denounced him immediately after Jan. 6 to press the matter any further. They either resigned themselves to his power in the party and fell silent or, in the case of House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and so many of his colleagues, reverted to pro-Trump sycophancy.
So it must have been very satisfying for Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger, the Illinois Republican who co-led Thursday’s hearing with Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.), to show footage of McCarthy denouncing Trump shortly after the attack. Since then, McCarthy has led the internal party persecution of Cheney and Kinzinger for continuing to insist upon a truth that McCarthy himself once acknowledged.
The committee also called the bluff of the GOP’s Ivy League Fake Populist Caucus. After showing a photo of Sen. Josh Hawley (Republican of Missouri and Yale Law School) going into the Capitol with a fist raised in solidarity with the pro-Trump mob, they ran video of him fleeing in terror as the violent crowd surged through the hallways.
Trump still has a hold on his party, and many of his election-denying candidates have prevailed in primaries. But recent polling in Michigan, New Hampshire and nationwide suggests that a large share of Republicans are searching for 2024 alternatives, growing weary of Trump and becoming exhausted by his refusal to let go of his 2020 election defeat. Footage of the taping of a Trump speech on Jan. 7 that captured his refusal to say “the election is over” brought home how lies about 2020 are now the heart of his political message.
By systematically calling on Republicans, including his former aides (not “his political enemies,” Cheney pointed out), to describe what Sarah Matthews, Trump’s former deputy press secretary, called his “indefensible” behavior, the committee sought to reach beyond a Democratic Party base that already despises the former president.
This, along with the committee’s commitment to hold more hearings this fall, is a message to the roughly one-fifth of Republicans who have an unfavorable view of Trump as well as independent voters: The imperative this year is to defeat GOP politicians who refuse to face up to Trump’s crimes against democracy.
The word “crimes” is key to the other major effect of the committee’s work: If the Justice Department might once have worried that prosecuting Trump would appear “political,” it now has reason to be far more concerned about the message it would send if it fails to investigate and indict a former president so eager to trample the law and to welcome violence.
The committee’s task was to ensure that Trump is held accountable — morally, politically and legally. On all these fronts, the dam really has broken.
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