Hearings over, nothing’s changed
Barring an appearance by the now-subpoenaed Donald Trump, the House Jan. 6 hearings are over, and what have we learned? Nothing at all, at least from the viewpoint of Trump’s most rabid followers. Like the former president himself, they deny the validity of the Jan. 6 riot.
The Capitol was under attack? The peaceful transfer of power from one presidential administration to another came under unprecedented assault? No way, they say. Those were peaceful protests by men and women patriots defending, not destroying, American democracy.
As for the violence, that was the result of the infiltration of the patriots’ ranks by leftists and government operatives determined to thwart the will of the American people, who really did elect Trump to another four years in the White House in November 2020.
Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and the rest of the socialists on the House Select Committee are the bad guys, not the good Americans who gathered at the Capitol on Jan. 6; not Trump, the greatest president in the history of the United States, the truest patriot of them all. Greater and truer than even Washington and Lincoln.
Why, the Trump-ensnared ask, aren’t we talking about inflation, the lousy economy, crime, the invasion at the southern border by hordes of drugs-dealing illegals bent on the destruction (along with Democrats) of our country?
For that matter, why aren’t we talking about Hunter Biden and his corrupt dad, the illegally elected president, the bogus commander-in-chief who’s takes it easy on the Chinese? The Bidens love the Chinese (a) because the Chinese are making them rich and (b) because, like the Chinese, the Bidens are communists. At the very least, the current occupant (TCO) of the White House is a communist-sympathizer.
TCO Biden is not a Christian, not a true Christian.
God bless the Christian patriots of Jan. 6. The blood of Christ washes away all sin. We are all sinners, especially the leaders of the Democrat Party. Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer. They are going to hell.
Joe Biden is ruining the country. He’s senile. He does what he’s told to do. He’s a puppet. The House should look into that. On Day One of the new House majority in January 2023, Republicans will end the reign of fake investigations and install a Select Committee of their own. Maybe several. Impeach Biden.
And on it goes.
Sarah Longwell, the executive director of Republicans for the Rule of Law, wrote in the spring that 68% of Republicans believe that Trump won the 2020 election. “For many Trump voters, the belief that the election was stolen is not a fully formed thought,” she said. “It’s more of an attitude.” The culture of grievance runs deep.
According to Longwell, the Trump crowd is mystified that other people don’t feel the sense of angry betrayal they feel.
“I personally went to Trump rallies that were filling stadiums,” a North Carolina man told Longwell, also a pollster, “and then Biden can’t even fill a freaking library. Like, no, it’s not true” that Trump lost. “I don’t believe it. I don’t buy it.”
Another man said, “There was 10 million more votes for Trump in the last election than he got in 2016. You’re telling me that Biden got that many?”
“These voters are not bad, or unintelligent people,” Longwell said. “The problem is the Big Lie is embedded in their daily lives.” They hear and read it on their news feeds. They get it from friends and family. It’s everywhere they are.
The most chilling moments of Thursday’s hearing of the House Select Committee may well have been the Jan. 6 videos shown for the first time of congressional leaders squirreled away in the Capitol complex calling around for outside help. They were hoping to rustle up aid for themselves, of course, but more importantly, for the American experiment in free government, whose future was in peril on that day and in that hour.
In the same sequence, the committee replayed parts of Republican leader Kevin McCarthy’s speech accusing Trump of breaking his oath of office on the 6th of January. Trump, he said, has to take responsibility for his actions. Would there at least be an acknowledgment of gross presidential irresponsibility?
Then comes the reality check: McCarthy and House Republicans, except for several notable exceptions, quickly became Trump- enablers in the aftermath of Jan. 6. Little wonder the rank-and-file became enablers, too.
Richard Robbins is the author, most recently, of Troubled Times: The Struggle for Wages, Recognition, and Power in the Age of Coal and Coke. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.