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      ‘Watergate for streaming era’: how the January 6 panel created gripping hearings

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      ‘Watergate for streaming era’: how the January 6 panel created gripping hearingsThe committee have put on hearings that feel more like a Hollywood prestige limited series than a congressional inquiry There is a certain kind of ritual that has come to define a blockbuster congressional hearing in Washington.The star witnesses take their seats facing the dias, swamped by photographers. The committee chairman gives a solemn opening statement, followed by a statement from the ranking member of the minority party. There is some bickering over the rules for the hearing, whether it is a sham, sometimes followed by a theatrical effort to postpone the session. Eventually, the star witness gets to speak, and parries questions from the committee members, each party asking either friendly or aggressive questions, depending on the politics. The whole thing often lasts hours and can get somewhat confusing to follow. At the end of the day, newscasts are filled with highlight reels of the can’t miss moments.Get the latest updates on voting rights in the Guardian’s Fight to vote newsletterBut over the last few weeks, the committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US capitol has broken that mold.Instead of just presenting the facts from their investigation, the committee has generated a clear narrative, teasing how each piece will connect to the next at a future hearing. They have promised and delivered on new sensational details making the hearings can’t miss television. The committee, which is getting advice from a former ABC News executive, have put on hearings that felt more like a Hollywood prestige limited series than a congressional inquiry.“They have put on the Watergate hearings for the streaming era,” said Norman Eisen, who served as special counsel to the House judiciary committee during Trump’s first impeachment.The committee has done this in a few key ways. They’ve broken up the hearings into several pieces, keeping each hearing to just a few hours (short by Congress’s standards) and focused on a particular topic. A single member of the committee, or professional staff, has handled the questioning, without interruptions from the opposing party. And the committee has placed a beating heart at the center of its investigation, featuring testimony from police officers, elected officials, and election workers who have all emotionally laid out the severe consequences of Trump’s investigative work.“What they’ve done brilliantly is use video, kind of the newest techniques of presenting narrative through video, with the most traditional, but powerful approach of having live witnesses. And they’ve blended the two and managed to tell a gripping account of a criminal conspiracy,” said Eisen, who now serves as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.Perhaps most significantly, the committee has made extraordinary use of over a year of investigative work. They frequently play video clips of government officials at the highest levels of government and in Trump’s inner circle detailing what was going on behind the scenes as Trump tried to overturn the election. In many of those clips, the officials have said they knew Trump’s claims about massive fraud were bunk and told him so. Their close ties to Trump make their words all the more damning.“Video is the top of the pyramid of what gets people’s attention,” said David Litt, a former speechwriter for Barack Obama. “The same set of words, if it’s a quote, it’s less valuable than audio, and audio is less valuable than video. I think they understood that.”The committee has also done a good job of feeding the appetite for constant new information by carefully meting out and teasing bombshell information, Litt said. During the first impeachment hearing, for example, Liz Cheney said that multiple Republican congressman sought presidential pardons, but didn’t reveal who. Cheney opened another hearing by saying that Rudy Giuliani was “apparently inebriated”, before later playing a clip of Jason Miller, a senior Trump adviser telling investigators that was the case. At one hearing, the committee also teased a video in which Eric Herchmann says he told John Eastman: “I’m going to give you the best free legal advice you’re ever getting in your life: get a great fucking criminal defense lawyer.”“They went out and they got the receipts and now they’re deploying them in a smart way where there’s this constant drip,” Litt said. “They understand that the drip drip drip is what holds interest in a story. Unfortunately we’ve seen this time and time again where there’s a bombshell, but someone just waits it out because all the shoes drop at once.”Some of the committee’s biggest success may also be the result of a strategic error by Republicans. After Nancy Pelosi blocked two Republicans who voted to overturn the election from serving on the January 6 committee last year, Kevin McCarthy, the Republican said he wouldn’t appoint any Republicans to the panel. That decision left Trump without any allies on the commission to challenge the committee’s inquiries or throw out distracting questions to muddy the water during hearings. Trump has said in recent days that McCarthy’s decision was a mistake.Now, the committee has shown a remarkable discipline in its effort to investigate witnesses without having to worry about sideshows. Republican witnesses who might otherwise have been reluctant to testify publicly and face grandstanding from Republican members, might now feel more comfortable coming forward, Litt said.But even though the committee has succeeded in creating remarkably compelling hearings, will the hearings actually break through? Part of that depends on who the audience is. In one sense, the entire investigation has a very specific audience, the US justice department, which is weighing whether to bring criminal charges against Trump and allies. And it’s difficult to say whether the hearings will sway Attorney General Merrick Garland and other justice department officials one way or the other.For another audience, the committee’s work may be succeeding. The committee’s work is never going to convince diehard Trump supporters that the election wasn’t stolen, Litt noted. But more than a year and a half after January 6, the committee is forcing the events of January 6 to be at the center of America’s political discourse.“When I was writing speeches, the important thing I used to say is that you can’t tell people what to think, but you can tell them what to think about,” Litt said. “And a large percentage of the most influential people in American media, business and politics are thinking about what happened on January 6 and why. And whether the people responsible have been held accountable.”TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS politicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

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      January 6 hearings: if Republicans did nothing wrong, why were pardons sought?

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      January 6 hearings: if Republicans did nothing wrong, why were pardons sought?Email from Alabama’s Mo Brooks potentially reveals what conduct by lawmakers he feared might be criminal When the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack revealed the evidence that showed Republican members of Congress sought preemptive presidential pardons after January 6, one of the most striking requests came from Congressman Mo Brooks.The request from Brooks to the Trump White House came in an 11 January 2021 email – obtained by the Guardian – that asked for all-purpose, preemptive pardons for lawmakers involved in objecting to the certification of Joe Biden’s election win.Brooks in the first instance sought preemptive pardons for “every Republican who signed the Amicus brief in the Texas lawsuit” that sued then-vice president Mike Pence to unilaterally decide whether to certify Biden’s win in certain battleground states.The Alabama congressman also recommended in the email to former Oval Operations coordinator Molly Michael that Donald Trump issue pardons for “Every Congressman and Senator who voted to reject the electoral college vote submissions of Arizona and Pennsylvania”.Brooks was one of at least a half dozen Republican congressmen who sought pardons immediately after the Capitol attack. It came after Trump “hinted at a blanket pardon for the Jan. 6 thing for anybody,” the head of White House presidential personnel John McEntee testified.But the request from Brooks stands out because he explicitly outlines two groups for whom he was seeking preemptive pardons, opening a window into his thinking and potentially revealing for what conduct he worried that they might have been guilty of a crime.The reference to the Texas lawsuit is revealing since that suit pushed Pence to commandeer the ceremonial congressional certification to overturn the results of the 2020 election – which the select committee has argued amounted to a violation of federal law.Meanwhile, the reference to Arizona and Pennsylvania is notable since the objections to those states occurred after the Capitol attack, which, seen with Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani asking senators to keep objecting to stop Biden’s certification, could suggest further corrupt intent.Brooks has rejected the notion that the pardon requests showed any consciousness of guilt, saying in a statement that he feared Democrats would prosecute and jail “Republicans who acted pursuant to their Constitutional or statutory duties under 3 USC 15”.The statement referred to the statute governing the congressional certification of the presidential election, at which members of Congress are permitted to raise objections to the results in any of the states.But the trouble with Brooks’s statement remains that if he truly believed that Republicans were engaging in only lawful activity on January 6, then he could defend that conduct in court – without the need for a pardon.The select committee at the hearing also showed testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson, a top former aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who said House Republicans Louie Gohmert, Scott Perry, Andy Biggs and Matt Gaetz also expressed interest in pardons.Hutchinson recalled that House Republican Jim Jordan did not directly ask for a pardon but did ask whether Trump was going to give them to members of Congress, and that House Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene expressed interest to the White House counsel’s office.The testimony by Hutchinson and McEntee and other top White House aides showed that at the very least, Republican members of Congress were concerned about potential legal exposure over their roles in Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.And the accounts, delivered under oath to the select committee, showed the extraordinary and brazen inquiries by some of Trump’s top allies on Capitol Hill to use the power of presidential pardons for their own political and personal ends.“I think the American public understands folks asking for pardons generally feel they did something illegal,” select committee member Pete Aguilar told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday morning of the preemptive pardon requests.Gohmert had brought the Texas lawsuit while Perry had played a role in Trump’s efforts to pressure the justice department to reverse his election defeat in battleground states. Biggs and Gaetz had strategized with Trump about objecting to Biden’s certification.The Republican members of Congress accused of seeking preemptive pardons near-universally rejected the allegations.Gohmert denied making a request for a pardon. Perry said in a statement that he “never sought a presidential pardon for myself or other members of Congress”. Biggs said Hutchinson was “mistaken” and Greene accurately called Hutchinson’s testimony hearsay.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Capitol attack hearings: if Republicans did nothing wrong, why were pardons sought?

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      Capitol attack hearings: if Republicans did nothing wrong, why were pardons sought?The email from Alabama’s Mo Brooks potentially reveals what conduct by lawmakers he feared might be criminal One of the most striking all-purpose, preemptive pardon requests that the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack has revealed came from Alabama’s Mo Brooks.In an email obtained by the Guardian, Brooks sought preemptive pardons for lawmakers involved in objecting to the certification of Joe Biden’s election win.The 11 January 2021 email requested pardons for “Every Republican who signed the Amicus brief in the Texas lawsuit” that sued then-vice-president Mike Pence to unilaterally decide whether to certify Biden’s win in certain battleground states.Brooks, who sent the email to former Oval Office Operations coordinator Molly Michael, also recommended that Donald Trump issue preemptive pardons for “Every Congressman and Senator who voted to reject the electoral college vote submissions of Arizona and Pennsylvania”.Brooks was one of at least a half dozen members of Congress who sought pardons from Trump in the immediate aftermath of the January 6 attack. The former president “had hinted at a blanket pardon for the Jan. 6 thing for anybody,” the head of White House presidential personnel, John McEntee testified, which appears to have elicited pardon requests from some of Trump’s top allies on Capitol Hill.But the request from Brooks stands out because he explicitly outlines two groups for whom he was seeking preemptive pardons, opening a window into his thinking and potentially revealing for what conduct he worried that they might have been guilty of a crime.The reference to the Texas lawsuit is revealing since that suit pushed Pence to commandeer the ceremonial congressional certification to overturn the results of the 2020 election – which the select committee has argued amounted to a violation of federal law.Meanwhile, the reference to Arizona and Pennsylvania is notable since the objections to those states occurred after the Capitol attack, which, seen with Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani asking senators to keep objecting to stop Biden’s certification, could suggest further corrupt intent.Brooks has rejected the notion that the pardon requests showed any consciousness of guilt, saying in a statement that he feared Democrats would prosecute and jail “Republicans who acted pursuant to their Constitutional or statutory duties under 3 USC 15”.The statement referred to the statute governing the congressional certification of the presidential election, at which members of Congress are permitted to raise objections to the results in any of the states.But the trouble with Brooks’ statement remains that if he truly believed that Republicans were engaging in only lawful activity on January 6, then he could defend that conduct in court – without the need for a pardon.The select committee at the hearing also showed testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson, a top former aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who said House Republicans Louie Gohmert, Scott Perry, Andy Biggs and Matt Gaetz also expressed interest in pardons.Hutchinson recalled that House Republican Jim Jordan did not directly ask for a pardon but did ask whether Trump was going to give them to members of Congress, and that House Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene expressed interest to the White House counsel’s office.The testimony by Hutchinson and McEntee and other top White House aides showed that at the very least, Republican members of Congress were concerned about potential legal exposure over their roles in Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.And the accounts, delivered under oath to the select committee, showed the extraordinary and brazen inquiries by some of Trump’s top allies on Capitol Hill to use the power of presidential pardons for their own political and personal ends.Gohmert had brought the Texas lawsuit while Perry had played a role in Trump’s efforts to pressure the justice department to reverse his election defeat in battleground states. Biggs and Gaetz had strategized with Trump about objecting to Biden’s certification.The Republican members of Congress accused of seeking preemptive pardons near-universally rejected the allegations.Gohmert denied making a request for a pardon. Perry said in a statement that he “never sought a presidential pardon for myself or other members of Congress”. Biggs said Hutchinson was “mistaken” and Greene accurately called Hutchinson’s testimony hearsay.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS politicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      The Observer view on Donald Trump’s influence on Roe v Wade ruling | Observer editorial

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      The Observer view on Donald Trump’s influence on Roe v Wade rulingObserver editorialThe US abortion ban is the ex-president’s legacy and he must face prosecution for abuse of power The baleful influence of Donald Trump continues to be felt in American life despite his decisive election defeat in 2020 and subsequent disgraceful behaviour. The supreme court’s regressive, dangerous and insulting decision to abolish a woman’s constitutional right to abortion was made possible by Trump’s appointment of three highly conservative justices who all voted for the change.This disaster is not all Trump’s doing. A noisy anti-abortion lobby of rightwing Republicans and evangelical Christians has fought for decades to scrap the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling giving women the right to choose. But they represent, at most, one-third of Americans. Trump adopted their minority view for the same reason he champions the gun lobby – for electoral advantage.Although the court’s decision was anticipated, it is still a tremendous shock – as ensuing nationwide protests suggest. The speed with which some Republican-controlled states are moving to outlaw or restrict abortion is also dismaying. The fear is that the other hard-won privacy rights and freedoms, such as the right to contraception and same-sex marriage, may be threatened.Seeking to limit divisions, the chief justice, John Roberts, had hoped to limit Roe v Wade rather than abolish it outright. The Trump justices’ willingness to take the most extreme option will further undermine public confidence in the court, damaged like other US institutions by the political partisanship of the “culture wars” era.President Joe Biden described the ruling as a “sad day”, while outraged Democrats say they will try to enshrine abortion rights in federal law. To do so, they need to win big in November’s congressional midterm elections. Abortion rights are thus certain to be a central issue in the autumn campaign and the 2024 presidential election.Trump will relish that. As is his wont, he claimed personal credit for the court’s decision, saying it was his “great honour” to have made it possible. Yet it has long been evident he lacks strong religious or moral convictions about abortion or anything else. As always, his motives are self-serving. Even erstwhile diehard supporters tire of such cynicism. There is evidence that Trump fatigue is setting in.Proof of that contention has been on display in recent days on Capitol Hill, where an investigation into the 6 January 2021 insurrection is providing jaw-dropping testimony about Trump’s undeniable criminal culpability. From the moment he realised Biden was winning on election night in November 2020, Trump began a concerted, deliberate and illegal effort to reverse the result.Abusing the power of his office, Trump intimidated officials in Georgia and other swing states in a move to fiddle the vote, knowingly disseminated false claims of fraud and conspiracy theories, and dangled promises of presidential pardons for those who supported his coup attempt. “Just say the election is corrupt and leave the rest to me,” senior justice department officials said Trump told them.When none of that worked, he openly incited white supremacist groups such as the Proud Boys to attack Congress to prevent certification of Biden’s victory. When they threatened to hang his vice-president, Mike Pence, for refusing to invalidate the election outcome, he applauded. “Maybe our supporters have the right idea,” he reportedly told aides. Pence “deserves it”.Like the abortion debate, this is not over. Clinging to his “big lie”, Trump claims everything else is a hoax. As ever, he subverts American democracy. But he has been weakened and now is not the time to let him off the hook. Trump plainly broke numerous laws. Most Americans agree: he must face criminal prosecution.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.ukTopicsRoe v WadeOpinionAbortionDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackWomenUS politicseditorialsReuse this content More

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      Group aims to strip Fox News of ad revenue over ‘fueling next insurrection’

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      Group aims to strip Fox News of ad revenue over ‘fueling next insurrection’Check My Ads targeting news channel website at a time when its prominent hosts are downplaying January 6 insurrection After two years which have seen Fox News lunge even further towards the right wing of US politics, the news channel may now start to suffer the consequences, with the launch of a campaign to strip the news channel’s Foxnews.com website of advertising revenue.Check My Ads, an organization run by two former marketing executives, launched its campaign to target Fox News in early June, accusing the news channel and its website of “working overtime to fuel the next insurrection”.More than 40,000 people signed up in the first five days, forming an increasingly powerful lobbying group which aims to get ad exchanges to drop Foxnews.com.The campaign comes at a time when prominent Fox News hosts are downplaying the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol in Washington DC as “a forgettably minor outbreak” of “mob violence”, continuing to dabble in election conspiracy theories, and have most recently begun to brand school teachers and drag performers as “groomers”.Check My Ads was founded by two marketing executives who have a deep understanding of how advertising appears on websites. Despite its record of dabbling in misinformation, adverts for companies like Walgreens and Optimum can still be found on Foxnews.com. The adverts are largely placed there, Atkin said, by ad exchanges, which handle the distribution of adverts for advertising agencies.“Foxnews.com benefits enormously from being a part of the global advertising society. Foxnews.com receives ads from blue chip brands, which gives incredible legitimacy to the lies that they are publishing. That brand equity is intrinsically valuable,” Atkin said.A number of large companies have already stopped advertising on the Fox News after various misdeeds by its TV hosts over the years. But ads for Walgreens and the like still pop up on the Fox News website, despite the obvious link between the two entities. Whereas viewers of the TV channel might see adverts for relatively little known companies, like Nutrisystem and Balance of Nature, visitors to the website see the names of big companies, which can suggest to the reader that this is a respected website.“When Fox is plugged into that ads supply chain, it gives them the legitimacy of a real news outlet, when in fact they are publishing disinformation regularly that leads to real-world violence.”In the two weeks following the 2020 election, Fox News cast doubt on, or pushed conspiracy theories about the result 774 times, according to Media Matters for America, a watchdog group. That helped to fuel anger among Donald Trump’s supporters – rage which came to the surface on 6 January, when hundreds of Trump’s adherents stormed the US Capitol.Since the Capitol attack, Fox News hosts have rubbished the idea that the storming of the building – done in an attempt to stop Joe Biden being declared president – was an insurrection. Fox News viewers have instead heard that it was a minor skirmish, one which may even have been orchestrated by the government.That’s why, Atkin said, Check My Ads is determined to trim the network’s wings.“Advertisers have been crystal clear that they do not want to sponsor violence. And we all saw what happened on January 6. It’s not just violence, this was the attempted overthrow of the government. This is world-scale political violence,” Atkin said.Ad exchanges vet certain websites before placing adverts on behalf of their clients. If a website meets their criteria – and the criteria often include statements that the website does not endorse or encourage harassment or bullying – then ads are placed on them.But the exchanges, Atkin said, are “not checking their inventory” thoroughly enough, and websites like Fox News are slipping through the cracks.Check My Ads’ campaign works by finding which ad exchanges are active on a given website, which is easy enough to do: typing https://www.foxnews.com/ads.txt brings up the list.The innovative part of Check My Ads is how the organization has set up a way for people to send swift, concise complaints to those ad exchanges. The organization sends out email templates to those who sign up, which they can send on to ad exchanges, flagging sites where the exchange has placed ads on sites which are incompatible with the exchanges’ stated policy.“The ad exchanges promise in their legal documentation in these policies that are available online to anyone: ‘We only work with premium publishers and we will never work with websites that publish election disinformation, the promotion of real world violence, all of these other things,” Atkin said.“That is providing a sense of false confidence to advertisers. Because as we know, these ad exchanges are still sending ads and money and data to the propaganda outlets that are doing our society the most harm, and who are the most brand unsafe.”In a statement, Fox News said: “Fox News Media strongly supports the first amendment and is proud to lead the industry in featuring more dissenting viewpoints on the major issues facing the country than our cable news competitors, which is why we attract the most politically diverse audience in television news.”The campaign isn’t going to financially cripple Fox News. Some 95% of Fox’s revenue comes from cable contracts, as opposed to advertising, NPR reported this year. But Atkin believes the campaign, as well as removing ads which lend legitimacy to Fox News, could also prevent Foxnews.com from collecting data on its users so that they can be later targeted with specific content – potentially anti-democratic content.Fox News is the most-watched cable news channel in the US, and is a huge opponent. But Check My Ads are hopeful that they have found a foolproof way to at least take away some of its power.“The fact is that the advertising industry, in general, has said one thing and it has done another,” she said.“We are opening the conversation up for everyone who wants to say enough is enough.”TopicsFox NewsAdvertisingTV newsTelevision industryUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

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      Trump aides identify Republicans who sought pardons for January 6th – video

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      In the fifth round of hearings probing the ways in which US president Trump abused his powers to cajole the justice department into endorsing his false election claims, White House staffers give testimony identifying several Republican members of Congress who sought pardons. Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger said ‘the only reason I know to ask for a pardon is because you think you’ve committed a crime’

      Republicans who aided coup attempt sought blanket presidential pardons
      ‘More to come’: what the January 6 panel has revealed of Trump’s efforts to retain power More

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      Trump aides identify Republicans who sought pardons for January 6 – video

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      In the fifth round of hearings probing the ways in which US president Trump abused his powers to cajole the justice department into endorsing his false election claims, White House staffers give testimony identifying several Republican members of Congress who sought pardons. Republican Adam Kinzinger said: ‘The only reason I know to ask for a pardon is because you think you’ve committed a crime’

      Republicans who aided coup attempt sought blanket presidential pardons
      ‘More to come’: what the January 6 panel has revealed of Trump’s efforts to retain power More

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      Trump feeling fallout of Capitol attack hearings as allies abandon ship

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      Trump feeling fallout of Capitol attack hearings as allies abandon shipThe smooth and efficient proceedings with testimonies from Republicans has reportedly infuriated Trump Somewhere in Bedminster, New Jersey, on Thursday afternoon, it seems quite possible that an elderly man was sitting in front of a television howling with rage.Donald Trump, who spends summers at his Bedminster golf club, is a TV guy, a ratings guy. So the widely televised hearings of the congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol hit him where it hurts.‘A dangerous cancer’: fourth hearing reveals how Trump’s big lie destroyed people’s livesRead moreThe former US president has reportedly been glued to them – and has not liked what he’s seen. As the panel has presented a carefully crafted case against Trump as the leader of a failed coup, he is said to be livid that there is no one in the room to speak up for him.Trump “has tuned into every hearing” and has grown increasingly irate – to “the point of about to scream at the TV”, according to a close adviser – with what he views as the “lack of defense by his Capitol Hill allies”, the Washington Post reported.He is possibly aware that, while the hearings come too late to force his resignation and may or may not cause the justice department to press criminal charges, they seem to be inflicting greater political damage than anyone imagined.Thursday’s fifth hearing served up more of the same in the Cannon Caucus Room which, somewhat reminiscent of a grand ornate ballroom with curtains closed and lights on, is bringing a gravitas to the nailing of Trump that no trickle of media revelations or tell-all memoirs can.Photographers crowded around the witnesses just as the panel’s chairman, congressman Bennie Thompson, brought down the gavel, a now ominous sound for Trump, and spoke of “a brazen attempt to use the justice department to advance the president’s personal political agenda”.Trump’s consternation is likely to have only intensified when Republican Liz Cheney summed up his central role in the conspiracy to overturn the election, then another Republican, Adam Kinzinger, questioned former justice department officials. “Today President Trump’s total disregard for the constitution and his oath will be fully exposed,” Kinzinger said.Once again, all went smoothly and efficiently. There were no interruptions, objections, points of order or spoiling tactics. And that is said to have made Trump furious. He is especially critical of Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader in the House, for boycotting the committee instead of giving pro-Trump Republicans a voice on it.Trump told Punchbowl News, “In retrospect, I think it would have been very smart” to put more Republicans on the committee. “The Republicans don’t have a voice. They don’t even have anything to say.”McCarthy apparently gambled that this would allow Republicans to write off the hearings as illegitimate, partisan and an attempt to distract from more pressing issues such as inflation. But the presence of Cheney, Kinzinger and more than a dozen Republican witnesses have undermined that argument.Moreover, McCarthy, who wants to be speaker of the House of Representatives, may have forgotten that Trump pays attention to TV, where the hearings are inescapable and will run into next month, prolonging the agony. Even if they are not penetrating the Trump base, they are penetrating Trump himself.And his formidable political instincts – which served him well against Hillary Clinton and warned him early that Joe Biden posed the biggest threat to his reelection – will now be warning Trump that the January 6 committee’s contribution to the history books poses a threat to his hopes of a 2024 presidential run.The hearings have painted a portrait of a man detached from reality, peddling paranoid conspiracy theories and putting himself before his country. Kinzinger noted: “He was willing to sacrifice our republic to prolong his presidency. I can imagine no more dishonorable act by a president.” They have also highlighted a callous, cruel streak that saw him make baseless allegations with no regard for how they would ruin individual lives.A source close to Trump told NBC News: “I look at this and say there is nobody in America who is watching this – even with all that’s going on in the world with Joe Biden – and saying, ‘Donald Trump should be the next president of the United States’. Nobody.’”Trump’s chequered record of endorsements in this year’s Republican primary elections have also raised questions over whether he still has a tight grip on the “Make America great again” movement. The hearings could turn him into damaged goods and give even Maga diehards some reasons to look for more electable alternatives.Frank Luntz, a political consultant and pollster, said: “I see people no longer drinking the Kool-Aid. I see people moving away from Trump for the first time. His endorsement matters more than anybody else in the Republican party by far, but he does not control the Republican party anymore. He’s the loudest voice, he has the most influence, but he’s losing control every day.”The leading challenger to Trump’s throne is Ron DeSantis, the rightwing governor of Florida, who is gaining on him in opinion polls. A poll of 300 likely Republican voters in New Hampshire, the first presidential primary state, found 39% wanted DeSantis to be the next nominee, while 37% favored Trump, within the 5.5% margin of error, according to the University of New Hampshire Survey Center.Pam Roehl, attending last week’s Faith & Freedom Coalition conference in Nashville, Tennessee, told the Associated Press that she still supports Trump but increasingly finds herself in the minority among friends who have moved on. “They’re like kind of: ‘Get with the program. Why aren’t you backing DeSantis?’” she was quoted as saying.If the two men go head-to-head, DeSantis could point to his legislative record in Florida and would be free of the baggage of the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection. More than three decades younger than Trump, the governor would be seen as the candidate of the future while the former president keeps harping on the past. Trump’s big lie, it transpires, could prove his big liability.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpRepublicansUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More