You can skip right to 29:10 for Liz Cheney, if you missed it.
Clara Jeffery / Mother Jones:
January 6 Committee Opens With a Narrative MasterClass
Teasers, hooks, special guests, mic drop — what we just saw is a must-see TV.
In the prologue, they laid out where they’re going to go, and which night you can tune in for what part. They’re dropping little previews of the juicy depositions (I especially appreciated the way they let Jared show himself to be the callous traitor he is) and other evidence to come. And then they cut to a film, a timeline of sorts, of what went down that day — maybe 10 minutes of how the rioters talked of their plans, how they started to breach the Capitol, how Trump egged them on from the bandstands and then via Twitter, how the police fought for their lives and the lives of members of Congress.
By the end of the ransacking clip, my pulse was racing. I had a bit of a PTSD reaction. Then they dropped the mic and went to a 10-minute recess, allowing room for the TV pundits to express how they, too, were blown away by the storytelling.
Maybe it’ll bog down. Maybe none of it will matter. But one thing is for sure: Lawyers, TV producers, and storytellers of all stripes will be coming back to this first hour for years to come.
John Bresnahan / Twitter:
.@RepLizCheney talked about a “sophisticated 7-part plan” by Trump to steal the election. Here’s what it looked like…Step 1: “President Trump engaged in a massive effort to spread false and fraudulent information to the American public claiming the 2020 election was stolen from him.”
Step 2: “President Trump corruptly planned to replace the Acting Attorney General, so that the Department of Justice would support his fake election claims.”
“President Trump corruptly pressured Vice President Pence to refuse to count certified electoral votes in violation of the US Constitution and the law.”
“President Trump corruptly pressured state election officials, and state legislators, to change election results.”
“President Trump’s legal team and other Trump associates instructed Republicans in multiple states to create false electoral slates and transmit those slates to Congress and the National Archives.”
Step 6: “President Trump summoned and assembled a violent mob in Washington and directed them to march on the US Capitol.”
Step 7: “As the violence was underway, President Trump ignored multiple pleas for assistance and failed to take immediate action to stop the violence and instruct his supporters to leave the Capitol.”
She mentioned Rep.Scott Perry by name.
Greg Sargent / WaPo:
Fox News’s blackout of Jan. 6 points to a hidden crisis for Democrats
By contrast, Fox hosts are gearing up to substitute a propagandistic alternative story in which the only real victims related to Jan. 6 and the hearings are Trump and his supporters. House Republicans allied with Trump will manufacture material for this disinformation push designed to keep the truth from the base at all costs.
Yet Fox’s blackout also highlights severe information challenges that Democrats will face for the foreseeable future. The fact that Republicans enjoy a massive media apparatus that manufactures a separate reality for the base, even as Democrats rely on traditional news organizations to communicate with voters, creates deep information asymmetries that continue to bedevil them.
Do not believe the naysayers. These hearings matter.
As is the case so often, the best material hasn’t been written yet, but the tweets give you a flavor of how it went over.
AJC:
January 6 committee to hear from Raffensperger, Sterling
[GA SoS Brad] Raffensperger became nationally known for his refusal to overturn Georgia’s election results following the 2020 elections in the face of substantial pressure from former President Donald Trump and his allies.
“Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong, “Raffensperger told Trump during an infamous leaked call on Jan. 2, 2021, during which the president cajoled him to “find” 11,780 votes to reverse Democrat Joe Biden’s win in Georgia.
His turn before the select committee, however, could bring him into the national spotlight in a new way.
Susan B Glasser / New Yorker:
Without Mark Meadows, January 6th Might Never Have Happened
Trump’s fourth and final White House chief of staff served as the “matador” for the former President’s election lies.
Meadows acted less as a gatekeeper than as a door opener. “Meadows was basically a matador,” a Republican involved in discussions with the White House at the time told us. “He’s sort of just let in anybody and everybody who wanted to come in.” A White House colleague of his said, “Meadows admitted to people privately. . . ‘Trust me, I’m gonna get the President there, he’s gonna drop this issue. Just kind of give him time to mourn and grieve, and then he’s gonna come around. ‘ But while he was telling this to Republicans such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the White House colleague pointed out, he was also facilitating the ongoing plot. “He was bringing crazies into the West Wing.”
Rick Hasan / WaPo:
The Jan 6. committee should be looking ahead to election threats in 2024
Establishing what happened in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election is important. It’s even more crucial to fix vulnerabilities in the system.
But the most important thing the hearings can do – given that, if someone tries to steal the next election, they won’t do it precisely the way Trump and his allies tried in 2020 – is to shift our gaze forward: They can highlight continuing vulnerabilities in our electoral system and propose ways to fix them, before it is too late.
The hearings also represent the best chance to galvanize public support to address these weak points, which is important, because the window for passing such legislation is closing; If Republicans retake the House in November, they will never put forth bills that imply the country needs protection from Trump, their kingmaker. If these hearings do not spur action by this summer or fall, expect Congress to do nothing before the 2024 elections, at which point American democracy will be in great danger.
Any attempt to subvert the next presidential election is likely to be far more efficient and ruthlessly targeted than the last effort. It will be focused on holes and ambiguities in the arcane rules for counting electoral college votes set forth in the Constitution and in a poorly written 1887 law, the Electoral Count Act.
And in non Jan 6 news …
Andrew Exum / Atlantic:
Putting Armed Veterans Into Schools Is Madness
Politicians need to stop turning to the military to solve every problem.
I drop my kids off at school most mornings, but I also have a job. I do not have the time to run inside and clear all of their classrooms with a firearm — although I am sure my kids and their friends would think it hilarious to watch me doing so with my trusty 28-gauge shotgun, saving them from any hostile quail found lurking under their desks.
The only veterans who have the time to do this, then, are those veterans who are mentally or physically disabled from their service, or veterans who have otherwise failed to transition back to “civilian life” and find gainful employment. Many, I would respectfully argue, are the very last people you want walking around schools with firearms.