The nine hearings about the insurrection so far have been explosive. A president out of control. A White House at war with democracy.
Last night was the exclamation mark. As CBS News’s chief political analyst John Dickerson pointed out, when Donald Trump accepted his party’s nomination to be president— which I’ve just noticed was exactly six years ago, yesterday— he insisted that “I alone can fix it.” But while nothing needed fixing more than the un-American attack on the Capitol on January 6th, Trump fixed nothing. To the contrary, he summoned the mob, he commanded the mob, he praised the mob as patriots. What he didn’t do for more than three hours was tell them to go home. What he didn’t do was tell them they were wrong. All he did was ignore the appeals from his closest advisors to subdue his supporters. All he did was phone his henchmen on The Hill to urge them to keep fighting to overturn his loss.
All the while, the United States Capitol was stormed, police were ferociously attacked, people were dying.
This didn’t come from Trump’s political enemies. It came from tapes and tweets, transcripts and testimony from Republicans who had been loyal allies.
But at the end of the day, I ask with a pang of despair, will it make a difference? Which Americans were even watching or reading about all this? How much has really changed?
The answer is, not much at all, according to a just-released NPR/PBS Newshour/Marist poll. It says, fewer than half of all Republicans in the country even paid attention to the hearings. Going into last night’s session, 40% of them described the insurrection as no more than “an unfortunate event, but one in the past, so no need to worry about it anymore.”
I’d say there’s still plenty to worry about, with the defeated former president still pouring gasoline on the fire, and with a fair share of candidates who toe the Trump line beating comparatively moderate opponents across the country and winning their party’s nominations for statewide office. The most recent was this week in Maryland. An unrepentant election denier named Dan Cox— who chartered buses to take people to Trump’s inflammatory rally in Washington and then tweeted during the attack on the Capitol that “Pence is a traitor”— is now his party’s choice for governor.
We’ve seen the same kinds of candidates pull out statewide victories in races from Pennsylvania to Nevada, Ohio to Georgia. It’s no surprise, then, that the poll also shows that January 6th Committee vice-chair Liz Cheney, one of the few rare Republicans showing any backbone, is favorably viewed by just 13% of her party. She’s on the right side of history, but odds are that in next month’s primary in Wyoming, it’s going to cost her her job.
Another 40% of Republicans in the poll called the attempted coup a “political protest.” I’ve covered political protests and I’ve covered coups. There’s a difference. When law enforcement is violently attacked, and people die— as five did as a result of what happened on January 6th— it hardly qualifies as “political protest.”
The final statistic is the most startling: just 12% of Republicans consider the insurrection a threat to democracy. Six months ago the figure was 10%. The hearings have barely moved the needle. This means, at best, that they just haven’t cared enough to follow the hearings and hear firsthand what Donald Trump did to undermine our republic. At worst it means that despite no evidence that Trump actually won the presidential election and irrefutable evidence that he inspired the insurgency and didn’t lift a presidential finger to stop it, they have thrown in their lot with an immoral, dishonest, undemocratic man.
And none have taken a deeper dive than Trump’s enablers in politics, at virtually every level of government. They haven’t just buried their heads in the sand. They have buried their principles. They have buried their devotion to democracy. Trump’s allies in Congress have made it clear that they think it’s far more important to investigate Hunter Biden’s ethics and his taxes and his contentious purchase of a firearm than to investigate an attempt to overthrow the government. They’ve already announced that if they retake control of Congress, hearings on Hunter Biden will be a priority, as if the president’s son were president himself. The January 6th Committee will be history.
At the first primetime hearing, Congresswoman Cheney took aim at her fellow Republicans. She was blunt and accurate: “There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone but your dishonor will remain.” But with each passing day, it’s harder to believe that they care. It’s almost 90 weeks since Trump came in more than seven million votes behind Joe Biden, yet Trump is still pushing his treacherous lie that the election was stolen. After phoning the Speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly just last week, urging him to overturn the 2020 results there, he’s still trying to corrupt public officials to spin his fabricated fantasy.
Yet more elected Republicans censure the hearings than censure Trump.
His deceit is not enough to convince everyone to condemn his contempt for the Constitution, but it’s enough to lead to those woeful findings in that NPR/PBS Newshour/Marist poll. It’s enough to compel a 26-year-old Trump Republican in Texas to tell CNN, "Anyone with logic and reasoning could tell you something fishy happened, something illegitimate happened.” Trump’s lie has been refuted by honest Republican legislators and judges across the country. But it’s being incessantly regurgitated by his acolytes. Evidently logic and reasoning eclipse evidence and proof.
The other Republican sitting beside Liz Cheney on the January 6th Committee, Adam Kinzinger, ended his comments last night with an ominous warning: “The forces that Donald Trump ignited that day have not gone away.” And I’ll quote Cheney again, who in an interview this week pessimistically defined the perils we still face. “As a country, we’re at a moment where we really do have to step back from the abyss and it’s not totally clear to me that we’re going to. The forces that want to drag us over the edge are strong and fighting.”
In their shameless self-interest, those forces still are ignoring the facts of what happened on January 6th, and what Donald Trump did and didn’t do. He did encourage it. He didn’t fix it.
Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies and politics at home and international crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.
Jul 22, 2022, 12:30 PM (2 days ago)
to Greg
Great piece! History will mark this period as the beginning of the downfall of America. History will also show that it was the republican party that was the catalyst. It will also show that the weakness of the democrats and the politicization of the Supreme Court and ineffectiveness of all branches contributed to our demise. I am not sure that America was ever a moral compass for the world, but we were better than any other country. Do we deserve our fate? I think we might. We released the reins and let the horse take control. I am pessimistic that Trump will ever face criminal charges, he seems to be above the law. His comment that he could shoot someone on fifth avenue and get away with was very prescient.
Hope you are well.....I am a little bummed.😱😱.
We are so glad to receive your email commentary! Thanks Greg!