THUNDER BAY – POLITICAL Analysis – In the United States House of Representatives, hearings are underway into the January 6, 2020 attack and breach of the Capital building.
Members of the special committee are sharing evidence on former President Donald J. Trump’s actions on that day and on the days following the 2019 Presidential election.
After the election of Joe Biden as President of the United States, then President Trump declared that the election had been stolen, and a massive voter fraud was being put over on the people of the United States.
Evidence presented to the committee is showing that the efforts appeared to start on election night when an intoxicated Rudy Guilianni wanted the Trump team to simply declare victory.
Trump lost the election, knew he lost, yet continued to claim the election was ‘stolen’ and spread the Big Lie.
Watch the Select Committee’s hearing 2 recap ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/CQOXUKjLc6
— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) June 13, 2022
The Trump efforts to overturn the election results were increasingly shown to have no factual validity.
Republican Liz Cheney one of only two GOP representatives on the committee in her opening statement said, “As you will see in the hearings to come, President Trump believed his supporters at the Capitol, and I quote, ‘were doing what they should be doing’. This is what he told his staff as they pleaded with him to call off the mob, to instruct his supporters to leave. Over a series of hearings in the coming weeks, you will hear testimony, live and on video, from more than a half dozen former White House staff in the Trump administration, all of whom were in the West Wing of the White House on January 6th.
You will hear testimony that ‘The President didn’t really want to put anything out’ calling off the riot or asking his supporters to leave. You will hear that President Trump was yelling, and ‘really angry at advisors who told him he needed to be doing something more’. And, aware of the rioters’ chants to “hang Mike Pence,” the President responded with this sentiment: ‘maybe our supporters have the right idea.’ Mike Pence ‘deserves’ it.
You will hear evidence that President Trump refused for hours to do what his staff, his family, and many of his other advisors begged him to do: immediately instruct his supporters to stand down and evacuate the Capitol.
Trump’s former Attorney General according to the Washington Post fired a rhetorical dagger at his former boss.
Appearing larger than life on a giant screen above the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, former attorney general William P. Barr on Monday offered a blistering assessment of the man he’d spent years defending: In 2020, after losing the election, President Donald Trump appeared “detached from reality” and obsessed with fantastical notions of voter fraud, Barr said.
The hearings are somewhat reminiscent of the Watergate Hearings in the early 1970s that led to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon.
Trump being out of office, can’t be forced to resign.
The special committee can’t build a criminal case against the former twice impeached president either.
The United States has prided itself on the strength of the republic, and on being free. The Americans point to their elections as the envy of the world.
The first peaceful transition of power following an American election was in 1800, after the American Revolution.
The transition from Trump to Biden was marred by the riots and the deaths at Capital Hill on January 6th.
It likely is going to take the American people learning exactly what happened, and why. It is going to be painful and shameful.
There is likely not going to be any apologies from the former President, that skill appears outside of his political, and moral tool box.
The former President has in effect taken to the campaign trail pushing Trump Republicans for the coming mid-term elections.
If Trump supporters stopped for a moment and started really looking at the facts it is likely that most would be taking off their ‘Make America Great Again’ ball caps usually made in China, and put the brakes on the political games that the former president is playing.
The polarization of politics in the United States has the republic appearing more divided and divisive since the Civil War.
Perhaps what the House Committee can do is fully expose the whole story and trust to the American people to find the truth.
James Murray
