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“Top advisers to then-President Donald Trump told him that his claims of widespread election fraud were unfounded and would not reverse his election loss, but he refused to listen, according to testimony on Monday at a hearing of the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.” Reuters
Here’s our previous coverage of the hearings. The Flip Side
The right argues that the evidence from the hearing is undercut by Democrats’ hypocrisy.
“Do Democrats want to unfairly besmirch the entire GOP with the Jan. 6 disgrace, while distracting voters from 8.6% inflation and $5-a-gallon gasoline? Yes. Yet did the committee offer a damning look at President Trump’s scheme to stay in office after losing the 2020 election? Also yes. Fresh video of the riot is a reminder that Jan. 6 was a brutal melee of fists and chemical sprays…
“The committee calls Jan. 6 an ‘attempted coup.’ That makes it seem as if there was a chance of success. There wasn’t. It was an impossible plan hatched by screwballs, and it would have gone down as such if the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers hadn’t breached the Capitol…
“One irony is that the largely Democratic committee’s evidence makes clear that Mr. Trump’s designs on overturning the election were foiled mainly by Republicans, including many in his Administration. White House lawyers threatened to resign if he fired Justice Department officials who didn’t indulge his fraud theories. GOP state legislators refused to name new electors. His judicial appointees rejected dubious fraud claims. Above all, his own Vice President stood up to Mr. Trump’s public and private pressure not to count electoral votes.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
“[Former Attorney General William] Barr compellingly explained that there was no widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election… Barr’s solid account — based on facts and the law, and coming from a top Trump official who wanted the president to be reelected — would not have been impeached if Representatives Jim Jordan and Jim Banks, whom [House Minority Leader Kevin] McCarthy tried to appoint, had been seated on the committee and permitted to cross-examine Barr…
“Consequently, the testimony would have been more powerful: The opportunity to challenge Barr’s account would have lent fact-finding integrity to the hearing, and the inability to shake his account would have enhanced our confidence that the hearing was getting to the truth. That is how real investigations and hearings work: They are adversarial proceedings… Alas, Pelosi chose not to play ball with McCarthy, turning the committee into an exercise in partisan theater, instead.”
Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review
“Democrats themselves used some very questionable legal pretexts to try to overturn a presidential election they lost in 2000 and insisted that the 2016 [election] was illegitimate… [They] will sometimes concede that their recent tolerance of political violence and their two decades of election rejection are a problem because they give Trump partisans a talking point, but that isn’t nearly enough…
“It’s not just that you can’t go from ‘rioting is social justice’ in July to ’riots are sedition’ in January — it’s that you shouldn’t be starting from ‘rioting is social justice’ in the first place, and, if you are, you have already lost the game. The fact that Republicans have cynical, self-serving reasons for not taking the Democrats seriously does not erase the fact that there are excellent reasons for not taking the Democrats seriously…
“Instead of self-examination, Democrats offer: ‘I don’t get why these Republicans are so radical and angry, and, also, everybody who retweets a joke I don’t like should lose his job’… And if these hearings go nowhere, which is likely, and if Democrats get pulverized in November, which also is likely, what are Democrats going to say? ‘We just didn’t realize how racist this country really is!’ Because racism is why thinking people don’t want Elizabeth Warren, the whitest woman since Eunice Wentworth Howell, in charge of writing our laws.”
Kevin D. Williamson, National Review
The left highlights the fact that Trump continued pushing allegations of fraud even though his own advisers were telling him they were baseless.
The left highlights the fact that Trump continued pushing allegations of fraud even though his own advisers were telling him they were baseless.
“Video of Barr, along with live testimony from a former US attorney in Georgia and a former Philadelphia city commissioner, went allegation by allegation through baseless claims of fraud… There was no evidence of fraud in Philadelphia. ‘Absolute rubbish,’ Barr said. There was no evidence of a big vote dump in Detroit. Barr said Trump actually did better there in 2020 than in 2016…
“The concerns of a truck driver that he had delivered fraudulent ballots were investigated and dismissed. Misleading video shared online from Georgia was not of a suitcase of fraudulent ballots, but rather the normally used lockbox. Dominion voting machines were not fraudulent. Barr said ‘idiotic claims’ had been made in a sensational way to influence people.”
Zachary B. Wolf, CNN
“[Trump’s former campaign manager Bill] Stepien described Trumpworld as being divided after the election was called, between ‘Team Normal’ — those who accepted the result of the election — and those aligned with [former NYC mayor Rudy] Giuliani’s efforts to overturn the election…
“Eric Herschmann, a Trump White House lawyer who defended the former president on the Senate floor during the first impeachment and another member of ‘Team Normal,’ bluntly told the committee during his interview, ‘What they were proposing, I thought was nuts.’ He added, ‘I mean, it was a combination of Italians, Germans, I mean, different things floating around as to who was involved. Hugo Chavez and the Venezuelans … something with the Philippines, just all over the radar.’… Barr, along with other administration officials, described playing ‘whack-a-mole’ with Trump’s false claims of fraud.”
Ben Jacobs, Vox
“Again and again, reality was presented to him, but [Trump] acted as if it did not exist. Is this because he cannot recognize reality or because he doesn’t want to recognize reality for assorted transactional purposes? So far, the committee has not provided an authoritative answer. But that may be above its pay grade…
“In any event, there is a fundamental truth that transcends resolution of this issue: Whether or not Trump believes in his Big Lie, he has successfully encouraged millions of Americans to do so, and that includes the thousands who assaulted the Capitol on January 6. In either case, Trump is a threat to the republic.”
David Corn, Mother Jones
“[The committee] heard Monday from a cavalcade of former officials who worked for President Donald Trump around the time of the 2020 election. They all wanted Mr. Trump to win. Yet they all testified that they were confident that the election was not stolen and that they told Mr. Trump so…
“Anyone in Trumpworld with a shred of intellectual honesty apparently concluded that the claims of Mr. Trump and other 2020 crackpots were obviously false — ‘bull---t,’ as former attorney general William P. Barr put it. The lesson is that, in the age of social media and hyper-partisanship, it is unsettlingly easy to manufacture national crises out of absolutely nothing…
“Americans have long had the luxury of voting for leaders based on day-to-day issues such as economic performance or tax, education or environmental policy, because the major parties’ nominees have shared commitments to basic facts and to the U.S. political system. We no longer have that luxury. Voters must now prioritize honesty on core issues and commitment to democracy above all else. If we fail to repudiate politicians who lie or who amplify lies about U.S. democracy, more will do so… Whether we have another 2020 — or worse — in 2024 depends heavily on what voters do this November.”
Editorial Board, Washington Post
