More than eight televised hearings that reveal the most comprehensive account yet of President Donald Trump’s provocative role carnage at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, the House panel looking into the attack has made clear its main target audience: Republicans.
The star witnesses have been the Republicans. Democratic committee members have gone out of their way to praise the Republicans who stood up to Trump, primarily his vice president, Mike Pence. And the committee’s vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), has openly appealed to Republican voters. On Thursday night he pleaded with them to drop the man they had long revered — a man who “took advantage of his patriotism,” he said, lying to them about a stolen election.
“Can a president who is willing to make the choices that Donald Trump made during the violence of Jan. 6 be entrusted with any position of authority in our great nation?” he asked in his final statement.
But it’s not yet clear whether Republicans are listening.
Polls show GOP the views of January 6 have barely moved. And at the summer meeting of the Republican Governors Association, held in Aspen, Colo., this week, audiences barely arose.
Even Larry Hogan, the anti-Trump Republican governor of Maryland who is considering a run for the White House in 2024, offered a measured assessment of the committee’s influence. Among the subset of Republicans after the proceedings, Hogan said in an interview on the sidelines of the summit, “it’s having an impact because they’re listening to people in the White House and members of the administration and supporters who are giving eye-opening facts.”
But most Republicans, he noted, “are not watching and they’re not paying attention, and it’s not going to affect them.”
The members of the committee have not hidden that they consider Trump a threat to American democracy and that their goal is no less than to eliminate the possibility of his return to power.
Through witness testimony and other evidence, the committee has shown that Trump summoned supporters to DC on January 6 with claims of voter fraud that he was repeatedly told were false; he knew the protesters were armed, and yet he marched them toward the Capitol anyway; he resisted pleas to quell the violence and instead persisted in efforts to delay the certification of Joe Biden’s victory; and he refused, a day after the siege, to state that the election was over.
Trump’s election raised tensions and put the US on track until Jan. 6, the panel said
Amid these revelations, Trump has moved forward with preparations for another presidential campaign, eyeing a fall announcement.
Still, even as he does, there are signs of potential change afoot, with support for his future candidacy waning and Trump himself reeling from the lack of support he’s received on television and in line from his fellow Republicans as the committee argues.
Trump has called the hearings, which are expected to resume in September and look into the Pentagon’s response, Capitol security and fundraising by Trump and his allies, among other issues, a “scam.” He has mostly not watched the hearings live, plays golf almost every day, but has followed the coverage, watched some of the proceedings on tape and consulted friends about the revelations, according to advisers who, like others cited by for this story, they spoke on condition of anonymity to speak candidly.
He has been further encouraged by the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, a former top aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, and urged allies to challenge her account. He has become particularly angry when he sees some of his close aides on camera criticizing his actions or questioning his claim that the election was stolen, four aides said. A Trump spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump has also urged House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and others to push back more aggressively against the committee, complaining that there are no Republicans on TV to defend him . He has asked his advisers and advisers to attack the committee online, with his posts on Truth Social, the online platform he and his allies created, not getting as much traction as he once had on Twitter.
Many of his advisers are watching to see if any of the revelations are “reportable,” in the words of one, or if the Justice Department will take steps to prosecute him. Hogan said he believes much of the final impact of the hearings will depend “on what happens with potential actions by the Department of Justice.”
An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll released this week found almost no change from December 2021 in the share of people who see the events of January 6, 2021 as an insurrection and a threat to democracy. About half identified it as such, while a quarter, including 2 in 5 Republicans, described it as unfortunate, but in the past and not something to worry about.
The same proportion of Republicans said it was political protest protected by the First Amendment. Independents appear to have evolved in their thinking, with 52 percent of them now saying it was an insurrection, up nine points from December.
The clearest sign of the committee’s impact, some pollsters said, is not Trump’s favorability within the GOP, which remains strong, but attitudes about his possible future candidacy.
“You can see the effect of the hearings on the percentage of Republicans who want him to run again,” said Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican pollster. “A large number of Republicans protect and support him, but more and more believe he has too much baggage to be the nominee in 2024.”
A New York Times-Siena College poll released last week was the latest to show a shrinking share who want him to run for president again. Only 49 percent said they would support him for another nomination.
That data is in line with findings from focus groups conducted since the hearings began last month by Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist and founder of the anti-Trump Republican Accountability Project. In several sessions with Republicans who voted for Trump in 2020, he said, not a single participant wanted him to run again in 2024, compared with overwhelming majorities favoring a third campaign in dozens of focus groups before June .
“They think audiences are stupid and they like Donald Trump.” Longwell said. “But they are making a political calculation about who can win.”
Staffers, strategists and donors across the GOP spectrum, from Trump critics to devotees, said any fallout from the former president would be based not on a substantive reassessment of him, but on tactics.
“Republicans want to forget about January 6,” said a top aide to a gubernatorial candidate who beat a Trump-backed candidate in a recent Republican primary.
That feeling may make some voters weary of Trump, in part because of his approach to debating the results of an election he lost. Republican primary voters “by a 2-to-1 margin in Midwestern states want candidates and elected officials to focus on the future, not the past,” said Joe Lakin, a Republican media consultant in Missouri .
Republicans who have chosen to stick with the former president could also see their position hurt by that preference. To the extent that the Jan. 6 hearings came up at the Republican gathering in Aspen, according to people at the meetings, it was in the form of warnings about the general election viability of Trump-backed candidates and “negatives of the elections”. as a governor’s top aide rated these contenders.
Frank Luntz, a veteran GOP pollster who attended the meeting in Aspen, said he detected “frustration” among Republican voters. “That Trump is making them go through this.”
But The fallout from the hearings would affect “only Trump,” Luntz argued. That’s in stark contrast to Cheney’s prediction last month, directed at fellow Republicans who have continued to support the former president: “Your disgrace will remain.”
Many Republicans may never hear that message because they have already dismissed the hearings as a partisan exercise, donors and strategists said. Republicans blocked the creation of an independent commission last year, and McCarthy withdrew her five picks for the committee after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) rejected two. That left a committee composed mostly of Democrats, along with two anti-Trump Republicans.
“The people who tune in are people who have taken a position one way or another,” said Stephen B. King, Trump’s ambassador to the Czech Republic and a Republican donor and former party official.
Trump has rarely faced political costs when backed up against a wall, said Brian Ballard, a lobbyist and top Trump fundraiser who also presided over the 2019 inauguration of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“I agree with President Trump’s statement when he first ran for president, when he said he could stand on Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and not lose support,” Ballard said. “I don’t see anything in the coverage that will significantly alter their support for the party.”
Advisers to other top Republicans believe the hearings are cementing concerns about Trump’s weakness. In his estimation, it’s less that the hearings alone will disqualify Trump as a potential candidate, but rather that they will remind people of the things they dislike most about him.
Two Florida lobbyists who have raised funds for DeSantis, a potential candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said the hearings could intensify “Trump fatigue,” as one put it. “I think a lot of people want normalcy. Politics without the craziness.” The other said the committee lacks credibility among Republicans but could still create unease over the “Trump drama.”
Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former Pence aide and White House communications director who…