Are the January 6 hearings over yet? Is this a miniseries or will it be picked up for season two? And does the cast of this ensemble production have anything to say about being snubbed at this year’s Emmys?
No matter what final “findings” the democracy-defending committee leaves us with, this saga will rightly go down in history as nothing more than a show trial.
It didn’t have to be this way.
Last year, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to allow Republican congressmen Jim Banks of Indiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio to serve on the select committee investigating what Joe Biden describes as the “worst attack on the US since the Civil War.” In response, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy denounced the sham investigation and pulled five other Republicans from the committee.
By not allowing the GOP to present an opposing side, Pelosi gave half the country permission to tune out whatever noise emanated from these “bombshell” hearings. Her hyper-partisan ploys turned what could have been a legitimate investigation into a C-SPAN soap opera. She also ensured that the partisan group of anti-Trump investigators would never look into some of January 6’s most glaring questions — of which there are many.
On Thursday night, Tucker Carlson devoted a segment of his show to Ray Epps. The insurrectionist, who was filmed on January 5 and 6 telling people to go into the Capitol building, is now garnering sympathy from — of all places — the New York Times. Politics really does makes strange bedfellows. According to the paper of record, Epps became the “face of a conspiracy theory by pro-Trump forces” and was forced to go into hiding.
As Tucker points out, if Epps is not a federal agent (the mainstream media assures us he is not), then he is one of the instigators of the insurrection. So why is the New York Times playing a tiny violin for Mr. Epps? There are plenty of other rioters sitting in prison cells for their participation in January 6. Yet the liberal activists at the Gray Lady only feel sorry for one perpetrator, the same guy who Adam Kinzinger assures us is not a fed. Got it.
The truth-seekers on the J6 Committee never mention Epps unless they are knocking the far-right fringe for purporting a “conspiracy theory.” Hell, these investigators won’t even look into why the Capitol Police held doors open for rioters and waved them into the building. Even Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez voiced her concern about that inconvenient fact this week. Why can’t a tiny chunk of the millions being spent on this kangaroo court be used to look into some of these basic questions? Instead we get debunked hearsay from Mark Meadows’s former aide about Orange Man Bad’s ketchup habits.
In the left’s ideal world, this trial would result in findings so appalling that Trump would become unelectable. (The former president recently told New York magazine he has already made up his mind about 2024, and there is speculation he could announce his decision as early as September.) But even if, hypothetically, the Democrats were able to succeed in their endeavor, wouldn’t Ron DeSantis be the obvious next choice for conservatives? In stopping Trump, liberals would actually be sparing conservatives the DeSantis/Trump primary infighting. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time the Trump-Deranged party overplayed their hand.
If both sides had been allowed to present their questions and findings, the American people might have been able to put this terrible day behind us. Instead, the country is more divided than before, while this televised train wreck has no end in sight. And somehow, after all of the very expensive grandstanding, there are more questions about January 6 than there are answers. The most damning indictment that comes out of this circus might be for its ringmasters.
