At around 1pm on Tuesday in the Caucus room of the Cannon House office building near the US Capitol, the murmur among approximately 70 spectators and 100 journalists subsided as a former aide to former chief of staff Donald Trump entered through the back door and sat on the witness table, where the hanging photographers withdrew.
The journalists were pressed into the 10 gathered tables for the sudden convening of a hearing by the commission of the Chamber investigating the January 6 riot. It was announced last week that there would be no more hearings until July. But on Monday, the panel unexpectedly said it was convening a hearing to “present recent evidence and testify.”
This witness was Cassidy Hutchinson, who made a series of startling allegations, including that on January 6, the then president was informed that people gathering nearby this morning had guns, but he told officers to “let my people in.” inside ”and a march to the Capitol.
Yet, despite her title testimonies and other revelations from the hearings, it is not yet clear how many of them resonate with the American public or change their minds.
“Evidence of the impact of the hearings so far is difficult to find,” said William A. Galston, chairman and senior management research fellow at the Brookings Institution.
On the first night of the hearings, the commission set out the beginning of its case against Trump – that his lies about the 2020 election and his pressure on Vice President Mike Pence to repeal it directly led to the violence on January 6, 2021.
Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump’s White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, testified Tuesday. (Jacqueline Martin / Associated Press)
These hearings were televised in prime time and attracted an audience of about 20 million people, the equivalent, according to The New York Times, of television events such as a big football game on Sunday night.
But by the second hearing, broadcast in the afternoon, the audience had halved to almost 11 million. That followed up to nine million on the third day.
The commission has heard a number of former Trump aides and Republican after Republican who said they told Trump they did not believe his allegations of electoral fraud.
Former Attorney General Bill Barr testified in a video that he told Trump that there was no evidence of voter fraud, that he disagreed with the idea of saying the election was stolen – but in Trump, said Bar, “there has never been an indication of interest in the actual facts.”
The hearings also heard of a plan by conservative lawyer John Eastman, which he presented to Trump and which was aimed at reversing Joe Biden’s election victory.
In addition, the hearings heard that Trump is prosecuting the US Department of Justice to prosecute his false allegations of election fraud, contacting the agency’s leader “almost every day” and trying in vain to attract senior law enforcement officials. in a desperate attempt to stay in power.
About eight to 10 journalists were squeezed into the 10 tables gathered for Tuesday’s abrupt hearing. (Mark Golom / CBC)
But a survey by ABC News / Ipsos found that only 34 percent of Americans follow hearings to some degree or very closely, with only nine percent following them very closely.
The poll also found that of those who follow closely, 43 percent are Democrats and 22 percent are Republicans.
“I think that also shows that the Jan. 6 committee doesn’t really have any influence among Republicans,” said Chris Jackson, an Ipsos researcher.
A Quinnipiac University study found that a majority of Americans say they follow the news of the commission very closely (26 percent) or to some extent (32 percent). About 41 percent say it’s not so accurate (17 percent) or not at all (24 percent).
A Politico / Morning Consult poll, meanwhile, found that 40 percent of Americans said the Jan. 6 attacks had a big impact on their prospects, compared with 66 percent for the Sept. 11 attacks, 62 percent for the pandemic and 52 percent for the recent wave of mass shootings.
Galston says that, taking into account these and other polls, he concludes that most people who watch the hearings are Democrats and that relatively few independents and Republicans follow them.
WATCH | Trump wanted gunmen at a rally, says a former associate:
Trump wanted people with guns at the Jan. 6 rally: a former aide
Former White House official Cassidy Hutchinson says Donald Trump knew people had guns on Jan. 6, but he wanted to be allowed into his rally because he wanted a large crowd.
But while Republicans may not be watching the hearings, they are hearing about them, he said.
“And what they hear is not good.”
The hearings were also filled with moments of emotional testimony, including that of Republican State House Speaker Rusty Bowers, who spoke about the threats he and his family had to face to admit that Joe Biden had won the state. .
Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, a former Georgia election official, testified that she and her mother faced such brutal public harassment by Trump’s allies that they felt unable to live a normal life.
But Brian Gaines, a professor of political science at the University of Illinois, says it may not have had as much of an impact as the 1973 Watergate hearings that took place while Richard Nixon was still president.
“The biggest difference is that Trump is not the current president,” Gaines said.
WATCH | Highlights from the testimony of Bar:
Highlights from Bill Bar’s testimony before the commission on January 6
Former US Attorney General Bill Barr told a House of Representatives committee investigating the January 6 riot in the US Capitol that he considered early allegations of fraud in the November 2020 election to be “false and stupid.”
Then the question “How much did the president know?” it was “really what he did [the Watergate scandal] take off, “he said.
“How much the former president knew is a different matter altogether.
Yet Galston says he believes some Republicans are beginning to worry that the hearings are affecting people’s perceptions of Trump and whether he is the man they want to represent the party in 2024.
“The fact that almost all the witnesses are Republicans, I’m sure, hasn’t escaped their notice,” he said.
Trump himself has beaten Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy for his decision not to include more Republicans in the hearings.
“Trump is obviously worried that this has an effect, if not on the Republican Party, then on him personally,” Galston said.
Jackson of Ipsos says their research shows that most Americans believe that Trump bears at least much of the responsibility for the attack on the US Capitol. However, he says the hearings may have little effect on those beliefs.
“Republicans who think Trump is innocent, Democrats who think Trump is guilty, they don’t move.
Wandrea ‘Shaye’ Moss, a former Georgia election official, testified on June 21. (Michael Reynolds / Pool Photo via Associated Press)
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