{"id":1527399,"date":"2022-06-23T21:34:23","date_gmt":"2022-06-24T01:34:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1527399"},"modified":"2022-06-23T21:34:44","modified_gmt":"2022-06-24T01:34:44","slug":"the-january-6th-committee-is-the-worst-watergate-revival-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-january-6th-committee-is-the-worst-watergate-revival-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"The January 6th Committee Is The Worst Watergate Revival Ever"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fthe-january-6th-committee-is-the-worst-watergate-revival-ever%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1527399&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>In the theater when a show bombs so terribly that producers start canceling performances its called \u201ccutting the run of the show.\u201d When this happens in political theater it\u2019s called the House January 6th Committee. After months of promising bombshells and big thrills in their live hearings, the committee head a dull prime time special, netting a lackluster 20 million viewers, then abruptly postponed their third hearing, and finally announced that their final hearing would move from a coveted evening slot to a far less visible 3pm Eastern Time. None of these are the actions of a panel that thinks it is doing well.<\/p>\n<p>To carry the theater analogy a bit further, this is at least the fourth or fifth revival of a particular show called \u201cWatergate\u201d since that blockbuster opened in 1973. We had Iran Contra, the Clinton impeachment, Benghazi, and so on. None of these hearings or investigations ever reached the heady heights of Watergate for many reasons, among them that Nixon was short sighted enough to literally record himself committing crimes, and also because it actually led to the resignation of an American president.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But what makes this Capitol riot iteration of Watergate the worst one yet is that it\u2019s not so much a hearing as it is a powerpoint presentation. In hearings there are heated exchanges that sometimes lead to revelations, information is discovered, not simply presented. Here there is no cross examination, no pressing for facts, just solemn committee members and their witnesses nodding with profound conceit at all the supposed evils of Donald Trump and his treasonous minions.<\/p>\n<p>During the prime time opener Rep. Liz Cheney, the Vice Chair of the Committee and one of two Democrat appointed members of the one sided panel, laid out what the committee would seek to prove. There are three basic elements of the alleged crime. First, that Trump knew or should have known that he lost the election and yet lied about it, second that he sought to influence federal and state election officials, and finally that he summoned and directed the crowd to storm the Capitol.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The evidence that Trump knew, or crucially, \u201cshould have known\u201d that he lost the 2020 election came mostly from video testimony of associates who told him so leading up to January 6. We saw former Attorney General Bill Barr, leaning back in his chair, casually gesticulating with his right hand saying, \u201cI told him it was bull****.\u201d\u00a0 Trump advisor Jason Miller testified that he was present when a digital election expert gave Trump the unwanted news. But importantly, the edited video left out the part where Miller went on to say that Trump told the expert he \u201cdisagreed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But of course Trump had other advisers, such as Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, urging him to press his fight to \u201cstop the steal\u201d until the bitter end. It is perhaps the least surprising thing in the world that faced with a choice between a group of people who said he lost and another calling him the winner, that Trump chose as he chose.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>As to Trump pressuring officials, particularly Mike Pence and Georgia state officials, the hearing focused on the former Vice President in its third episode. Pence\u2019s attorney Greg Jacob, appearing live, and his Chief of Staff Marc Short via video told us that Pence heard out Eastman\u2019s contorted constitutional claim that the Vice President could simply stop the count, and almost immediately rejected it. In the fourth hearing we will hear from Brad Raffensburger, the Attorney General of Georgia who Trump asked to \u201cfind\u201d enough votes to get him over the top. A request that again was denied. Not only is all of this evidence that we already had and knew about within days of the riot, in the Raffensburger\u2019s case we knew about it before January 6.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately it is Cheney\u2019s third allegation, essentially that Trump knowingly incited the riot, that stands out as decisive. But here, Republicans point out a quandary in the Committee\u2019s logic centered around the question of whether the attack on the Capitol was premeditated. If it was, then how could Trump have \u201cincited\u201d something already planned before January 6? If it wasn\u2019t premeditated, then how could Trump have plotted a spontaneous coup? After the hearing, Chairman Thompson told CNN\u2019s Jake Tapper that the committee would prove a connection between Proud Boys, some of whom have been charged with seditious conspiracy, and people \u201cin Trump\u2019s orbit.\u201d Thus far, however, we don\u2019t know what that connection is.<\/p>\n<p>Unless what the Committee has is something close to a direct communication between Trump and an agitator saying, \u201chey, let\u2019s storm the Capitol,\u201d which is to say, something like Nixon\u2019s tapes, then it really won\u2019t matter. And if it had something like that, why would they have canceled their second evening TV extravaganza as the chance<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the theater when a show bombs so terribly that producers start canceling performances its called \u201ccutting the run of the show.\u201d When this happens in political theater it\u2019s called the House January 6th Committee. After months of promising bombshells and big thrills in their live hearings, the committee head a dull prime time special, &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":346,"featured_media":1527420,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1527399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1527399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/346"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1527399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1527399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1527420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1527399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1527399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1527399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}