On January 6, 2021, when, at the instigation of Trump, a mob of his supporters stormed the US Capitol building, this principle was apparently put to the test. Attempts at reprimand failed. Key members of Trump’s team refused to condemn him. His supporters seemed to remain loyal. Now, as the events of that day come before a select committee of Parliament, there is a new approach to the fight to do so: less the presentation of evidence by a lawyer to a jury than a drama of prestige by a producer to a TV audience – one with limited time and many other viewing options. Last Thursday, at 8 p.m. Eastern Time, every television network in the US, with the exception of Fox News, carried live coverage of the House selection committee in the January 6 uprising. If the 2015 Benghazi hearings or Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings three years later were, by the standards of most livestock cable TV shows, blockbusters, it was a completely different series. The number of viewers for the first day of the auditions reached 20 million on television alone – that is, without numbers for all those who watch live. The committee’s Democratic chairman, MP Bennie Thompson, and his vice president, Republican MP Liz Cheney, staged a two-hour presentation that gathered evidence against Trump as skilfully as any HBO pilot. Both seemed to know their deeper purpose: not just to present the facts, but to create a narrative that could ultimately convince Americans who doubt that Trump instigated a mob that intended to overthrow the election. To this end, the auditions are being conducted by James Goldston, former president of ABC News and a veteran producer of exciting television. Unlike Watergate’s 1973 television auditions, which were much freer and less exciting, the first two days of auditions were extremely choreographed and dramatically structured, edited to hold one ‘s attention. From Thompson’s opening remarks – “tonight,” he said, using the language of exclusive news, “you will never see footage of the violent attack on our Capitol” – to the split-screen format of the reaction as witnesses spoke, it was excellent television. . Thompson quoted Cheney as saying, “President Trump called the mob, gathered the mob and lit the flame of this attack,” she said before addressing her Republican counterpart: “There will be a day. “Donald Trump will leave, but your dishonesty will remain.” Part of the drama in the hours that followed was the shock of seeing former loyal Trump officials make a quick 180-degree turn. These included Cheney herself, a conservative whose voting record during Trump’s tenure was aligned in 93% of cases with the man she now called a liar. More in this spirit were to follow. Bill Barr, Trump’s attorney general and a man who until recently had only praise for his former boss, testified via video that Trump’s “stop stealing” was “bullshit” and did not want to do it. Ivanka Trump, who looked so eerie that she looked almost like a hologram, testified in a video saying she had believed Barr. and Jared Kouchner, with an even sicker look, confirmed that, after Trump’s lawyer himself had told him that no election fraud had taken place, Kouchner had dismissed the information as “crying.” Witnesses for the first day were cleverly selected: a young, female U.S. Capitol police officer, who fell unconscious while trying to contain the rioters, tightened her cords. “I’m trained to handle a crowd,” he said, “but I’m not trained in battle.” And British documentary filmmaker Nick Quested, who immortalized in the film incontrovertible evidence that the events of January 6 were not accidental, but a plot carried out by white supremacists such as the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys. There was humor – Cheney’s dead expression as he described how Trump, on election night, “followed the advice of a seemingly drunk Rudy Giuliani.” And there was emotional release. It is shocking how laxative it was to hear a bipartisan committee, with all the bureaucrats behind it, finally say the words we expected to hear: “Donald Trump acted illegally.” All this choreography is designed to create a case that will probably eventually help the justice department in its criminal proceedings against Trump. In the meantime, it was the hearts and minds that the committee sought, culminating in that first hearing with a montage of closing scenes of violence in the Capitol overlapping with Trump. “They were peaceful people,” he said, as images of his supporters beating police and breaking windows without being rolled up. “These are wonderful people. I mentioned the word love, love, love in the air. ” On Wednesday, American audiences waited with bated breath for the third episode of the drama to end.
