Jan 6 Hearings

[Dill]

(06-14-2022, 02:16 PM)hollodero Wrote: Well, in all honesty, these Monday hearings told an already pretty well-known story, with some additional witnesses and details for sure, but there was no real bombshell to be expected (Barr repeatedly using the term BS is not quite that). Yeah folks around Trump knew he lost and that there's nothing to all these conspiracies. Yeah, Trump dismissed them and kept throwing out said conspiracies. We all knew that already.

A summary will do just fine for most people and did just fine for me.

You're likely more informed than most of my fellow citizens, including me, I'm sorry to say.

I didn't know that Ivanka and Jarrod and virtually all of Trump's pollsters and serious legal advisors agreed the election was fairly lost and told Trump that the night of the election and for a week after that, so I got that from the first hearings.

I think listening to Trump insiders testifying to their tack toward the facts, as Trump tacked away from them, was much more persuasive than a summary by Dem Committee members could ever be. And much harder for Hannity & Co. to spin away. The isolation of Giuliani and Powell as the clown car rather than "team normal"--by Trump's own polling/legal team, no less--was especially effective, as were Barr's own explanations of why specific rumors (e.g., late night delivery of ballots in Michigan) were based on misrepresentation of normal processes. For the audience that needs to hear this, Barr and Trump's own daughter are more effective speakers than Bennie Thompson.

As far as the Monday hearings, I also figured Trump was grifting with his appeals for a "Stop the Steal" defense fund, but I didn't realize that, so far as anyone can tell, there isn't and never was any such fund. Money just went straight to the Trump organization for "expenses" and "charities" run by co-conspirators like Meadows. This looks worse than the now defunct Trump Foundation grift. 
https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2019/donald-j-trump-pays-court-ordered-2-million-illegally-using-trump-foundation

I don't think that "we" knew all this already if some of "us" have been largely listening to right wing media, which have been insistently minimizing the gravity of the insurgency/coup attempt and assuming that belief in "the steal" was the consensus among Trump insiders and Republicans who were actually investigating allegations of fraud. 

Also, Trump defenders have sought not only to minimize the Capitol breach, but also to disconnect it from Trump and the Big Lie which motivated them along with millions of Republican voters who still believe the election was stolen. The hearings have reconnected all these disparate elements to show how the "Big Lie," the Green Bay Sweep, the pressure on Pence to disqualify electors in swing states, and Trump sending a mass of true believers to converge "peacefully" on the Capitol to increase pressure on Pence--as Proud Boys and Oathkeepers already waited in position--all worked together to disrupt the certification of the 2020 election, and in a manner requiring foresight and long term preparation. And they are doing this largely by testimony from the perps and video.