June 10, 2022 - 10:15am

Despite bombshell claims in the Left-leaning media that Trump ‘was at the center’ and to be blamed for the Jan 6 ‘carnage’, last night’s ‘first hearing’ of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack proved disappointingly flat. 

The event was treated like a blockbuster film, with blanket coverage on all major networks. This was the first of at least six hearings scheduled just for the month of June, and it was heralded by Democrats with the promise of “unseen” footage and Hollywood-style production values that would excite and enliven what is, by now, somewhat old news. 

Calling it the “first hearing” is something of a misnomer, however, because the House already held hearings, in July 2021, in which Capitol Police officers exhaustively detailed their defence of the Capitol building. But it’s the nature of political spectacle to demand the revelation of continually fresh horrors, even if they add nothing new.  

What was on display at these hearings was tame. Yes, people marched on the Capitol and knocked over metal barriers. Yes, at least one window was broken and protestors clambered through it. Rioters tangled with police, and some officers were evidently injured. The mob did stream through the Capitol building, and Congress did adjourn for a few hours, before reconvening to finish its business of certifying the 2020 election, after the would-be insurrectionists went home. 

Is that… it? One would expect, given the ubiquity of cameras today that they would have scraped up some evidence that January 6 really was as violent and dismal as we’ve been told, constantly, since it happened. In order to be shocked by video of cops and protestors in a scrum, pushing each other, with occasional punches or kicks, one would have to pretend that the summer of 2020, when violent riots resulted in thousands of police injuries and billions of dollars of damage by fire, had never happened. Certainly, we sympathise with Capitol Police officers who were hurt on January 6. But when they took their jobs, was there an expectation that they would never have to deal with a riot? 

It’s a measure of the distance between rhetoric and reality that, though the media incessantly dwells on the “deadly” nature of the riot, Thursday’s hearing made no reference to anyone’s death. And for good reason. Though seven people “lost their lives” in connection with January 6, only one was killed. Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed veteran, was shot at point-blank range by Capitol Police officer Michael Byrd, who faced no discipline for his action, and who has since been praised as a hero and lifesaver.

For months after the event, the media and the political establishment insisted that another officer, Brian Sicknick, had been beaten to death with a fire extinguisher by rioters, but this bogus martyrdom was exposed as a lie by the Washington D.C. Chief Medical Examiner, who found that Sicknick died of natural causes.  

Ultimately, the events last night amounted to a damp squib. The chain of claims that supposedly link Donald Trump to the actions of moronic hooligans is tendentious. The case is based on assertions that Trump told “lies” about matters of opinion, and that he did not listen to the advice of some of his aides. Trump called for a rally which turned into a riot; therefore, Trump caused a riot. Some of the mob imagined that they could prevent the transfer of power; therefore, the whole thing was an attempted coup. 

This kind of dramatisation has become all too typical of the Democrats, but it is clear that voters have grown tired of it. Until they can give up the Trump ghost and focus on issues that actually matter to voters — cost of living, inflation, and crime — the party will face electoral annihilation in 2022 and beyond.


Seth Barron is managing editor of The American Mind and author of The Last Days of New York.

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