A Television Moment

8:00 PM

At 8 pm on this Thursday night, perhaps the most important television “event” of the 21^st Century will air.  The House Committee on the January 6^th Insurrection will begin to present their case to the American people.  What they demonstrate then, and the next six hearings after, will determine how America will evaluate what happened on that day, and the events leading up to it.

The Committee will only have “one shot” at getting this right.  There are already a significant percentage of Americans who will directly decide NOT to watch this.  Their minds are already made up.  And there is another large percentage who won’t be bothered to watch.  They are the “pox on all your houses” crowd, blaming politics as a failed profession; “all crooked”.  Those folks are simply failing their own country, unwilling to participate not only in making “…a more perfect union”, but willing to allow our democracy to end.

But for the rest of the nation, this is the one shot that the Committee has to capture America’s attention.  Here’s what they have to show.

Structure of Insurrection

Americans watched in horror as the mob attacked the United State Capitol.  We saw the medieval battles on the steps and in the hallways, and the travesty of the Confederate Battle Flag parading through the Rotunda.  While the video footage of that day is compelling, there’s really nothing new in that for Americans to see.  We know why they were there.  The mob was convinced that the election was stolen, and in the grand American tradition, from the Whiskey Rebellion to Black Lives Matter, they took to the streets.  But instead of demonstrating, they violently attacked the center of American democracy.

And in that is all the difference.  

What the Committee must show, up front on Thursday night, is that there was more to the Insurrection than just an out of control mob.  America must see that the Insurrection was not just the unintended outcome of Donald Trump’s reckless statements, but an organized and intentional assault on American Democracy.   

Americans must see the structure of “administration” behind the screaming chants, flag pole spears and bear spray clouds.  They need to see the organization of rebellion, the finance of millions of dollars of “seed money”, the back room deals and “8 Chan” calls to violence.  

And the Committee must draw a straight line from that structure to the White House.

Opening Statement

This is the Committee’s opening statement to the American “jury”.  And there will be plenty of “noise” in the ex-President’s defense.  Elise Stefanik, Jim Jordan, and the rest of the House Republican leadership will do all they can to distract from the Committee’s story, and provide “alternative facts” to the narrative.  So the Committee better get it right, from the beginning.

We know the alternative.  We saw the debacle of a diminished Bob Mueller, the former FBI Director who re-molded the Bureau into an anti-terrorism force, testifying in one word responses about the Russia investigation.  Even the brilliance of Adam Schiff and the other Democratic Congressmen could not overcome the absolute failure of Mueller to respond.  From the moment he took the witness stand, the Russia investigation was over.

So Thursday night there cannot be a Mueller-like disaster.  From what we know, there is a clear path from the insurrection to the President’s Chief of Staff, documented in message after message.  And there’s a clear threat to the Vice President, not just from the mob chanting to “hang Mike Pence” and the gallows on the lawn, but tracing back to the Oval Office.  The Committee needs to make sure America gets the overview of those connections, up front, on Thursday night.

Norms and Crimes

Like any good criminal trial, the Committee can fill in the details over the next several hearings.  But they must capture America’s attention on Thursday night, to keep the nation involved, and to bring in the skeptics. 

And the final and perhaps most difficult task, the Committee must convince the American people that the organization behind the Insurrection was not just “violating norms”, or playing “hardball” politics.  The Committee must show that what the Trump Campaign did was criminal, violating Federal statute, and punishable in Federal prisons.  

It would be “nice” if they could show it going all the way to the “top”, but into the Oval Office is enough.  

The case has to be compelling and convincing.  And it all has to happen on Thursday night.