| It wasn’t a night for big reveals. It was a
night for putting things in context, in particular the context of the ticking clock.
The Thursday night primetime hearing by the Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack sought chiefly to explain what then-President Trump was doing, and not doing, as his supporters sacked the Capitol and came closer than we knew to knocking off his vice president. The Committee showed us text messages from notable Trumpians (from Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham to his own son Don Jr.), imploring him to call a halt to the violence. It showed us testimony from his closest advisers, begging him to stop it.
But we already knew about those, as we knew about his refusal to do anything. We knew, as Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) made clear, that “Trump didn’t fail to act; he chose not to act.”
We already knew, from Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony, that Trump had fought with Bobby Engel, who headed his Secret Service detail, when Engel kept him from driving to the Capitol to join his armed mob. We heard testimony tonight from other witnesses saying they’d heard the same account.
We had not heard what one of last night’s witnesses, whose identity was kept secret, said: That White House security was concerned that if Trump succeeded in joining his mob, what would follow would be “a coup,” or at least, an attempted coup. That testimony echoed the presentiments of other West Wingers who feared that, if Trump went unscripted before the press room cameras while the rioters were still advancing in the Capitol, he might well tell them to keep going.
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