January 6 Hearings: Must-See TV
– By Ed Kociela –
Call it sweet serendipity, call it random happenstance, but there is a certain inclination rooted in divinity that the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Watergate scandal overlaps with the primetime exposure of The U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol.
We are already seeing our fair share of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the intrepid newsmen who set the tone of modern-day reporting when they pieced together the shattered mirror that was the Watergate scandal. They put the shards back together and although we emerged with a crackly image, we knew it was time to send President Richard Nixon packing. He really had no choice, either he left the office or risked time in a federal penitentiary for his crimes.
Fate will not be so kind as to offer former President Donald Trump and his co-conspirators that option. In fact, the best he can hope for if the whip comes down is a presidential pardon. It would ruin the career of President Joe Biden, but be necessary to get the nation over all of this and relieve us of the suffocating Trump fatigue.
We will see this all begin to lay itself out when the House Committee meets in primetime Thursday at 8 p.m. EST. The committee is tentatively set to meet at 10 a.m. EST on June 13, 15, 16, and 21 with a final meeting at 8 p.m. EST on June 23.
Whether it becomes an exercise in sturm und drang or a legitimate mining of truth remains to be seen and depends on how the actors, in this case the members of the committee, react to what should be a Super Bowl level television audience. I suggest we will get a little of both, so pop the popcorn and settle in front of the television for some high drama.
What we will not get from these meetings is a set of charges. That will be up to the Department of Justice to decide. But, these meetings will set that wheel in motion.
In the run-up, we will, of course, hear many references to the Watergate proceedings and the talking heads will spar about whether the Jan. 6 insurrection was equal to, worse than, or less than the impact of Watergate on the nation.
These meetings seem, going in, to have an awful lot of evidence. Reportedly there have been more than 1,000 interviews and more than 125,000 documents have been examined in the investigation of the plot to undermine American democracy, as one news outlet put it, that emanated from the White House.
The primary goal of these meetings, according to sources, is to share what Trump was doing as the terror attack unfolded, offering a timeline of the three-hour insurrection between the time when reason gave way to treason and the point where even Trump had enough and told his brownshirts to go home.
These committee meetings will in no way be as boring and tedious as the Watergate hearings, which seemed to plod along as a cadre of mostly common crooks and thugs was paraded through the system as the finger became more and more directed at Nixon. Expect some explosive moments in this round of inquiry into how a president tried to undermine the U.S. government and Constitution. There will be some jaw-dropping moments to be sure. I mean the simple fact that we will probably see the First Daughter’s testimony will surely enhance the size of the TV audience. And, you can surely expect some seismic explosions in the days and hours between televised meetings as the talking heads devour themselves in breathless outrage that would, I guarantee, be humorous except for the fact that there were major crimes committed here as a president sold out his country to cling to power.
Trump is smart enough to realize that he will probably never see the inside of a federal prison, but I don’t think his intellect and ego would allow him to see that he faces an even more striking penalty: one of irrelevance, which is what he will be if charged by DOJ. Nobody will care any more, nobody will come wooing his endorsement, nobody will clamor to be in his presence, leaving him to hook up with local carnies to roam the countryside as geek in residence, gnawing off the heads of chickens and snakes to the unsettling amusement of the rubes. But, hey, he is a former reality TV host, placing him in the rousing company of the Kardashians and the bumpkins on “Duck Dynasty.”
I’m not so concerned about the fact that Trump will probably never wear prison orange, either. Karmic fate, which holds a much stronger hand than I, will take care of that.
But, I do worry about security for the meetings. I worry about further violence and bloodshed. I worry about the deepening chasm that separates us politically, morally, culturally. I worry about the lack of intellectual clarity among us. I worry that the damage to the nation is beyond repair, that we do not know yet just how deleterious this has all been to the American fabric, how it has damaged us all to one degree or another. There is no question here about for whom the bell tolls.
The best we can hope for is that this series of televised committee meetings brings forth conclusive evidence and closure to, arguably, the most embarrassing chapter of the United States and those who wrote it, which may be why the committee is taking the unusual step of going live in primetime.
Maybe they’ve got the goods on Trump and his crew.
Maybe there is irrefutable evidence to drop this into his lap once and for all.
Maybe, just maybe, we will find cause and reason to place one foot in front of the other again and move forward instead of slogging through the muck and mire that was the Trump Era.
I certainly hope so, which is why Thursday night and the subsequent televised meetings will be must-see TV.
Viewpoints and perspectives expressed throughout The Independent are those of the individual contributors. They do not necessarily reflect those held by the staff of The Independent or our advertising sponsors. Your comments, rebuttals, and contributions are welcome in accordance with our Terms of Service. Please be respectful and abide by our Community Rules. If you have privacy concerns you can view our Privacy Policy here. Thank you!
Click here to submit an article, guest opinion piece, or a Letter to the Editor
