Abbreviated pundit roundup: January 6th committee updates
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We begin today’s roundup with an analysis of the latest developments from the January 6th Committee from Ben Jacobs at New York magazine:
After a quiet few months, some of the committee’s investigation has begun to leak out to the public, such as the seven-hour gap in White House call logs on the day of the attack on the Capitol and the revelation that Ginni Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, had been directly lobbying White House officials on how to overturn the 2020 election. Behind the scenes, the committee has heard testimony from about 800 people and is getting ready to present its findings to the public in televised hearings as soon as next month.
More on the January 6th investigation:
A Washington, D.C., jury on Monday found former Rocky Mount, Virginia, police officer Thomas Robertson guilty on six counts related to his involvement in the January 6, 20201, attack on the Capitol, including impeding law enforcement, disorderly conduct with a dangerous weapon, and obstructing Congress’ certification of the electoral college votes.
Daniel Strauss at The New Republic explores Donald Trump’s hold on the Republican Party and his endorsement of Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania’s Senate Race:
Trump likes to brag about how his endorsement can win a candidate just about any primary and boost that candidate “like a rocket” in the general election. But he’s shown that getting his endorsement requires a high level of fealty to him and how he campaigns. The assumption among Republican campaigns has been that having Trump allies on the campaign creates a serious pathway to getting Trump’s endorsement. Except that’s not always true. And even when candidates do get Trump’s endorsement, recent developments in major primaries across the country show that doesn’t necessarily end the contest.
Trump has an uncanny ability to find the most unqualified crackpots, dissemblers and candidates with histories of alleged abuse for his endorsements. Shocking, I know, that Trump would gravitate to such candidates.
Meanwhile, David French at The Atlantic examines Republican attacks on free speech:
As the Republican Party evolves from a party focused on individual liberty and limits on government power to a party that more fully embraces government control of the economy and morality, it is reversing many of its previous stances on free speech in public universities, in public education, and in private corporations. Driven by a combination of partisan animosity and public fear, it is embracing the tactics that it once opposed.
On a final note, Philip Bump at The Washington Post analyzes how the Republican Party fully embraced Donald Trump’s Big Lie as a foundation of its ideology:
Trump’s continuation of months of rhetoric alleging that mail ballots were suspect became weeks of complaining about counting those ballots became months of elevating any accusation about wrongdoing that came across his transom, however obviously false. An ecosystem arose around his claims — “stop the steal” — that generated a lot of money by propagating the narrative. Trump’s most loyal supporters believed (and still believe) that the election was stolen.
So the right got to work. As with the Russia investigation, it needed to come up with a way to agree that the election was stolen without embracing the junk that was obviously false or deranged. The result? Maybe there was rampant fraud, maybe there wasn’t. But everyone could agree that the election was rigged against Trump by the very elites he was trying to disempower.