Donald Trump and Kevin McCarthy give something away ahead of January 6th public hearings

| 5:00 pm EDT June 9, 2022
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For days we’ve been seeing media reports about the “counter programming” that Donald Trump and his Republican allies are going to roll out in the name of trying to distract the general public from the January 6th public hearings. This alone gives away that Trump and his allies expect these hearings to have a major impact; otherwise they wouldn’t need to worry about doing counter programming.

Now that the day of the first public hearing has arrived, Trump world is giving away that it’s really concerned about the impact that these hearings will have. Kevin McCarthy held a press conference and ended up screaming. Donald Trump released arguably his most unhinged statement yet. Marco Rubio made a point of announcing that no one is going to watch the hearings – a clear sign that he thinks everyone will watch the hearings.

It’s important to keep in mind that it’s almost completely irrelevant that Fox News isn’t airing these hearings. First of all, that was never going to happen, given that multiple Fox News hosts are directly caught up in this scandal. On top of that, Fox viewers are the specific people who aren’t going to change their minds no matter what. So who cares if they’re not watching the hearings?

These hearings are for everyone else out there, the American general public in the middle, who know that some bad stuff went down on January 6th and that Trump was vaguely connected to it, but have no familiarity with the specific crimes that Trump committed that day, or the extent the Republican Party went to in trying to help Trump carry out the dumbest coup plot of all time.

What matters greatly is that these hearings are airing live in primetime on network television including NBC, CBS, and ABC, which is where average Americans in the middle are going to trip over them and end up watching. These are the people who can, and will, be persuaded by these hearings. They’re the ones who will tune in and then perhaps decide they should vote accordingly in the midterms. It’s why Trump and his allies are freaking out so badly. The Fox News audience is already voting a certain way and is therefore irrelevant. These hearings are about educating and persuading everyone else.