DRIP DRIP DRIP
Now that the January 6th Committee has completed the frustrating but necessary work of collecting evidence and testimony from hundreds of lower level witnesses, it’s becoming clear that the committee has a treasure trove of such evidence. It’s led to questions about why the committee doesn’t just release it all at once. There’s a good reason for this.
If the committee were to dump out all the evidence against Donald Trump and his co-conspirators, it would make major headlines for a few days, but then it would fade away. The media would find some other new shiny object, and the committee would have blown its entire wad for nothing.
Instead the committee appears to have decided to release new January 6th evidence every few days, so the media always has a new juicy detail to chew on and run with. This strategy will serve to keep the January 6th scandal in the headlines perpetually, all day every day, as we head into this crucial 2022 election year. This kind of “drip drip drip” approach is crucial, particularly in this always-on era of cable news and social media.
The Republicans and their allies proved how viable this strategy is when they used the “drip drip drip” approach to the Hillary Clinton email scandal. What’s remarkable is that they managed to keep this imaginary scandal in the headlines for an entire election cycle, and thus impact the outcome of the election cycle, just by releasing new tidbits every few days – even though those tidbits didn’t amount to anything.
The January 6th Committee has a very real Trump-GOP scandal on its hands, and a ton of very real evidence. But even as real and important as this scandal is, the committee still has to deal with the reality of how the media picks its ratings-driven narratives, and how the social media machine needs to be constantly fed.
So long as the committee keeps putting more evidence out there at regular intervals, it’ll serve to educate the voting public accordingly, dominate the media headlines, and get the majority of the public behind the criminal referrals that it’ll ultimately make against Donald Trump and other Republicans. This will give the January 6th Committee the chance to win the battle for the truth and the battle for the midterms.
