So now we can solve the question: How does democracy die? It dies now no longer in darkness because the Washington Post’s Trump-generation slogan could have it, however, inside the White House itself, withinside the personal eating room off the Oval Office, with the sound of Fox News blaring withinside the background. That personal eating room changed into Donald Trump’s de-facto headquarters for a whole lot of his Presidency. It changed into wherein he watched tv and wherein he tweeted approximately what he watched on tv— of the sports that, possibly greater than any other, described his tenure. It changed into additionally wherein Trump, on January 6, 2021, remained holed up for 100 and eighty-seven minutes, as his fans stormed the U.S. Capitol till he finally, reluctantly, launched a video urging them to head domestic and telling them he cherished them. On Thursday night, the House pick committee charged with investigating January sixth concluded a -month run of blockbuster hearings with a searing, minute-with the aid of using-minute account of what Trump did—and didn’t do—withinside the eating room that lousy afternoon. The phrase “dereliction of duty” got here up a lot, as did terms like “stain on our history” and “betrayed his oath of office.” It all introduced as much as a portrait of something the USA has now no longer visible in its greater than hundred and 40 years: a President who abdicated his position as Commander-in-Chief, having unleashed a violent mob of his personal making after which selected to take a seat down with the aid of using and do not anything as his nation’s Capitol changed into besieged and crushed with the aid of using that mob. “President Trump did now no longer fail to act,” Representative Adam Kinzinger, the renegade, anti-Trump Republican from Illinois, who offered a whole lot of the proof on Thursday, said. “He selected now no longer to act.” The listening to, just like the seven that preceded it, changed into, in all honesty, a piece of a mishmash. There have been damning new revelations, greatest-hits reprises, and earnest and preachy lectures approximately the destiny of the Republic. There have been even moments of cringe-inducing comedy, just like the blooper reel of Trump balking, on January 7th, at studying phrases that his workforce had written for him renouncing his rigged-election campaign after the preceding day’s debacle. “ ‘Yesterday’ is a tough phrase for me,” he says. It changed as though the screenwriters for “Veep” had conjured the moment. But it changed into each revelatory and lethal extreme to pay attention to Trump, in that formerly unreleased footage, who refuse to surrender his lies. “I don’t need to mention the election is over,” he says. Which would possibly as nicely be Donald Trump’s petulant political epitaph. As improbable because it nonetheless seems, that 12 months and a 1/2 later, America had a President who changed into inclined to burn down democracy itself in preference to admit he misplaced an election. Of course, the listening began out with an integrated problem: we already knew that Trump did now no longer do a rattling issue to forestall the assault on January sixth and that he had, in fact, incited and endorsed it. It is tough to provide a season-finishing cliffhanger whilst the belief is by no means in doubt. And but it changed into nonetheless transfixing, and terrifying, to concentrate on because the committee performed by no means-earlier than-heard audio and video detailing how Vice-President Mike Pence’s protection element feared they have been approximate to be overrun with the aid of using the mob—fears so acute, the committee revealed, that a few have been even calling their cherished ones to mention goodbye. We knew, however, nonetheless, it changed into something to pay attention to the growing terror of their crackling voices, to apprehend that they'd seconds to determine whether or not to race Pence via to protection or get caught and danger being crushed with the aid of using the fast-drawing near mob. They selected right, because it turns out, however, what if they hadn’t? A lot of what passes for televised drama in our politics isn't a whole lot greater than synthetic artifice: a fake screen of something we already know, an embarrassing gaffe this is quickly forgotten, and the like. But this, it appeared to me, changed into the actual issue. When the hearings started, in June, Representative Liz Cheney began them out with a rousing admonition to her Republican colleagues, nearly all of whom have refused to sign up for her, and Kinzinger robustly and publicly condemned Trump for the catastrophe he introduced on himself and the nation. “There will come an afternoon whilst Donald Trump is gone, however, your dishonor will continue to be,” she warned then. Much of Thursday’s consultation changed into approximately forcing her fellow Republicans to wallow in that dishonor, that's why the listening to each started out and ended with clips of the Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell condemning Trump’s actions. Cheney and Kinzinger, of course, are each G.O.P. outcasts now. Kinzinger, confronted with an unwinnable new gerrymandered district, selected now no longer to run for reëlection, and Cheney is an awesome underdog to a Trump-encouraged candidate in her upcoming number one. Unshackled from any similar needs of partisan loyalty, they have been each unsparing in reminding their prime-time national-tv target market of the perfidy in their personal party. Both appeared to take specific pleasure in tweaking House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, who first of all blamed Trump for January sixth after which, weeks later, abjectly sought his prefer as soon as again. Kinzinger appeared nearly gleeful as he stated how, all through the riot, McCarthy changed into “scared and begging” Trump to name off the mob. As for Josh Hawley, the younger Republican senator from Missouri, who led the objections to the electoral expect January sixth, the committee confirmed him pumping his fist in the guide of the mob—observed with the aid of using a closeup shot of Hawley fleeing for his lifestyles from the rioters down a Capitol hallway. This changed into the congressional listening to as revenge play, an epic troll of the trolls. But the actual villain of the listening to, as in all of the others, changed into the previous President. Cheney and the opposite committee contributors went to excellent lengths, in fact, too, again and again, to factor out that Trump did not do anything to forestall the mob no matter the pleadings of his personal aides, advisers, and own circle of relatives and contributors—all dependable Trumpists who had caught with him to the very quit of his disastrous 4 years in office. They knew, as Trump knew, that he had misplaced the election. “The case in opposition to Donald Trump in those hearings isn't made with the aid of using witnesses who have been his political enemies,” Cheney pointed out, however it got here as a substitute withinside the shape of “confessions” with the aid of using his personal group. The committee introduced contributors of that group into the listening room in person—Matthew Pottinger, Trump’s former deputy national-protection adviser, and Sarah Matthews, his former White House deputy press secretary—to testify how they have been so disgusted with the aid of using the President’s refusal to do so on January sixth that they stop in protest that identical afternoon. I’ll depart the very last phrase, though, to Cheney, who as an instantaneous result of her insistence on now no longer shutting up approximately Trump and the tragedy of January sixth will possibly lose her House seat in Wyoming’s Republican number one subsequent month, earlier than the House committee convenes again, in September. “We ought to take into account that we can not abandon the reality and continue to be an unfastened nation,” Cheney said. And but Republicans—the significant majority of them—have selected Trump’s Big Lie over the tough truths that could allow our democracy to endure. For now. So there's a cliffhanger finishing to the committee’s paintings after all. ♦
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