Democracy dishonoured

ON THURSDAY evening, just after the game show Jeopardy! finished airing, millions of Americans tuned in to an unusual prime-time broadcast.

The committee set up to investigate the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol opened its public hearings. Regularly scheduled programming was pre-empted on all networks – except for the Fox News Channel – to make way for a live feed of the proceedings.

The picture painted was a startling one. Presented were new information and dramatic testimony, some of which drew gasps from people gathered in the committee’s public gallery, and possibly also in living rooms across the world.

In reply to rioters’ chants of “Hang Mike Pence,” former US president Donald Trump showed no care for the safety of his vice president or the sanctity of the US constitution. Instead, he suggested Mr Pence deserved it: “Maybe our supporters have the right idea.”

Further, during the attack Mr Trump showed no concern for the well-being of any of the US representatives endangered, taking no steps to deploy the National Guard and speaking with no element of the US government to instruct that the Capitol should be defended.

Instead, the Republican party leader continued falsely to claim the 2020 election had been stolen, alleging voter fraud even as his own advisers had informed him there was no basis on which to challenge the result.

Through previously unreleased video testimony, the world on Thursday evening saw Mr Trump’s top law-enforcement official, attorney general William Barr, bluntly assessing the president’s claims as being nothing more than “bulls--t.” Mr Trump’s own daughter, Ivanka, accepted Mr Barr's view.

So shaken were members of the president’s cabinet by his conduct on January 6 that they discussed invoking the 25th Amendment to replace him.

Meanwhile, multiple Republican congressmen quietly sought presidential pardons for their role in trying to overturn the election result.

“January 6 and the lies that led to insurrection have put two and a half centuries of constitutional democracy at risk,” said the committee’s chairman Bennie Thompson. “The world is watching what we do here.”

The world is indeed watching.

But the question is, will enough Americans be watching too?

Unlike the famous Watergate hearings, these proceedings come at a time when the US is deeply divided. Fox News’s decision to blank the broadcast is in line with the Republican Party’s stance of now dismissing January 6 as little more than a blip.

But with the advent of Russia’s war against Ukraine, the idea of treasonous conduct on US soil appears more serious each day.

“There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonour will remain,” committee vice chair Liz Cheney told her Republican colleagues on Thursday evening, perhaps mindful of what may come to pass.