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Their mother, brothers agreed, would like brothers and sisters Dale Peterson and Priscilla Harris to find a way to respect each other’s views on the Jan. 6 hearings, even if Peterson is a staunch Liberal Democrat and his sister is a conservative Republican for life.
So, 1,200 miles apart, as was the first televised hearing last week, Peterson was on his phone in Orlando, while Harris, in her lair in Tulsa, had her cell phone on speakerphone. In the end, they did not fight, but sympathized with the country’s future and the weakness of the facts. Still deeply divided by ideology and party, they found common ground in concluding that these hearings would not change the minds of many.
Harris recalls watching every minute of the 1973 Watergate hearings, a televised event that riveted the nation and convinced many of Richard M. Nixon’s supporters that their president was indeed a crook. But then the Americans were more open to the facts, she said: “Every American knew to the end that Nixon was guilty. But now it’s different. Because Trump supporters don’t believe what you do, whatever you say. “
In a heated debate and silent tension, with bits of hope and carts of doubt, the Americans processed the first hearings before a congressional committee investigating last year’s attack on the US Capitol. Millions have watched for evidence that President Donald Trump instigated the January 6, 2021 uprising because they want the former president held accountable. They watched in the hope that Trump supporters could see the folly of their hero’s allegations of rigged elections.
But millions of others haven’t watched it – because they’ve dealt so far with criticism of a president they admire, or because they’ve gone too far with politics, or because they’re too busy working to go through crazy gas prices and expensive everything .
On the Tulsa-Orlando line, the brothers and sisters concluded that despite numerous testimonies showing how people around Trump were trying to convince him that he had lost the 2020 election, he “probably just has no hope of convincing” his supporters. that Trump’s claims about the fraudulent election were completely false, said Peterson, 73, a retired corporate human resources officer.
He concluded from the first hearings that Trump knew that “what he is telling people is a lie and his intention to tell those lies is to stay in power. or to raise millions. “But Peterson has little hope that Trump’s electorate will accept this.” even slightly from this position.
His sister, 79, and once a delegate to the Republican National Convention, did not share her brother’s admiration for the chairman of the commission, Benny G. Thompson (D-Miss.). “He seems to come to a conclusion before he hears anything,” she said. But she found the Republican vice president, Liz Cheney (Wayo), convincing, and the siblings agreed.
How to watch the committee hearings on January 6 and what to watch for
Across the country, onlookers were often outraged by the scale of the intrigue that led to the attack. In the suburbs of Chicago Highland Park, Christina Merlot joined in to show her sons, aged 13 and 16, why it is vital to take action to protect democracy. Merlot, 53, said she appreciated the commission’s calm approach and said she had learned the answers to questions her children could have about “the rule of law, the peaceful transfer of power, the acceptance of election results”.
Although the first hearing attracted an audience of about 19 million, according to Nielsen, the vast majority of Americans relied on either video clips and news accounts, or ignored the production altogether.
In Wheaton, Illinois, Dave Seng turned off the first hearing and decided not to tune in again this week, not because he was busy, but because of the stress the hearings caused him.
“I’m at odds,” said Seng, 54, a software development manager at a financial services company in Chicago. “On the one hand, I feel I have to look to get a first-hand perspective. … There is almost an aspect of civil liability. But on the other hand, I know that the testimony will be powered by political spinning machines that will spit out all kinds of rubbish. “
An independent who once leaned toward a Republican, he left the party two decades ago, deciding he preferred to consider the issues himself rather than depend on a party he believes is guided more by how its candidates can win than by from the principles of how to manage.
Less politics leads to a fuller life, he concluded. “I can find enough information in a short period of time to know who I will vote for. I don’t need to pay attention to him for more than four years. “
In Tulsa, Susan Phillips is also on the sidelines. Twice voting for Trump, she decided the commission’s work was “an incredible waste of time.” I think they have abandoned the conclusions. “
Retired psychologist Phillips, 77, said the hearings were designed to distract us from what was happening in this country – and I refuse to be distracted. What about the high price of fuel and raging inflation, I believe our current government would not want us to worry about these things, so they are doing a show. “
But in the suburbs of Fort Worth Benbrook, where Jerry Grantland remains convinced that Trump was a successful president who never intended his supporters to storm the Capitol, the hearings still helped convince him that Trump should step down.
Grantland, a 74-year Vietnam War veteran suffering from a disease he traced to contact with Agent Orange, sees Trump as “a good president who had good intentions.” Things just went wrong, but I don’t think that was his intention. “
However, the presentation of Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric at the hearings convinced Grantland that the former president “certainly caused a lot of baggage.” It’s time for Republicans – and Trump – to move forward and support a different candidate, he said: “We old boys just have to give up.”
Even if the hearings really change the minds of some Trump voters, they cannot save the country from insidious, even forced, payments, said Kathleen Betsko Yale, a retired actress and playwright from Buffalo.
Yale is glued to the hearings. As an immigrant who grew up in Coventry, England, during World War II, she found too many echoes of the rise of authoritarianism in Europe.
“I’m trying to hope,” she said, “but I think we’ve reached a turning point and we’re going to have to go through some dark times before we come to our senses. Fascism is always pitting people against each other, and we see that in hearings. “
Yale expects her great-grandchildren to come out of the days of American darkness, “but at 83, I doubt I’ll see that. What we need is reconciliation, but I have people in my own family who are on the other side and we can’t talk about it. We try to understand each other without going there. ”
This sense of despair, this feeling that only those who already saw Trump as a threat to democracy, gained wisdom from the hearings, seemed palpable in many places.
The next January 6 hearings will focus on how Trump’s “big lie” feeds the rebels
“Only we, the people who hate his insides, watch this,” said Shirley Welch, a 78-year-old grandmother of three at Fort Worth. “I still think this is a good thing. But that won’t change my mind. “
As she watched her 6-year-old Siamese cat, Sophie, land on an ottoman in front of her, Welch shuddered when she saw a video of frantic protesters throwing a female Capitol police officer to the ground. Welch laughed when he heard Trump praise the rebels.
“I hope they can put him in jail, or at least put him where he can’t escape again,” she said.
A retired hospital lab technician who once aspired to the Republicans – while sen. John McCain did not elect then-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his candidate in 2008. Welch received a boost from the hearings, especially from the two Republicans on the committee, which she sees as putting the state above the party.
But she does not expect the procedure to help cure the division in the nation. She does not want kumbaya: “I just want our political people to be normal, law-abiding people.”
However, some conservatives have found a new perspective from Republican witnesses who testified that Trump’s inner circle knew he had lost the election.
Mike Patterson, 49, who owns a graphic design business in Weatherford, Texas, west of Fort Worth, calls himself a staunch conservative and said the hearings were “very instructive”, convincing him that the 2020 election was likely they are not “attuned”.
The commission has successfully debunked the idea that ballot boxes in Georgia were placed to direct the state’s votes to Joe Biden, Patterson said. He now believes that Trump was wrong to continue to fight the false claim that he won the election.
“His pride prevented him from accepting that he had lost,” Patterson said.
Consensus in short supply
This kind of spin may have been what Jean Dufour hoped to witness at a party he organized last week in Madison, Georgia, 60 miles east of Atlanta. Duforth, 66, a real estate agent who is active in the local Democratic Party, imagined a bipartisan mob coming together to examine the evidence with an open mind.
But the 14 people who gathered in the Episcopal Church of Advent were mostly – well, probably all – Democrats. Like Dufour, they saw that the committee was “doing a good job of telling the story,” as she put it. “They tell the story from the inside out, saying that’s what the president did. That’s what he knew. These are the choices he made. “
Five blocks away, in Madison Town Park, Ron Collins spent the first night of the hearings watching a juggling show …
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