How Americans feel about the Jan. 6 hearings so far
Harris recalled watching every minute of the Watergate hearings in 1973, a TV event that riveted the nation and persuaded many of Richard M. Nixon’s supporters that their president was indeed a crook. But Americans were more open to facts then, she said: “Every American knew by the end that Nixon was guilty. But now it’s different. Because Trump supporters — no matter what you do, no matter what you say, they don’t believe.”
In snippy debates and in silent tension, with smidgens of hope and wheelbarrows of doubt, Americans processed the first hearings before the congressional committee investigating last year’s attack on the U.S. Capitol. Millions watched, looking for evidence that President Donald Trump incited the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, because they want the ex-president held to account. They watched in hopes that Trump supporters might see the folly of their hero’s claims about a rigged election.
But millions more did not watch — because they’ve had it up to here with criticism of a president they admired, or because they’re overdosed on politics, or too busy working to make it through a time of crazy gas prices and expensive everything.
On the line between Tulsa and Orlando, the siblings concluded that despite the barrage of testimony showing how the people around Trump tried to persuade him that he had lost the 2020 election, “there’s just probably no hope in persuading” his supporters that Trump’s claim of a rigged election was utterly bogus, said Petersen, 73, a retired corporate human resources officer.
He concluded from the first hearings that Trump knew that “what he is telling people is false and his intent in telling those lies is to remain in power, or to collect millions.” But Petersen harbors little hope that Trump voters will accept that: “They may take that viewpoint to the grave or, if they’re young enough, they may go 20 or 30 years to come off of that position even slightly.”
His sister, 79 and once a delegate to a Republican National Convention, didn’t share her brother’s admiration for the committee’s chairman, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.). “Seems like he’s reaching a conclusion before hearing anything,” she said. But she found the Republican vice chairwoman, Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), persuasive, and the siblings agreed on that.
Across the country, those who watched were often outraged by the extent of…
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