If the hearings end without consequences for Trump, the main takeaway will be: this is how much you can get away with in 2020s America
You have to say this for America in 2022. They know how to put on a show. The January 6 hearings in Washington have made for riveting viewing. Someday the last days of Trump will be turned into a movie, and it will make a worthy successor to films about political collapse like Downfall or The Damned. The testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, a surprise witness – just like in the movies! – offered one hit scene after another: the president of the United States saying he didn’t much care whether his own vice-president was hanged; Trump lunging for the steering wheel; the ketchup dripping down the wall after he threw his lunch. The last planned public hearing is scheduled for Thursday. CNN describes the event as having “all the makings of a potential blockbuster”. But the hearings already have been a massively successful work of political spectacle; and that’s where their danger lies.
The organizers of the January 6 hearings had no choice but to resort to showmanship. They clearly learned the lesson of the Mueller report. When Mueller gathered the findings of his investigation into the Trump campaign’s expectation to “benefit electorally” from Russian disinformation campaigns, he released them as a book. He may as well have put his findings in a bottle and thrown them into the sea. Americans don’t go to books to understand the world any more. They go to their screens. That’s one of the most prominent truths revealed by the Trump years: spectacle wins. The sheer capacity to gather attention is, by far, the most important force in US politics.
Stephen Marche is the author, most recently, of The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future
