The directors are hoping that the storyline will have all the elements of a TV smash hit: a King Lear figure ranting and raving as his power slips away from him, a glamorous couple struggling to rise above the fray, shady characters scheming sedition in hotel bedrooms, hordes of thugs in paramilitary gear chanting “hang him” as they march on the nation’s capitol.
When the US House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection opens its hearings on Thursday evening, it will do so in prime time and with primetime production values. The seven Democrats and two Republicans – shunned by their own party – who sit on the panel are pulling out all the stops in an attempt to seize the public’s attention.
They have brought onboard a former president of ABC News, James Goldston, a veteran of Good Morning America and other mass-market TV programmes, to tightly choreograph the six public hearings into movie-length episodes ranging from 90 minutes to two and a half hours. His task: to fulfill the prediction of one of the Democratic committee members, Jamie Raskin, that the hearings “will tell a story that will really blow the roof off the House”.
To amplify the event, activists are hosting dozens of public watch parties in living rooms and union halls across the country. A “flagship event” will take place at the Robert Taft Memorial and Carillon in Washington, where attendees can watch the hearing on a jumbotron while enjoying free Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream.
Reports suggest that one ratings-boosting tactic under consideration would be to show clips from the committee’s interviews with Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner. They were witness to many of Donald Trump’s rantings in the buildup to January 6, and highlights of their quizzing could command a large audience.
As a counterpoint to the glamorous couple, the committee is also likely to focus during the opening session on the activities of far-right groups including the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. This week, the justice department charged the national chairman of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, and four of the group’s other leaders with seditious conspiracy.
The indictments will act as backdrop to two of the committee’s main ambitions for the hearings. First, to show in dramatic and previously unseen footage – edited for maximum effect on TV and social media alike – the harrowing violence and brutal destruction that was unleashed during the storming of the Capitol, in which the vice-president was forced to flee rioters shouting: “Hang Mike Pence.”
The second ambition is to convey to the American people that the maelstrom of rage was not random and unprompted, but rather the opposite – instigated, organised, meticulously planned and conceived by an array of conscious actors.
To tease out the violent drama and the calculated premeditation of the insurrection, the panel is expected to call Nick Quested to testify. The British film-maker attached himself to far-right groups in the days leading up to January 6, and on the day itself joined a group of Proud Boys as they entered the Capitol compound.
The Republican leadership, which is planning a slew of counter-programming measures to undermine the hearings, is counting on the American people being so bored by January 6 and distracted by Ukraine, inflation and other worries that millions will avoid tuning in. But opinion poll research suggests they should not be too confident.
Celinda Lake, a veteran Democratic pollster, told a press event staged by the Defend Democracy Project that she had been “frankly quite surprised” to find a high level of public interest in the hearings. “I did not think with everything else on their plates and how fleeting the public’s attention is that this would be such a major issue, but it’s really penetrated their consciousness,” she said.
The elephant in the room is Trump. How to play the former president and his role behind January 6 is one of the most sensitive issues facing the hearings’ orchestrators.
Doug Jones, the former Democratic senator from Alabama and a former federal prosecutor, urged colleagues to avoid giving the impression they were out to get him.
“They should not give the American public the perception that this is an attack on Donald Trump – this is truly an attack on democracy. Right now for primetime, they need to lay the facts and let the American public see this for what it is.”
The committee is thought to be intending to tackle Trump head on in the final of the six public hearings which, like the first, will be held in primetime later this month. Unnamed sources have been predicting that presentation will contain several “bombshells” which, if true, are certain to be deployed to full dramatic effect.
