WASHINGTON — The Jan. 6 hearings opened with a shocking portrayal in prime time of how then-President Donald Trump’s efforts to subvert his election loss touched off a deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Yet the House investigation’s ultimate impact on public attitudes will turn on whether the committee continues to deliver moments that will etch themselves into the consciousness of an American public focused on rising prices for gasoline and food as inflation hits a fresh 40-year high, shortages resulting from supply-chain snarls and rising crime.
In an age when viral memes and social media conversations shape perceptions, two highlights of Thursday’s session may prove the most durable: Trump Attorney General William Barr and the former president’s daughter Ivanka saying they didn’t believe his claims of a stolen election, and the live testimony of a Capitol Police officer. The officer, who was injured in the melee, described a “war scene” in which she and her fellow officers were pummeled by rioters and slipping in blood.
“Ivanka” and “Barr” were among the top trending topics on Twitter Friday morning, along with “Pence,” inspired by a preview that Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney presented in Thursday’s hearing of coming testimony from White House aides that Trump reacted approvingly to rioters’ chants to “hang” his vice president and angrily rebuffed pleas to call off supporters.
The moments, along with chilling video of Trump supporters clashing with police and a rioter reading a Trump tweet from a bullhorn as insurrectionists charged up the Capitol steps, directly discredit continuing claims the presidential election outcome was illegitimate and efforts by Republican political figures to dismiss the significance of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.
The committee succeeded with its immediate aim of “trying to shock the senses of everyone,” said Thomas Spulak, a King & Spalding LLP partner who served as staff director to the House Rules Committee and later as general counsel to the chamber in the 1990s.
“Really, the bar was set high,” Spulak said. “The goal last night was to get people’s attention — and maybe open up minds to pay attention to what comes next. And they did that.”
Trump seemed to sense danger, posting statements on social media during the hearing disparaging his daughter as “checked out” and his former attorney general as “a coward.”
The committee did succeed in solidifying and amplifying its major thesis for these hearings — that Trump’s rhetoric and actions instigated the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, said Cayce Myers, an associate professor of public relations at Virginia Tech who specializes in media history.
“Despite establishing that narrative, it’s difficult to know if the committee’s narrative has enough traction with American viewers to keep them watching or even to get them to watch,” Myers said.
In addition to difficulty breaking through to typical voters concerned about the risk of a recession, motivated members of Trump’s populist base are engaged with a conservative media ecosystem that continues to push narratives of a stolen election and casts efforts to investigate the riot as partisan.
“It’s not likely to break through to the Republican Fox voter at all,” said Joe Lockhart a former White House press secretary for Democrat Bill Clinton who is now a public relations strategist. “There are two sets of facts now, the Fox facts and the real facts.”
The first hearing was carried live on prime-time television by most major networks — except Fox News, the highest rated cable news channel, where hosts devoted the time to dismissing the event as a partisan stunt.
The House committee is trying to break through to a weary public by packaging its hearings in a concentrated barrage of episodes released during a single month, similar to the way premium channels such as HBO, Apple TV and Netflix market television series, Lockhart said.
“They structured this for the way we watch television now, and it’s in episodes,” Lockhart said. “It was structured as this is going to be a program, and we hope you’ll watch the whole program.”
The committee has a difficult climb to sustain public attention over six more hearings — including three next week — with none of next week’s hearings set to be aired on major national TV networks, Spulak said.
“I think we will see a gradual fall-off,” he said.
