As cable news networks and journalists around Washington prepare for the first of several prime time hearings hosted by the select House committee investigating 6 January, lawmakers are being confronted by a simple question: How many Americans still care?
The question was on the mind of reporters at Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s weekly press conference at the Capitol on Thursday, where the Democratic leader was confronted by a journalist who asserted that “a big chunk of Americans” have “decided [that] they just don’t care” about the investigation into the violence that overtook the nation’s capital, including the effort to determine Donald Trump’s role in the day’s events.
“I don’t think that that’s the case,” Ms Pelosi countered.
She added: “I don’t know that [it’s a fact that many Americans do not care]. I know that there are people who would like it to go away, some of them in this very Congress. But I don’t stipulate to what you have said, no.”
The assertion by Ms Pelosi that most Americans have not tuned out from the arguments over the deadly riot that erupted when Donald Trump’s supporters attempted to force Congress to overturn the election appears to be largely borne out by reality: A CBS News poll released Thursday morning indicated that as many as seven in ten Americans still believe that “finding out what happened on Jan 6” is important; less than a third said otherwise. Republicans were the only group to hold significant opposition to an investigation in the poll, with just over half saying that it was not important to pursue an investigation into the attack.
In the same poll, two-thirds of Americans said they were worried about the future of democracy in the US, and a slightly larger share agreed that the riot was a sign of escalating politically-motivated violence in the country.
Crucially for the efforts of lawmakers on the panel, America’s independent voters appear to still be interested in the investigation. 68 per cent of poltically independent voters in the CBS poll called efforts to find the truth about Jan 6 at least somewhat important. And in a dangerous finding for Republicans, more than eight in ten independents say they disapproved of the actions of those Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol (whose actions continue to be minimised and even praised by Republicans, including Mr Trump).
Republicans in the House continue to cater to their hardcore base that opposes an investigation, however, and for that reason spent their time Thursday on criticising the panel’s investigation itself as well as Ms Pelosi’s refusal to seat two Republicans on the panel who had made public statements minimising the seriousness of the attack (and one of whom, Jim Jordan, is now a witness whose testimony is being sought by the panel).
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy attacked the panel’s work at his own press conference on Thursday, referring to it as the “most political and least legitimate committee in congressional history,” and insisted that “I think everyone in the country bears responsibility” for escalating political rhetoric when asked by journalists whether Donald Trump bore responsibility for the attack.
The GOP has tread a fine line, arguing that their members believe that an investigation into the attack is necessary for more than a year now while at the same time those same members have opposed for one reason or another virtually every single effort to do so.
Many members of their party also continue to undermine the seriousness of their leaders’ calls for the investigation to occur by publicly criticising the Justice Department over its own efforts to hold participants in the attack accountable; House members like Marjorie Taylor Greene have decried the long periods of pretrial detention in DC jail that some Jan 6 defendants have faced, though such a practice is fairly common in unrelated matters around the country.
