Best- and Worst-Case Outcomes of the Jan. 6 Public Hearings

Interesting Times with Ross Douthat

New York Times Opinion

New York Times, Journalism, News, Society & Culture, Ross Douthat

4.0 • 7.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 June 2022

⏱️ 32 minutes

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Summary

On Thursday, a bipartisan House select committee will begin public hearings on the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. The weeks ahead will be awash with news as the committee reveals what happened in the days and weeks before the attack — and to what extent the rioters were emboldened, or enabled, by the White House and Republican lawmakers. To wade through the news and help us understand what to pay attention to as the hearings unfold, host Jane Coaston calls upon two experts on the Republican Party. Nicole Hemmer is an author and historian of conservative media. Ross Douthat is a Times Opinion columnist. They give their takes on what narratives might play out in the hearings and comment on the danger of far-right extremism in the G.O.P. “I don’t see an incentive structure that pulls the Republican Party in general away from procedural extremism, or even really at the moment, anything that pulls them back to a majoritarian democratic process,” Hemmer says.

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's the argument.
0:03.2	I'm Jane Kostun.
0:08.0	Lawmakers are holding their first public hearings in the January 6th attack at the Capitol,
0:12.2	starting this week.
0:13.2	The public will see live witnesses and pre-taped interviews with Trump family members testifying
0:18.3	about how the days and weeks before the insurrection unfolded.
0:22.4	The big questions are, how complicit were the White House and elected Republicans in the
0:26.7	Capitol right.
0:28.3	And perhaps more importantly, what will it take for voters to pay attention and to care?
0:34.2	There's going to be a lot of news to wait through in the coming weeks, so I wanted to hear
0:37.7	from two experts on the Republican Party to help me and you figure out what to pay attention
0:42.4	to as the hearings unfold.
0:44.2	You probably know Ross Dalfit.
0:46.1	I'm your colleague, Jane, the New York Times.
0:49.2	I'm an opinion columnist.
0:51.6	And I guess I'm one of the founders of this show, so that too.
0:57.2	Ross is our occasional optimist about the state of American democracy, as you'll hear.
1:02.4	And Nicole Hemmer.
1:03.6	So I am an associate research scholar at Columbia University, and I'm also the author of
1:08.4	a book called Messengers of the Right, Conservative Media, and the Transformation of American
1:12.7	Politics.
1:14.0	She isn't so convinced and thinks there's a pretty good reason to be worried about where
	...

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