Checks and Balance: Capitol punishment
Checks and Balance from The Economist
The Economist
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 7 January 2022
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
“The former president of the United States has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election.” Joe Biden had harsh words for Donald Trump in a speech marking the anniversary of the Capitol attack. What has the House Select Committee set up to investigate January 6th discovered so far?
The Economist’s James Astill combs through the committee’s findings. We trace the link between the disputed election of 1876 and the insurrection. And anti-Trump Republican Sarah Longwell assesses her party’s response to the events of a year ago.
John Prideaux presents with Jon Fasman and Charlotte Howard.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The attack on Washington DC came in the heat of August. The mob was British. Its troops |
| 0:09.3 | sacking the ground buildings of government before burning them to the ground. |
| 0:14.4 | One casualty of the flames was the nascent collection of the Library of Congress. To replace |
| 0:19.5 | the lost books, lawmakers bought Thomas Jefferson's 6,500 volumes. And when, in 1897, the library |
| 0:26.6 | grew too big for its original home in the capital, the stately Bozar-style building constructed |
| 0:31.8 | to house the books was named after the third president. Today, the Thomas Jefferson building |
| 0:37.7 | is just one of the homes of the largest library in the world, holding over 170 million items. |
| 0:44.3 | It's the task of a bipartisan group of five senators and five members of the house to sit |
| 0:49.8 | on the joint committee of Congress on the library and oversee the collection. Of all the committee |
| 0:55.3 | assignments available, it's not the most headline grabbing, especially compared with the one |
| 1:00.3 | looking at the events of a year ago, the Select Committee to investigate the January 6 |
| 1:05.5 | attack on the US Capitol. This is Checks and Balance. Each week, we take one big theme |
| 1:15.4 | shaping American politics and explore it in depth. |
| 1:25.4 | Today, what have we learned so far from the January 6 committee? |
| 1:41.3 | Donald Trump was planning to mark the anniversary of the attack on the Capitol with a press conference |
| 1:45.3 | at his Florida home. But earlier this week, he called it off the event, blaming what he called |
| 1:50.3 | the total bias and dishonesty of the January 6 unselect committee of Democrats, two failed Republicans |
| 1:57.3 | and the fake news media. He had been expected to launch a no-holds-barred attack on the committee, |
| 2:03.3 | part of an ongoing effort by Trump and his allies to obstruct and undermine its work. Without much |
| 2:09.3 | Republican cooperation, what can the committee really achieve? |
| 2:21.3 | With me as ever to discuss all of this, I'll Charlotte Howard, the economist's New York Bureau Chief |
| 2:27.3 | and John Fasman, the US digital editor. Charlotte, how are you doing? Happy New Year. How is New Year for you? |
... |
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