Welcome to Beg to Bue to Differ.

The Bulwerks Weekly Roundtable discussion featuring civil conversation across the political spectrum.

We range from center left to center right.

I'm Mona Charon, syndicated columnist and policy editor of The Bullwork, and I'm joined

by our regulars Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution in the

Wall Street Journal and Damon Linger, author of Eyes on the Right for Substac.

And Linda Chavez is out this week sitting in for her is John Ward of Yahoo News.

We appreciate that.

And our special guest this week is Tom Nichols, Professor Emeritus at the Naval War College, and a contributor to the Atlantic.

Welcome, one and all.

By the time people hear this podcast, they will, many of them have already seen the last of the scheduled televised hearings from the January 6th committee, focusing on what Trump was doing while his enraged

followers were trashing the capital and attacking police. Now this was originally

supposed to mark the end of the public hearings, but the committee has said that it's receiving so much new information that it may well return for further public hearings at a later date.

And so there are many questions that are still hanging, whether Trump

will be indicted, whether Trump will declare his candidacy for president,

perhaps to foreclose indictment,

and whether the hearings are actually making a difference.

So there was an article this week in Politico

that suggested that the accumulation is making a difference.

I'm going to start with you, Bill Galston.

You study polling very closely. Is it your sense that

these hearings are having some sort of effect at eroding Trump's grip on the GOP?

...