Welcome to Beg to Beg to Differ, the Bulwerck's 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 am joined

by our regulars. Bill Galston of the Brookings

Institution and the Wall Street Journal, Damon Linker who writes Eyes on the

right for Substack and Linda Chavez of the Niskannen Center.

Our special guest this week is Matt Bennett,

founder of the Center Left Think Tank Third Way.

Delighted that you are all here. I am recuperating from about with COVID, but getting there.

And by the time this podcast airs, the January 6th Committee will have begun its much anticipated public hearings.

And there are a lot of questions that swirl around these public hearings, not just what will be revealed,

but whether it's even necessary or helpful for our country to even indulge in them.

So, Linda, I'm going to start with you.

I want to read you two different quotations.

First is from Representative Matt Cartwright, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, but whose

district backed Trump both in 2016 and in 2020.

He was asked whether he was going to be encouraging his constituents to watch and he said,

it was Politico who asked, he said, people who read Politico in my district will be watching,

most people though are just concerned on keeping shelter over their heads

and doing the best for their families. And so he said he really wouldn't push people to watch one way or another.

Contrast that with the sentiment expressed by Nick Grossman, former guest on this podcast who said, sort of framing the importance of these hearings, he said, an American president refusing

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