Tuesday’s hearing was a masterclass on the threats posed by Trump to our republic
On Tuesday, the House select committee delivered a two-hour masterclass on the threats posed by Donald Trump to our republic and democracy. Cassidy Hutchinson, a deputy to Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, may have placed Trump’s name on a federal indictment for seditious conspiracy. The Capitol had been defaced for the “sake of a lie”, Hutchinson declared.
Hutchinson testified that Trump attempted to strangle his secret service agent and lunged for the steering wheel when he was told that he would not be driven to the Capitol to join the rioters. Hutchinson also testified that Trump said that Mike Pence “deserved” to be hanged for his refusal to overturn the election. On Tuesday night, NBC’s Washington correspondent Peter Alexander reported that both the lead agent and the presidential limousine driver are “prepared to testify under oath that neither man was assaulted and that Mr Trump never lunged for the steering wheel.”
Hutchinson “isn’t crazy”, a Trump White House veteran confided to the
Guardian a few hours before the hearing. But she is a “timebomb”. Sadly, her testimony proved the aide right. The 45th president relished the violence committed in his name. Trump knew that people might die as the mob vied to demonstrate its devotion. He was our mad king.
Hutchinson placed Trump; Meadows; Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s TV lawyer; and Roger Stone, the veteran Republican operative, in the middle of the run-up to the insurrection. Beyond that, she made clear that the threat of violence loomed large in the days and moments before the invasion of the Capitol.
Trump reacted angrily when armed rioters were barred from standing in the area closest to the stage. “Take the f-ing [magnetometers] away,” he declared. When Trump said that the crowd “would walk down to the Capitol”,
he was pining for the mayhem that followed.
The ex-gameshow host knew he would have been spearheading an army. Hutchinson also conveyed that her boss, Mark Meadows, showed no reaction when he heard of the catalog of weapons confiscated at the rally held on the morning of 6 January. Can you say, “complicit”?
Make no mistake, Hutchinson’s political pedigree places her solidly amid the ranks of the right. Before moving to the West Wing, she interned for the likes of Representative Steve Scalise, the House Republican whip, and Senator Ted Cruz.
Both Scalise and Cruz voted against certifying the election. For good measure, Scalise affixed his name to a baseless amicus brief to the US supreme