Trump’s inaction, in super slo-mo

If nothing else good comes from the Jan. 6 hearings, at least we’ll get the Josh Hawley Run for Democracy. I’m picturing a 5K charity event, benefiting some group that treats disorders of the spine.

Thursday night the House Jan.6 committee ended Season 1 of its hearings with a primetime telecast. The old “Thursday Night Football” slogan, “When It’s On, It’s On” would have worked nicely. (“Thursday Night Football” has moved to Amazon Prime this year, so its new slogan will be, “We Found Some Items We Think You Might Like.”)

Hawley, the Republican senator mostly likely to become a QAnon shaman, provided a bitter form of comic relief, as the panel first showed video of the Missourian’s famous fist pump to the demonstrators earlier in the day.

A couple of things about the fist pump. Hawley, on that day, was celebrating himself for being the senator who would lodge a formal objection to the 2020 presidential vote tally. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell had tried to shove a cork in this idea from the jump.

McConnell has principles. Granted, you could fit them in a medium-sized coffee mug, but he does have them. He had correctly divined that a formal objection would lead to discussion and a vote, which would put his caucus members in the position of either voting against their president or against democracy.

Hawley was the member he couldn’t control. It’s probably unfair to blame Hawley for the savagely violent events of Jan. 6, although one fellow Republican senator, Mitt Romney, reportedly yelled “You have caused this” at him on that day.

So the fist pump was Hawley’s version of “Wolverines!” He was the rebel who was going to take on the fatcat socialists. Speaking of coffee mugs, Hawley later began hawking a mug and other merch featuring the fist-pump photo and the slogan “Show-Me Strong” despite not having obtained the rights to the image.

The committee then showed video from a few hours later, when Ostrogoths had smashed through the security lines, breaking glass and spilling blood. When it’s on, it on. We saw Hawley running down a corridor, a folder tucked under his arm. He had an oddly cartoonish gait, not exactly Bambi fleeing the forest fire. More like the way you’d expect Waldo to run if he saw a red dot on his chest and realized he’d been found by the wrong people.

Somebody on the committee has a cruel streak. The video was replayed at .5 speed. Thursday Night Scurrying. Let’s take a look in slo-mo, Troy.

So much for Mr. ShowMe Strong. He was happy to whip up the barking but afraid of the most rabid dogs in his own pack. You couldn’t hear it on the TV feed, but the audience in the room erupted in a sustained laugh.

In the scheme of things, it wasn’t all that meaningful, but it was a placeholder for other, similar losses of nerve. We saw McConnell and his House counterpart Kevin McCarthy denounce the attack and its godfather, Donald J. Trump, from the floors of their respective chambers.

We heard about McCarthy’s angry phone call to Trump while thugs rampaged through congressional workspaces and McCarthy’s staff tried to Hawley themselves to safety. We heard Republican lawmaker Jaime Herrera Beutler describe the exchange which ended, she said, with Trump telling McCarthy, “Well, Kevin, I guess they’re just more upset about the election theft than you are.”

But we also know that, in the ensuing weeks, both McConnell and McCarthy began examining their English muffins to see which side had more butter on it. Each took steps to block or weaken a rigorous inquiry into the events that had once so outraged them.

There was a different loss of nerve buried in Thursday night’s narrative. As the barbarian hordes slashed and smashed, Trump was finally persuaded to release a Twitter video. We watched outtakes from “America’s Funniest Presidential Terrorist-Enabling Bloopers.” We saw Trump balk at saying that tongue-twister “yesterday” which, he told his daughter, is “a hard word for me,” calling to mind the observation by political commentator Elton John: “Sorry seems to be the hardest word.”

At 4:17 p.m., the video was tweeted. It’s alleged central message — “leave in peace” — was cloaked in a swirl of peevish remarks about the stolen election. It was more an airing of grievances than a feat of strength.

But what bothered me was the testimony indicating that, right then, the White House staff agreed to call it a day. Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann, who has looked pretty upright in some of the other testimony, said the staff was “pretty drained” emotionally and that they’d done all they could do.

Seriously. The Capitol wasn’t fully secured for another 90 minutes. You guys are already knocking off ? It tells you a lot about how these people had come to see their own jobs. They were in the managing-amadman business. They were tasked with limiting the damage of a wildebeest in a Pottery Barn. It had apparently become difficult to see beyond that wall.

A final thought. One of the wobbly justifications lobbed by the dwindling mob of Trump apologists is the (true) assertion that he told the protesters, during his earlier speech that day: “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

This gets waved around as some kind of Get Out of Infamy Free card. But Thursday night drove home the reality: The rioters weren’t peaceful. And for 187 minutes, Trump did nothing about that except, in the words of his own staffers, pour more fuel on the fire.

He was no apostle of peace. He was Tybalt: “What, drawn, and talk of peace! I hate the word, As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee: Have at thee, coward!”

Of course, Tybalt didn’t mind putting his own body on the line.