The 1/6 Committee Hearings for today start in seven minutes…though I wonder if they shouldn't be called "The Committee to Make Ron DeSantis the Next G.O.P. Nominee for President." I shall try not to watch but I haven't done so well not watching so far.
Much, I'm sure, will be offered to prove that Donald J. Trump knew damn well he'd lost a fair and honest election. I don't know how anyone couldn't know that unless they were the kind of person Jordan Klepper manages to find when he goes out to interview clueless people in red hats. I can understand how some people, having lost, have decided that pretending they didn't is more comforting and/or a better position from which to operate.
But the alternative to Trump not believing he lost is Trump believing he lost. He was treacherous or he was and is completely outta touch with reality. Neither is a good qualification to be the leader of our great nation.
Thinking back on Nixon and Watergate: There was a point when even the man's defenders seemed to be losing heart and trying to avoid defending him on camera. If you remember, there was a somewhat adorable rabbi named Baruch Korff, who came out of nowhere — and went straight back there after Nixon resigned — who wound up on the news all the time as "The President's Chief Defender."
Rabbi Korff was a good man with a bad cause…and because he was new to politics and outside Nixon's Inner Circle, he did a spectacularly bad job of defending the president. If I'd been on trial for littering then and Rabbi Korff had been my chief defender, I might have gotten the death penalty. But he got the job of defending Nixon because no one else — certainly no prominent Republican leader — wanted it; not with the slow drip-drip-drip of new revelations. The rabbi changed about as many minds as Mike Lindell has.
I don't think Trump will ever be abandoned by all those in his party — and it is still his party — but I think these hearings may make a lot of Republicans wonder if they might be better off putting some distance between him and them. We'll see.