Jan. 6 Hearings Make Great TV, But Will It Matter?

In the long-running talkfest known as the Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, Attack on U.S. Capitol, we haven’t seen too many made-for-TV moments.

We don’t, for example, have video of Secret Service agents in then-Vice President Mike Pence’s detail making phone calls to their family members to say goodbye as they helped him escape barely ahead of the mob.

We don’t have video of then-President Donald Trump reportedly lunging for the steering wheel when his Secret Service detail refused his order to take him to the Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack. That’s how Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to then-chief of staff Mark Meadows, described it, an account later disputed by two Secret Service agents.

But the committee on Thursday did show video of a lesser-known but amusingly significant figure in the chaos, Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican with well-known political ambitions for the White House, and its value was more than comedic.

On Jan. 6, Hawley defied the wishes of then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to refrain from joining a Trump-instigated effort to halt the certification of Joe Biden’s election by rejecting electors chosen by voters.

Instead, he became the first senator to cast a “No” vote in that misbegotten effort, after famously pumping his fist defiantly in the air in front of the gathering crowd outside the Capitol, which included some eventual rioters.

The gesture made a nice gimmick for souvenir mugs, which his campaign has been selling, emblazoned with the fist-pump photo — at least until the photo’s copyright holder threatened to sue.

But now that photo must compete with a new visual: security camera footage of Hawley in a brisk, high-stepping sprint through the Capitol to escape the angry mob he had helped to fire up.

That visual gem was released to the world in Thursday’s prime-time hearing during a presentation by Rep. Elaine Luria, a Virginia Democrat, who noted that a Capitol Police officer had been frustrated that Hawley was doing his fist pump “in a safe space, protected by the officers and the barriers.”

But laughter broke out in the media room as she played the video of the running Hawley, first at regular speed, then in slow motion, almost floating like a gazelle, through the hallowed hallways.

That moment of comic relief roared across the Twitterverse. It didn’t add much to the committee’s argument that Trump worked to undermine the election results, but it did underscore an important element of context: a symbolic example of how a grand scheme to reverse Trump’s election loss could run quickly out of control and turn against at least one lawmaker who tried to use it for political advantage.

But, alas, as the laughter subsided I was left to wonder, like countless other viewers, how much difference the clip and the rest of the TV-savvy hearings will make with voters.

Overall the hearings have scored better than previous televised hearings since Watergate, an era when we had a lot fewer video screens competing for our eyeballs.

Experts say the ratings have been high for midsummer, a time of year when viewership tends to be low. About 20 million people watched the first prime-time hearing on June 9, according to the Nielsen Co.’s ratings.

But it appears that anyone looking to the polls for a dramatic trend for or against Trump’s political future will have to wait a while longer. His approval rating among Republicans remains high as he prepares for possible run again in 2024. But, as Randy Evans, a Georgia lawyer who served as Trump’s ambassador to Luxembourg, told Politico, over time negative news has a corrosive effect, even on Trump.

“It’s never the one thing” that can bring down a house of cards, he said. “It’s the accumulation.”

The hearings have given Attorney General Merrick Garland a lot to chew on, too.

“No person,” not even a former president, is above the law, Garland reiterated in a news conference before Thursday’s hearing. Those who want to speculate, he said, will have to keep on speculating.

Yes, we will. Garland quite properly avoids litigating his cases in public. But as a relentless speculator, I think Trump is in trouble.

Based on the evidence that has been gathered carefully and exhaustively by the Select Committee, Trump and his allies have offered much for which he should be held accountable.

Trump’s reputation is not all that’s at stake. So is our faith in the ability of our judicial system to bring justice.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)