How TV news covered the last Jan. 6 hearing: 'earth-shattering testimony' and a cliffhanger

If this was the last public meeting of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, it went out with a bang.

The committee has been both praised and derided for conducting its proceedings like it was a television show. Which, of course, it is. And Thursday’s episode ended with a cliffhanger: The committee members voted unanimously to subpoena Donald Trump.

It’s not unprecedented — MSNBC was quick to point out that Thomas Jefferson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton were also subpoenaed. But the fact that it’s happened so rarely is part of what made this intense TV.

“Today has really been just a culmination of what I think has been just earth-shattering testimony,” Norah O’Donnell, the anchor of the CBS Evening News, said after the hearing ended.

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It's still surreal to see Trump lie, and his supporters lap it up

It is both surreal and frightening to once again see video of Trump telling lie after lie after lie about the election, and to watch his supporters lap it all up without hesitation. And then to see some of them run for office on those lies. It seems unfathomable that anyone could watch the footage of the attack and hear the threats and think, yeah, this is the side I’m on.

“There are still Trump supporters out there that think this is some fabrication, that Donald Trump did nothing wrong, that those people did nothing wrong, because they are under that spell,” John King said on CNN.

But here it was again, a reminder of what that day was like, as we watched it unfold on our screens.

“I can remember when we were all here together following Jan. 6,” O’Donnell said. “It unfolded in this way that at the time we thought, Oh my god, what has happened, this crowd just got out of control. Little did we know at the time that there was such coordination, that there was such premeditation, that there was such incitement behind the scenes.”

Each of the hearings has had a theme — again, like any good TV series — and Thursday’s was dedicated to that planning and coordination, to proving that Trump knew that he had lost the election but carried on with trying to overturn it anyway.

Thus we heard Steve Bannon, one of Trump’s advisers, saying before the election, “If Biden’s winning, Trump’s going to do some crazy s---.”

And so he did.

The committee laid it all out in easy-to-understand terms, with audio and visuals, as it’s done in the past. Why change now? It’s been effective so far.

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All broadcast and cable news networks covered the latest Jan. 6 hearing live

All the broadcast and cable-news networks carried the hearing live.

Yes, even Fox News, which has covered all the daytime hearings live. It’s the prime-time ones that they punt to Fox Business, letting Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham rail against the hearings then.

Although Martha MacCallum on Fox News sounded dubious about the whole affair during a break in the hearing.

“I think they have been trying to lay out everything they can, with 26 days till the election,” she said. “They know this is their last gasp, as I said, and they’re hoping it will have an impact. I think if they had the courage to do this in a more fulsome way it might have had a stronger impact.”

Spoiler alert: It had impact.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) talked about Trump “watching the bloody attack unfold on Fox News.” Maybe the network can use that in a commercial.

The hearing was about creating a narrative

When or even if the committee will hold more public hearings isn't known just now, though the Trump subpoena makes it seem like something has to happen. For now, this was enough.

“What the committee did today was tell a story, a story of a plot,” Terry Moran said on ABC News. “And it unfolded ominously. It unfolded from that moment at the beginning when there were plans to claim victory on the night before all the votes were counted — a fundamentally un-American thing to do, to claim victory before all the votes were counted.”

And like any story, it has a main actor, Moran said.

“The central character in each step of the way as the committee portrayed it today, based on the evidence and testimony they got, was Donald Trump himself driving this plot,” he said.

It’s not like this hasn’t been proven, again and again. But it’s still striking — and scary —TV to see it all unfold again.

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Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: @goodyk. Subscribe to the weekly movies newsletter.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: The last Jan. 6 committee hearing ended with cliffhanger