The mainstream media's dishonest attempt to rehabilitate Cassidy Hutchinson
NOTE: I sent this post out late last night. It was intended to go to all of our subscribers. However, I must have pressed the wrong button because it seems to have been sent only to paid subscribers.
I am resending it today with apologies to those who end up getting it twice.
The following three things can all be true regarding the events of January 6 and the committee hearings about them: (1) Donald Trump bears major responsibility for the rioting at the Capitol that day, (2) the mainstream media isn’t being honest about what the committee hearings have shown, and (3) the Democrats shouldn’t have vetoed Republican members selected by GOP leadership to serve on the committee.
I believe all of these things are true.
The first point is the most important one. In an upcoming post, I’ll discuss how tonight’s prime time hearing provided additional confirmation of it. In this post, I want to discuss the second and third points.
Let’s start with the mainstream media. Readers will recall Cassidy Hutchinson’s dramatic testimony about a struggle on January 6 between Trump and the secret service for control of a presidential vehicle.
According to Hutchinson, Tony Ornato of the White House staff told her that when the secret service informed Trump he couldn’t go to the Capitol with the protesters, he tried to seize the steering wheel from an agent. In addition, Trump lunged at another agent.
However, Ornato reportedly denies telling Hutchinson this. Furthermore, the two agents in question reportedly deny that Trump tried to take control of the steering wheel or lunged at anyone.
These denials create a problem for the committee. What happened inside that vehicle has no bearing on Trump’s culpability for the January 6 rioting. However, if Hutchinson isn’t telling the truth about this, it undermines the credibility of her testimony on matters that do bear on the former president’s culpability.
Tonight, the committee tried preemptively to “rehabilitate” Hutchinson by presenting evidence that Trump was irate at the secret service for not taking him to the Capitol, and that he argued vociferously with the agents about this decision. CNN declared this rehabilitation a success. Dana Bash, John King, and Jake Tapper all claimed that the evidence presented showed that Hutchinson was telling the truth.
But no evidence presented tonight confirmed that Trump tried to gain control of the steering wheel or lunged at an agent. These were the headline-grabbing parts of Hutchinson’s testimony.
They may be true, but they weren’t corroborated tonight. And if they are contradicted on the record by Ornato and/or the two agents, then Hutchinson’s credibility will be in question.
By declaring Hutchinson vindicated, CNN misled its viewers. In effect, CNN backed the committee’s attempt to hide the ball.
This leads to the point I want about the exclusion of pro-Trump Republican members. If Nancy Pelosi had permitted the GOP to place Jim Jordan on the committee, he could have pointed out that the evidence presented tonight didn’t corroborate Hutchinson’s spectacular testimony. In this instance, he could have kept the hearings honest.
Liz Cheney tried to address the exclusion of members like Jordan, which she misleadingly blamed on Minority Leader McCarthy, by noting that witnesses like Bill Barr would not have wilted under cross-examination by hostile members. Very true.
But if there was no question of Barr and others wilting, why did Pelosi exclude Jordan? What was she afraid of?
The answer, in part, is just what I suggested a few paragraphs ago. Pelosi and the others didn’t want Jordan pointing to shortcomings in the evidence presented by the anti-Trump members. They didn’t want to have Jordan play clips of Trump telling protesters to march “peacefully” to the Capitol. They didn’t want clips presented of deposition testimony that didn’t go the way the majority members and Cheney desired.
As a matter of fairness, Pelosi should have permitted Jordan to participate.
And here’s another reason why I wish she had permitted it. I would like to have heard Jordan try to defend Trump’s indefensible behavior (and especially his inaction) during the hours when the mob was rampaging through the Capitol. Alternatively, I would like to have witnessed Jordan’s silence on that matter.
Either way, I think the case against Trump on this key point would have been bolstered by Jordan’s presence. But even without it, that case is plenty strong, as I will discuss in an upcoming post.