Don't Be Fooled by the January 6 Hearings

Let's not pretend that Trump's former aides care about democracy. They care about being on the winning side.

Screenshot: CBS News

The January 6 hearings are in full swing, and we are learning so many things. Like, did you know that the 2020 election was not stolen, despite the Trump administration’s assertion to the contrary? And did you know that many people inside Trumpworld knew the election had not been stolen and went around saying that it was not stolen? And that Rudy Giuliani is a stupid drunk?

The January 6 committee appears to be releasing information that falls into the category of “kind of already knew this, but good to have some confirmation I guess!” and so those are the big takeaways from Monday’s edition of the hearings, which focused on Trump’s efforts to lie about how the election had been swiped out from under him, even though it was very obvious that he’d lost fair and square. This will not come as a shock to anyone, but the hearings added a pungent, bleakly comic, and very official layer to what has been clear for nearly two years now. The two main standouts were Bill Stepien, Trump’s former campaign manager, and Bill Barr, Trump’s former attorney general. Both men testified that they never took the claims of election fraud seriously and that they made this clear at the time.

Yamiche Alcindor @Yamiche

Bill Stepien, former Trump campaign manager, told the committee on election night he suggested Trump say "votes were still being counted" & "it's too early to call but we were proud of the race we ran." Stepien said Trump disagreed. That night Trump falsely claimed "we won."

CSPAN @cspan

Bill Stepien: "I didn't mind being categorized -- there were two groups of them, we called them kinda my team and Rudy's team -- I didn't mind being categorized as Team Normal." #January6thHearings

Washington Week | PBS @washingtonweek

WATCH: In video testimony, former Attorney General Bill Barr said that President Trump was not interested in "actual facts" of election fraud allegations and he worried that Trump became "detached from reality." to.pbs.org/3xgmXVs

Cool, thanks for that. But before we all start praising these people for their truth-telling, or rush to place them on the right side of history, it’s important to ask a simple question: do any of us truly believe that Bill Stepien, or Bill Barr, or any of the other witnesses who have effectively turned state’s evidence against Trump, would have led the charge against him if his attempts to steal the 2020 election had not been as incompetent and unsuccessful? In other words: which side would they have been on if he’d pulled his plans off?