by Matthew Boyle
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, get ready for the main event. Step right up, get your tickets for the greatest show on earth. Democrats have decided to bet their entire political future on a few hours of a primetime televised hearing for the January 6 Select Committee to present its findings, and Thursday night, starting at 8:00 p.m. ET the party makes its move toward that endgame for the first of several hearings.
It is notable first and foremost that Democrats have picked primetime television for the first hearing after a yearlong investigation, and expectations are extremely high for them to actually produce new or compelling evidence to push their case. Secondly, it also worth noting this committee is unprecedentedly partisan. Even though two members who claim to be Republicans–Reps. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL)–are members of the committee, they got their appointments from Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. That came after Pelosi engaged in the never-before-seen step of removing two of the five Republicans that House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy had named to the panel–the other three stepped aside in protest at the action–so no matter what anyone in the establishment media or the political class says, this is nothing more than a partisan smear job.
The panel is chaired by Democrat Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS)–who just won his primary in Mississippi earlier this week–and features several top Democrat superstars like Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Adam Schiff (D-CA), Pete Aguilar (D-CA), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Elaine Luria (D-VA), and Stephanie Murphy (D-FL).
The use of taxpayer dollars–more than $8 million of them per estimates from House Administration Committee Republicans, as Breitbart News reported earlier on Thursday–for this committee will surely be questioned in the months and years to come depending on what the committee puts forward in this primetime event.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, this seems to be the last best hope Democrats in Congress have ahead of a brewing red tsunami in the upcoming November midterm elections. Even the New York Times admitted in a headline earlier this week that this hearing and future ones from the Committee offer Democrats a chance to “recast” their midterm message, which is currently mired in failure on literally every single issue. If they don’t deliver–and big time–on Thursday night, expect their last hopes of retaining a majority in either or both chambers of Congress after November’s midterm elections to fade significantly and quickly. That’s in large part why the actual House Republicans (not Cheney and Kinzinger, who really don’t count anymore) have planned a massive counter-offensive in the messaging wars. These actual House Republicans have been successful at this in the past–as evidenced by both of former President Donald Trump’s impeachments–and any shortcoming from the Democrat panel on Thursday night is surely going to backfire significantly on the party promoting this expensive taxpayer-funded production.
None of that is to excuse what actually happened on Jan. 6, 2021–the proper channels, like the Justice Department and law enforcement agencies and the courts, have been for over a year taking action on this front. The establishment media never will let us forget it, either, with a nonstop drip, drip, drip of every little detail of coverage on this. But the Democrats told us that those formal channels were not enough and that Americans needed to blow millions of their tax dollars on this production in addition to all that, so here we are on Thursday night where the rubber meets the road before the American public. Will they deliver, or not? That, friends, is the question.
Failed 2016 Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton earlier on Thursday implored Americans to watch this hearing in full, because she argued that some unnamed mysterious “MAGA” people do not want them to. Most of the major networks are carrying it–basically everyone except the Fox News Channel–and there are plenty of options to stream it online. Whatever you decide to do–watch or not watch–we got you covered on the most important developments. Follow along here in this livewire and on the site more broadly for the latest developments.
UPDATE 10:18 p.m. ET:
The hearing, now over, is being widely panned as entirely unsuccessful:
The Selectively Edited Committee!
— Jim Banks (@RepJimBanks) June 10, 2022
Read the rest at breitbart.com.
