2022 in Review: January 6th Hearings

Conversations We Returned to

• June 10 - January 6th Hearings: Why Every American Should Watch

• June 24 - January 6th Hearings: The Pressure Campaigns

• September 7 - January 6th Hearings: They're Back

• October 14 - Janaury 6th Hearings: President Trump Subpoenaed

EPISODE RESOURCES

We’ve compiled a lot of resources about these hearings in our January 6th Study Guide.

You can find more resources specific to each hearing in the show notes for our January 6th episodes:

• January 6th Hearings: 5 Things You Need to Know

• January 6th Hearings: Why Every American Should Watch

• January 6th Hearings: A Man of Honor Would’ve Conceded

• January 6th Hearings: The Pressure Campaigns

• January 6th Hearings: The Cassidy Hutchison Domino

• January 6th Hearings: Mailbag

• January 6th Hearings: They're Back

• Janaury 6th Hearings: President Trump Subpoenaed

TRANSCRIPT

Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland. 

Beth [00:00:08] And this is Beth Silvers.  

Sarah [00:00:10] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics.  

Beth [00:00:26] Hi, everyone. If you have been listening to Pantsuit Politics all year, you know that we prioritized the January six hearings all summer and throughout the fall. We watched every hearing and processed them together. We devoted time on the show, on our social media channels and in our newsletters to recapping these hearings. We even created a January six study guide to help us all keep track of what we were learning and from whom we were learning it. So as we thought about what we wanted to highlight, as the year draws to a close, we knew we had to include an episode about the January six committee's work. Today, you'll hear excerpts from our episodes immediately following each of the hearings. You'll notice that our understanding of events changes as we learn more, and you'll hear us thinking through what these hearings ask of us as citizens. If listening prompts you to want to engage with these hearings for the first time, we'll link everything you need to do that in our show notes. And if this is a review for you, we hope it's a helpful one.  

Sarah [00:01:28] We're going to do our best to help summarize and give takeaways and share our reactions to the January six hearing. But what I want to say, what I want everyone who can hear my voice understand, you have to watch them yourselves. You have to watch the hearings yourself. I cannot emphasize enough how important I think that is. The idea that we watched the events on January six and we understand the heartbreak and we can't take it in again, I get all that, but we don't understand the events just by watching them unfold live on TV. There is so much that is missed in that first draft of history and this committee is doing an exceptional job of putting forth that improved draft. And I think we all owe it to our country and to each other to participate in the hearings as best we can. It's 2 hours, it is difficult viewing, but I really think it is imperative that we all watch it.  

Beth [00:02:32] One of my favorite books about history and memory is fiction. It's Alias Grace from Margaret Atwood. That book talks about how the way we really understand what has happened to us is through this patchwork quilt of artifacts and individual perceptions and what gets recorded and what doesn't get recorded. And I think that the committee is trying to assemble some of that quilt for us now because the hearing consisted of live witness testimony, video deposition testimony clips, still photos, audio and video. And the video comes from all of these different angles, security cameras, body cams that police officers-- I thought that was some of the most impactful footage, seeing some of that body camera footage. What got recorded by news networks and on cell phones, the documentary filmmaker was there, some of the footage that he picked up. And so you can see them trying to assemble that quilt for us and say, "We've looked at this from as many angles as we possibly can a year or so out and after talking to thousands of people, and we're trying to assemble for you the truest representation first of what took place on that day, but secondarily and just as importantly, what preceded that day and what followed it.  

Sarah [00:03:50] From the beginning you had the chairman, Bennie Thompson, really place what we're talking about in the history of the United States. He took us way apart into the air and said, "Look, we are under an oath to protect against enemies, both foreign and domestic." And he talked about the Civil War and what happened after the Civil War and how we deal with sedition and how we deal with coups. And he took us all the way up and said, like, this is where we're replacing this in history. And then he sent it to Representative Liz Cheney and she took us all the way to the ground. And she said over and over and over again, president Trump was the chief actor in all of this. He set the tone before, he impacted the recruitment of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. He fired up the audience before with his tweet. He fired up the crowd there with his rhetoric at the speech and his dereliction of duty and not attempting at all to quell the insurrection once it had started. She just put all of that together. So I thought that contrast of let us take you way up high and show you why this is important, and let us take you down here on the ground and show you where President Trump is at the center of all of it and that danger remains, was so well done. What I was convinced of after watching it is that their approach is not about political opinion at all. Their approach is about establishing criminality so that charges can be placed. And I think that Liz Cheney's goal is that charges go to President Trump. That's what I am convinced of after watching the first hearing. What about you?  

Beth [00:05:20] I think they are certainly laying a groundwork for criminality. I think also they are trying to establish a congressional record that will lead to legislative action. I think the primary audience here might in some ways and should appropriately be their fellow members of Congress. You could absolutely see the Department of Justice building on this work to establish direct individual criminal liability for a whole host of actors and a whole host of charges. But I think you can also see legislative accountability in the form of changes to the Electoral Count Act at the bare minimum, and some accountability around committee membership, security clearances perhaps, like, really questioning the colleagues who were involved in this and who continue to lie about what happened. You need to convince other members of Congress, like, some of us are not here abiding by our oath. What are we going to do about that?  

Sarah [00:06:18] There is no doubt in my mind that Representative Cheney is absolutely speaking to many of her Republican colleagues. She said it clearly. She said...  

Representative Cheney [00:06:26] Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible. There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone.  

Sarah [00:06:35] This is not a congressional circus. This feels very much to me like we are going to lay out the evidence. We are establishing criminality. We are establishing the central role former President Donald Trump played in trying to subvert the results of the election. They are laying it out in a very methodical, very evidence-based way. And I think back to how I felt at the time and that first draft and-- I think the first draft that lives in my mind is that he was who he was, that he was bad, that he could not accept the results, and that it was this intense emotionality that bubbled up and affected the people there. And I think if I'm being honest, I told myself there was a lot of-- like it got out of control. Because that's what you watched on the day on the television screen. You watched and you just felt like this just kept going and kept going and it got out of control. And even as someone who's really been engaged with the material and who watch it so closely that day, this committee immediately just short circuited that. I just felt like from the second it started, they were like, this was not something that just got out of control. This was planned. This was a part of a plan to keep him president even though he lost the election.  

Beth [00:08:07] This is a bipartisan committee, and the members of this committee are not in agreement about what happens after this hearing. There are arguments happening among these committee members about what comes next, especially legislatively, which is the one thing that matters really to them, because that's their job. That's what they're there to do. And it's just such a good illustration of this really simple idea that seems to be lost to us as Americans, that we can disagree about the appropriate action steps while being honest about the problem. This committee can say we don't agree about what happens next, but that doesn't mean we're going to lie about the facts. We agree that the facts need to come out whatever they are, and then we make our best case for what you do with the facts. And I just feel very hopeful that that's unfolding this way, even as there's a lot to not feel hopeful about in the Republican reaction to this, there are at least two Republicans on this committee and a range of Democrats in terms of their opinions and ideologies. And all of them are saying, "Whatever else, we're going to start with what's real and we're not going to spin it. We're not going to whitewash any of it. We're just going to lay it out and look at it, and then we'll make our best cases for what comes next." I think that's really hopeful. And so as they started to tell us about the much more and we're going to get the details of this over the next hearings, last night was just the roadmap. But what the committee is really emphasizing is, number one, Trump knew that he lost the election and knew that the arguments to the contrary were being made in bad faith. And they allowed Trump's people to tell that story, starting with former Attorney General Bill Barr, who said, "I told the president it was bullshit. I told him I didn't want to have anything to do with it. I told him that these theories were bogus, that I saw nothing credible to suggest that the election had been stolen or even had significant irregularities." They showed Ivanka Trump saying, "I respected Bill Barr and what he said meant something to me and I accepted what he said."  

Sarah [00:10:18] Aghast. We all gasp.  

Beth [00:10:20] They showed one of the data people on the campaign talking about how he briefed everyone that there wasn't a path, that it was over. So piece number one, he knew and still spent, as they emphasized, millions of campaign funds advertising that the election had been stolen, which I think could potentially set up some forms of civil liability at least. They set up that piece and then they talk about the communication with groups like Proud Boys, Oath Keepers. Then they talk about the events of the day and how Trump never called for the National Guard, only Mike Pence was able to activate support for the Capitol Police.  

Sarah [00:11:04] Lots of mention around the 25th Amendment at that point.  

Beth [00:11:06] Yes. And then the reaction to things including text messages between Sean Hannity and Kayleigh McEnany. Kayleigh McEnany was at that point, I think, still the press secretary. And Sean Hannity is saying to her, here's the play now. No more stolen election talk. No more crazy people. So even Sean Hannity is characterizing that Fox pushing this stolen election narrative as crazy people, which I think says a lot about what he thinks of his audience and a lot about what standards he imposes for the material broadcast on his show. But they're showing you that at every step somebody was saying to Trump, stop. And through and including today, he has not stopped. His reaction to these hearings continues to perpetuate this idea that the election was stolen. I think that I have always looked at Donald Trump and believed (unkindly but vulnerably) that he is too incompetent to carry off anything that has a level of complexity to it. And what this hearing convinced me of is that he surrounded himself with enough people to have a complex scheme in motion. It wasn't a legal scheme. It wasn't a particularly clever scheme, but it was complicated and it did have tentacles that reached all over the United States and involved lots and lots of players. The least generous way I can describe it, but the most accurate for me, is I always think if he gets into trouble, it's the result of bumbling idiocy and big ego. And I think both of those things were present here. But there was also serious intention and concerted effort over a period of time to manipulate state by state the result of the election. It just all served a more complex scheme than I thought he was capable of putting together.  

Sarah [00:13:20] The complexity in the power and the danger of this scheme, all of these campaigns to pressure Mike Pence, to pressure local officials, to pressure the Department of Justice, which is not because they were formulated and carried out by Donald Trump. It's because they were formulated and carried out by the president of the United States and just the inherent power and influence and impact of everything the president does even when the president is a bumbling idiot, which I do believe him to be. Just the ridiculousness of what he was asking people, the absurdity that he would not understand how ridiculous what he was asking people to do actually was, it's just shocking. And you can hear it in all these officials voices, like, I can't do that. You don't understand. I can't do that. And it's like he only knows force. That's the only thing he knows. And you can kind of see it in the way he ran his business, right? You can just see, like, just throw everything at it and see what sticks. This is what this was like. Just throw anything at it and see what sticks. We're going to hear in day five where he literally looks at a Department of Justice official and says, "What do I have to lose?" Because his ego is just so individual and it's just driven by Donald Trump, but he wasn't just Donald Trump. He was president of the United States.  

Beth [00:14:44] And it's just discomforting to think about a president who understands the magnitude of that power, but only in terms of its benefit and never in terms of its responsibility. And that's the story of these hearings. In addition to targeting the state and local election officials, we heard very difficult testimony from Shaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, who were just election workers counting ballots in an election processing center in Georgia. And so the president, (on the advice it seems of Rudy Giuliani, who saw a video of them moving ballots) individually called them out on the Internet, unleashing just a wave of mob mentality against these two individual American citizens that has left them unable to feel safe in their homes, to go out in public.  It is really sad. And, again, it goes with that theme of here is a person who was willing to use the weight of his office against anybody for any reason with no regard for the truth whatsoever.  

Sarah [00:16:00] It stands in such sharp contrast to the way other people on the stand we're talking about their oath of office. Rusty Bowers had this moment where he was reading from his journal about his personal faith and beliefs surrounding his oath. We wanted to share that.  

Rusty Bowers [00:16:18] It is painful to have friends who have been such a help to me turn on me with such rancor. I may, in the eyes of men, not hold correct opinions or act according to their vision or convictions, but I do not take this current situation in a light manner, a fearful manner, or a vengeful manner. I do not want to be a winner by cheating. I will not play with laws I swore allegiance to.  

Sarah [00:16:51] You could just hear the weight and how serious he takes his oath. And so to see also the president using his oath to get what he wants, to destroy our institutions, to destroy careers, to threaten ordinary citizens, to destroy their lives, was so incredibly heartbreaking.  

Beth [00:17:15] It was striking to me to hear that neither Shaye Moss nor Ruby Freeman will ever work an election again. That Shaye Moss testified that the workers captured in that video from Fulton County that was circulating, none of them continue to work here. And that's the thing. You listen to Brad Raffensperger and think, who would want this job? Who would who would allow themselves to be subjected to this kind of scrutiny? And I'll tell you I don't think the Internet is helping that in its reaction to these hearings, because the point of these hearings is that our system requires us to follow the rules no matter who is in the seat and no matter who we wish to be in the seat  and no matter what we wish of that person or what outcome we're looking for. And I think we could tone it down a little bit on doing to these witnesses what we do way too often in any kind of televised process where we start treating them like celebrities and picking them apart. These are people who, thank goodness, did their civic duty. Was it the bare minimum civic duty? Sure. But that doesn't mean it wasn't hard. And to be honest with you, I watched these hearings and think I'm glad I've never been asked to save democracy. This looks incredibly awful to go through and I don't want to pile on to these people who, unlike a lot of high level people out there, are showing up for these hearings and swearing in oath under penalty of perjury to tell the truth about what happened. They are not cowards. You can say whatever else you want about their lives, but they are not cowards. And we are in a government where too many people have acted with cowardice as they had great power in their hands. So I appreciate them. I don't feel any need to do a moral calculus on what grade we would give them as a person, overall. I think that's not helpful.  

Sarah [00:19:13] We need Republicans to do the right thing. And the way to get Republicans to do the right thing is not stand up and call the Republicans doing the right thing not good enough. Give me a break. Pay attention to the goal, not how good it makes you feel to dump on Rusty Bowers. What are we trying to do? Is the idea that we will shame every Republican into saying, "You're right, I'm so bad. I'll stop voting" Or You're right, I'm so bad I'll become a Democrat until the country is filled with Democrats."  I want to play this out. We will still have people in America who have freedom of thought to believe very, very, conservative things. And that is okay. It is okay to believe very conservative things. It is not illegal. What it is not okay to do is to believe because you are conservative or Republican or a supporter of Donald Trump, that you have the right to break the law. That's what we're talking about.  

[00:20:14]  I think the scheduling of this hearing after the local officials was particularly impactful, because what you heard here is election officials all over the country with not a lot of power (they had a power in the right place when it came to the election of Donald Trump, but not a huge amount of power) saying, "No, I can't; it's illegal." Standing up to the president. And then you see these people with a lot of power, high up in the DOJ saying we were dealing with the same bullshit. That we were dealing with him listening to whatever lunatic had his ear last, telling him that this is what he could do and this was legal and him trying to again fire and replace the people who would not do what he wanted to do. And it was heartening to see DOJ officials, many of which I have enormous disagreement with when it comes to briefs they've written or positions they've argued inside the DOJ and outside the DOJ, banding together and saying this far and no farther, like, we will not allow this to happen and we will quit in mass. And in some ways, as I was watching it, I thought, well, I'm actually surprised. I'm surprised he didn't just say, well, if you're all going to quit, go ahead and quit. I want this bad enough. And then in some ways I think it's really brilliant of the committee to make that moment so clear because the concern has always been, well, if he really believed he won, then he can argue that in court. Or otherwise to say, you can't hold me responsible because I really believed I won and there was nothing I wouldn't do if I believed I won. But what this moment shows is that there were things he wouldn't do. There were decisions he made where he said, "Oh, that's too much. I won't do that." And I think it is brilliant of the committee to put those moments in sharp relief.  

Beth [00:22:12] Yeah, that's a really good point there. There's like no not guilty by reason of mental incompetence here because all of the decisions were calculated. And that's what really came to light with Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony, which I think was significant for two reasons. As to January six, we learned from Cassidy Hutchinson that Trump knew the crowd was armed. He knew the crowd was dangerous. He knew what the crowd might be capable of and that he wanted to point them to the Capitol. In fact, he wanted to go himself to watch what the crowd might do on his behalf at the Capitol. The other thing that I think we got from Cassidy Hutchinson that I keep thinking about is just the character of the man. As you talked about when you were saying that it was maybe hard for people to tell him the truth, Cassidy Hutchinson gave a very granular account of what it was like to be around Donald Trump when he was angry.  

Cassidy Hutchinson [00:23:04] I first noticed there is ketchup dripping down the wall and there's a shattered porcelain plate on the floor. The valet had articulated that the president was extremely angry at the attorney general's AP interview and had thrown his lunch against the wall.  

Beth [00:23:26] Just the temper tantrums and the effect that it had on everyone around him. What I think this set of hearings has done so effectively is say to the American public, yes, there's a lot in the world that you can't control, but here's a thing that you can. And they're really homing in on this one person's character because just exercising the one thing we can do, not re-electing Donald Trump, just that one action insulates us from so much harm. It doesn't mean everything in the world is perfect, but it insulates us from so much harm. And I think Cassidy Hutchinson testifying as to the daily reality of this kind of personality in the Oval Office, drives that home.  

Sarah [00:24:15] Her testimony was described at the time as blockbuster. I think that remains true. It was a blockbuster testimony because it really put you in the Oval Office, in the car at the rally with him to understand what his state of mind was. And the moment I'll never forget is when she talked about he wanted to remove the metal detectors. Well, their armed. Well, just take them-- Then the easy solution to that is just to not make them pass through the metal detectors. This was also something I will never forget, is that they understood this particular crowd reaction because they dealt with it so many times at his previous rallies where his supporters show up armed and they will not hand over their weapons to pass through the metal detectors. And so they turn and go another direction. I thought when you've had this happen so often at your rallies that you understand this interaction, that's really disturbing. And his explosive temper, the moment she describes that he almost got in fisticuffs with a Secret Service agent and in an effort to direct his car to the Capitol because at this point he knew Mike Pence was not going to do what he wanted him to do. And so he was ready to do whatever it took, including showing out with armed protesters at the United States Capitol to try to overthrow the election. I mean, really an armed coup. He knew they were armed. He wanted to lead them to the Capitol. What else would you call that?  

Beth [00:25:48] Yeah, I will never forget her saying that he told them about taking down the mags, like, "They're not here to hurt me. They won't hurt me." He really understood how he could harness the energy of this crowd. He understood that he was the trigger for these people, not someone who could be injured by them. The seventh hearing took us down who some of these people were and talked to us about how Oath Keepers and Proud Boys and QAnon adjacent groups were working in common cause to disrupt the counting of the electoral votes and that Trump intended that. And that his actions and his statements show that he intended that. And that's also the hearing where we heard about some of the non militia types who got swept up in all of this because of just a relentless campaign through social media and email and video and all the ways that Trump communicated relentlessly with his followers.  

Sarah [00:26:48] Well, and I think it's really important because if you're a person who does not follow politics closely, if you're a moderate or an independent or just someone who's sort of apolitical, I think it's easy to roll your eyes and blow off the idea that he was harnessing that energy, he was directing people. Until you hear regular people say he clearly wanted us to go there. He told us to go there. So I went. He told me and I went.  

Unidentified [00:27:15] And Trump asked us to come.  

Unidentified [00:27:17] He personally asked for us to come to DC that day.   

Donald Trump [00:27:21] We're going  to walk down to the Capitol.  

Unidentified [00:27:25] Did you hear former President Trump mentioning going to the Capitol during his speech?  

Unidentified [00:27:28] Oh, yeah.  

Sarah [00:27:29] And talking about the psychological need those movements fulfill in people and how someone can join the Oath Keepers and feel like it's fulfilling purpose in their life and how they were very keyed in to his tweets and his words. And so he was directing people. I just thought it was important to remember you might roll your eyes at that and think how could someone do that? But they do. And I thought the committee did a good job of sort of highlighting people's stories and saying this is what it looks like. Remember this is a thing that can happen in a normal, average American's life.  

Beth [00:28:06] Anything that you binge works on you, right? If I binge a podcast, even if it's a podcast about living a good, grounded life, it affects me. It affects me and I lose a little bit of myself and I find myself leaning a little bit into those ideas. I have never been a YouTube person, but it is not a stretch for me to imagine how you can get into YouTube and just be captivated by something. It doesn't sound any sillier to me, honestly, to hear someone like the witness from Ohio in this hearing say, "I just listened and I got caught up in it. And he said to go and I decided to go.  

Sarah [00:28:47] So I went.  

Beth [00:28:47] It doesn't sound sillier to me than listening to the Texas Tribune interview with Liz Cheney that I was watching this morning, where she talked about how she voted 90 something percent of the time with Donald Trump because she really agrees with him on policy. I laughed out loud when I heard her say that still, because I think the conclusion of these hearings was that it was never about policy. For the vast majority of people who have a real attachment to Donald Trump, it's never been about policy. And I think it's better to just say that out loud. To say it is about him as a media figure who got in the heads and the hearts of the people who he really spoke to. That is okay. That's an experience we can all relate to. The question is what are we going to do about it now? And the folks who have stood up and said, "Well, but it's just about policy," have prevented us from really doing something about that that's healthy and helpful. The last hearing before the committee took its big break was back to the day itself and how terrifying and violent that day was and how Trump watched it unfold and never used any of the many tools at his disposal to stop the violence, to assist the people in the Capitol, to bring any kind of order back to the scene. None. And instead, he was interested in continuing to put pressure on his handpicked senators to try to delay certification of the vote to the bitter end. To the bitter end.  

Sarah [00:30:17] Yeah. They were very focused on that, 187 minutes. Three hours he sat there and had every piece of information available to him. If you can think back to that day and remember how horrified you are just to watch the little pieces of footage and moments we could watch from CNN, and to think he had all that and more, he had people calling him from the ground, conveying the depth of danger and he did nothing. He did nothing as the Capitol was under attack. It's just so disgusting. It is so clearly a violation of his oath of office and a dereliction of duty. And I think they proved that definitively.  

Beth [00:31:00] The other aspect of their role that I think is significant as you lead into them voting to issue the subpoena, is that they have decided that they are going to be the storytellers, that they are keeping the historic record of what happened here, that they are the official repository for what went down because they are the storytellers with the most powerful tools to gather all of that evidence and put it in one place. And so you could say to yourself, well, why issue a subpoena when their work could be winding down? And I think it's because they know that their work will be judged by history. And let history know that they requested his testimony. He either fought it or he didn't. If Republicans take the majority, they either withdraw the subpoena or they don't. But they are saying we're willing to use the tools that we have, and this is our most powerful one and we've methodically built our case for its use and now we're employing it.  

Sarah [00:31:59] Yeah. Another part of was Cheney's opening statement that really struck me is when she said, "We cannot just punish the foot soldiers." And I think that's what the subpoena was meant to signal, is we've brought everyone else here to talk about what happened. How can we make the case that he is the sole reason this happened and not call him to come give his testimony? So I think it was the right call. And I think they spent a lot of time in this hearing, not just emphasizing that he was the center point of all of this, but really both summarizing previous hearings and testimony showing that this was premeditated, that he planned to do this all along. We saw some new video from Steve Bannon and Roger Stone. Really, again, how are these people still shocking me? But it was shocking to just hear them say even if he loses, he's going to say he won. Just straight up. Like, this is the plan. The plan is to take advantage of any confusion, delay anything and say claim victory and say he won. Roger Stone, as is shown on video, is saying possession is 9/10 of the law. F-you we won.  

Beth [00:33:11] In October.  

Sarah [00:33:13] In October. It's really shocking. And sothey go through this, they spent really an interesting moment with Adam Kinzinger showing that he knew he lost after the election because he was pursuing some unfinished business. So that's where we are now. That's where we are, now we have to see what's going to happen.  I think there is a temptation to sort of say, did it matter? What has the  committee done? I just don't think we know yet. I just don't think that we can say, even as we feel like this is probably sort of their finale, the summation of their case, the historical impact of what they have done and what they have put together. We're not going to know for a while. I think you can already see that they have grease the wheels. I think that that much is abundantly clear. It feels to me as if many different institutions have either felt the increased pressure from the committees work, had the ability to increase their momentum due to the committees work, whatever it is, you feel that speed increasing from the DOJ and from other areas that they have said and proven and concluded as clearly as they can that accountability is essential. There must be accountability for January 6th. There must be accountability at the highest levels for January 6th. And I think they have made that case.  

Beth [00:34:49] And what they said today is that that accountability must be criminal. Whether they formally decide to issue something styled as a criminal referral to the Department of Justice or not, they spent this hearing establishing Donald Trump's state of mind. And his state of mind to the extent that they hammered away at it today is really only relevant if you're talking about criminal charges.  Did he have the specific intent to do this? And the answer today was, yes, he did. And, listen, I did not walk into these hearings convinced of that fact, but I walked out of them convinced of it because it was an extremely thorough and compelling look at how at every step he had all the information, all of it, and he made his choices. And those choices led to that violent, dangerous, historically embarrassing moment for our country. And he watched it on TV and cheered it on and inflamed it. I don't know how you watch these hearings and see the presentation of evidence and conclude otherwise, I really don't.  

Sarah [00:36:01] I've always been on board with criminal charges, but I was worried about how they'd prove them. So I may be a bad prosecutor because I'd be, like, I just feel it in my gut. Let's go for it. But I think you're right. I don't think they've left any doubt. I think they have garnered the evidence and presented it fairly because that was what I was worried about. I myself believed he didn't have anybody telling him the truth and he cannot accept reality, but I think they've made a pretty good case that that is not accurate.  

Beth [00:36:28] I think that's right.  

Sarah [00:36:29] That he had plenty of people telling him the truth and that he understood it. He just fought it. And he fought it in ways that broke the law and endangered other people. And I think this is the part that they've done such a good job of as well. It's not just about January 6th. It's not just the threat on that day. It's that he opened up this door. He opened up this chasm of threat, this possibility, this opportunity that he's shown to other people. And if we do not also say to those other people, yes, you could do this and maybe you'd even do it better, but you will be held accountable. You want to try it? Fine. We can't stop you necessarily. But what we can say is that if you do, if you do, there will be consequences.  

Beth [00:37:34] I was taking a moment today, just briefly before we started recording, thinking about why did I feel so much watching that vote for the subpoena? I think it's because you have this sense that, okay, we do have an institution in the United States Congress that will take a step when the line has been crossed. It's taken an awful long time for them to to do it. And that's not really fair. I mean, the House impeached Trump over it, but the failure of the Senate to convict is, I think, a scar on us as a country that cannot fade. You can't ever fix that, but it feels like we're walking in a better direction. And combining that with this enormous verdict against Alex Jones, where you recognize that, yes, in a country where you can speak freely, people are going to say dangerous things. But sometimes those things cannot be tolerated and there will be a consequence. They can still say them, but they will have to accept the consequence associated with it. It feels like maybe we're marching towards something that is imperfect and that is fragile and that is explosive and contentious. But that is still pursuing some shared vision for what we can live here and do together. And that gives me a lot of feelings, but comfort is among them.  

Sarah [00:38:59] Yeah.  We had a conversation on our premium channels about accountability. And what does it mean when we know there are systemic issues. When we're holding an individual accountable but we understand inherently that there are systemic problems at play. And that's true here. We both know that Donald Trump is individually responsible and also that he exposed systemic problems that we all knew were there. It's not like the Electoral Count Act was ever a great solution by law. But he just exposed those weaknesses. Well, how do you come back from that? Well, you learn. You learn and you address the things you know. When you know better, you do better. And he has shown us things that we have to fix. And we're not done because, again, he has opened up this chasm that other people are going to try to exploit. We see them as candidates or secretary of state all over the country. And I think it's just this new era. It's the strengthening, right? It's this weakening, strengthening paradox where a lot of things we assumed for many, many years-- not all the entirety of our country, we've had other points in our history where people have exploited the weaknesses inside our systems. But we're outside of that period where the norms were the glue that was holding everything together. Okay, well, those norms aren't going to work anymore. And the idea that people will just respect the norms aren't going to do it. I think that that's what it's interesting because it's like what the argument the January six committee is making is, like, here were the norms, but that's all they were and he didn't respect them. It's like you're trying to point out that this is what everybody else did and he didn't do it. But in making that case, you're really showing that  the norms are not enough. The norms are not enough. We're going to have to have other things at certain points. We're going to have to have structural things in place and only to get to a point where we'll realize, oh, there were norms propping up this part and now we need structural things to hold those in place. I just think that that's sort of the perpetual work of a democracy, but we have some of that work to do right now and they have shown that. 

Beth [00:41:18] Well, and I feel myself wanting to say, like, what are those structural things? And I don't think we know all of them. I don't think they all exist at the federal level. I think there are structural things like a return of really in-depth civics curriculum so that we have an expectation of what a senator does besides host a podcast. I think there are lots and lots of pieces here because that is where a lot of the complexity and my emotion comes from today. That not only did the Trump presidency expose these structural deficiencies and lay bare how much our infrastructure of democracy needs to catch up with the size of this nation and the present conditions of the world, but also the sadness that I feel that Donald Trump was never writing on a blank sheet of paper in terms of the feelings and the opinions in this deep seated interest we have in being enraged at each other all the time. Because I don't believe he's ever been motivated by some great set of philosophy or ethics or values or policy positions, he also understood that he could amass money and power and influence by using the industry of politics, by wielding all of our feelings and all of the ways that we are all messed up to feed the money machine. That same money machine that is emailing all of us 8 to 10 times a day right now about elections and the same one that creates opportunities for people to become TV stars talking about what's happening on cable news. He saw the dollar signs as though we were a set of slot machines and we were primed for it. And it just makes me really sad that we were primed for it. And I want to ask not only what do we do to the Electoral Count Act, but how do we not look like that set of slot machines anymore?  

Sarah [00:43:27] The response that is so tempting that I think so many Americans take is to just opt out. And I think the January six committee did a good job of really trying to reach those people to say, no, this is still worthwhile. Please don't just assume it's all broken. Don't be a cynic. Don't be a skeptic. Don't be agnostic. Let us make this case to you that this matters, that holding him accountable matters, that this isn't just the same old political bullshit. That's why they used Republicans solely as witnesses, right? Because they're saying, "Hey, guys,  this is not just politics as normal, that you tune out. This is different. This is worse. We have to pay attention. We have to do something about it. And that is the work that we all have to carry on now that the committee is winding down its work. We have to continue to make that case as citizens. We have to continue to say, no, the problem with Donald Trump was not just mean tweets. That wasn't the issue. The issue is his complete and total disregard for the rule of law. And now he has spread that like a virus throughout the Republican Party. And that should matter just as much to Republicans as it does to Democrats. That's the charge, right? That's the charge because there's a lot of this that we can't control as everyday citizens. There's a lot of this process that they have now empowered and energized that is going to have to continue on without a lot of say from us. But because it's a democracy and because this matters, because the conversations we hold in our communities matter, we have to continue to give voice to that, to give voice, to say, no, we can't just be cynics and we can't just opt out. We have to continue to pay attention to this. This is important. People have to be held accountable, including Donald Trump.  

Beth [00:45:26] All of our apathy costs us a lot. And even as they have handled this process, I think, about the best way they possibly could have, they are also not writing on a blank sheet of paper. And it's worth it to say, okay, let's tune in. Let's heed this call. Let's do what we need to do. Let's get engaged. Which means, like you said, vote. Challenge people who say it was just the tweets. Be really clear-eyed about what the threat is here. But then also let's hang with it and level up our game even when it doesn't feel like everything is falling apart every day, so that the next time it falls apart we can handle that a little bit better. Thank you for listening today. We'll be talking about the January six committee's report after our winter break. And we look forward to continuing to process the committee's work with you. Next week, you'll hear more of our conversations about the biggest news stories this year. Until then, have the best weekend available to you.  

[00:46:46] Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our managing director.  

Sarah [00:46:51] Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music.  

Beth [00:46:57] Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers.  

Executive Producers (Read their own names) [00:47:01] Martha Bronitsky. Allie Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sara Greenup, Julie Haller. Helen Handley. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holliday. Katie Johnson. Katina Zugenalis Kasling. Barry Kaufman. Molly Kohrs. Katherine Vollmer. Laurie LaDow. Lilly McClure. Linda Daniel. Emily Neesley. The Pentons. Tawni Peterson. Tracey Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katy Stigers. Karen True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Vilelli. Amy Whited. Emily Helen Olsen. Lee Chaix McDonough.  

Beth [00:47:39] Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Michelle Wood. Joshua Allen. Morgan McCue. Nicole Berklas. Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.