Although I should be paying closer attention, I’ve sporadically followed the January 6th House Select Committee hearings. Most of the live coverage and commentary I’ve listened to has been from NPR during my work commute.
As viscerally horrified I was that day, time has blunted my emotions surrounding the incident. I chalk this up to Trump fatigue. I’m almost at the point where I say, “Fuck it. Let ‘em all walk as long as I don’t have to hear about them anymore.”
It’s not the conduct of the hearings. Reps. Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney are making the best of an awful situation. The revelations are nauseating but unsurprising. The parade of in person witnesses and recorded depositions has become a rehashed drone of things we either already knew or suspected.
Nevertheless, I was struck by Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony the week before last. Hutchinson was White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’ aide in the months and days leading up to January 6th. We learned of President Trump’s infantile reaction to Attorney General Barr’s denial of election fraud, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone’s warning of potential violence in the wake of the January 6th rally, and Meadows’ strange inaction during the riot, as well as the requests for pardons afterwards.
There was one thing in Hutchison’s testimony that cleared up a question I had had for the last year and a half concerning why Trump did not march on the Capitol after the rally as promised. Apparently it wasn’t one of the innumerable cheap pledges he’s made over his career; Trump reportedly lunged at his Secret Service driver after the driver told him he had to go back to the White House. That was the first actual surprise to come out of any the testimony. Another was that Trump wanted the metal detectors removed from the rally site so that his supporters could bring firearms since he thought they posed no security threat to him. It is unthinkable how much worse the ensuing riot would have been had Trump prevailed.
Like many of the reporters and talking heads covering Hutchinson’s testimony, I was uncritical at first because I was genuinely impressed by her. She projected a calm self-assurance, maturity, and wisdom beyond her twenty-five years. I was also taken with her earnestness. She was quoted in one source as wanting a career in public service, something that resonated with me. I was a wide-eyed idealist as a young adult, though I soon learned to keep those sentiments to myself because they were often met with eyerolls. At the time I worked in a position with a considerable amount of responsibility for a twentysomething, albeit far from the levers of power, but which nonetheless comported with my own aspirations.
The
passage of a couple of weeks has tempered my admiration. I do not doubt Ms. Hutchinson’s idealism (or at least her own belief in it), and
I will not criticize her conservative politics.
I can even forgive her cringy dance with Kayleigh McEnany to “Y.M.C.A.”
during the 2020 campaign. However, the White
House-aide-as-Capra-heroine narrative does not completely hold up the closer one
looks. Certain questions arise.
As an undergraduate Hutchinson interned with both Ted Cruz and Steve Scalise, two of the most disreputable people on Capitol Hill. Surely, she was aware of their reputations before seeking work with them. Then there is her accepting a position in the Trump White House. Was it really idealism, or a self-serving determination to get ahead? Only the most fanatical MAGA nutters, the people who believe Trump was chosen by God to save America from whatever imaginary threat, can truly believe Trump possesses even the slightest shard of integrity. Then there is her apparent acceptance of an offer to work at Mar-a-Lago post-presidency which was later withdrawn (and has led to accusations from conservative media that her testimony was sour grapes for not getting the job).
I am not second-guessing Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony. I believe her to have been truthful with the committee. However, I question the choices which put her in this position to begin with. Although she did the committee a service, it does not mitigate her responsibility for being part of a criminal presidency. Others may vouch for her character, but I am unconvinced.
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2022 The Unassuming Scholar
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