On Thursday, the January 6th Select Committee rolled out its last, desperate attempt to “get” former President Donald Trump. Specifically, they are subpoenaing him. After months of failing to deliver evidence of their promised conspiracy, the only thing left to do was throw a bomb from the 50-yard-line in the hope that someone comes down with it in the endzone.
To be clear, they aren’t subpoenaing Trump because they actually think he would give them evidence of their hair-brained allegation of a “seven-step plan” to overthrow the government. You can’t garner evidence of something that didn’t happen, at least not legitimately. Rather, the hope is that Trump fights the subpoena so they can point and say “see, he’s guilty” again and again before Republicans shut down their committee in January.
Perhaps Trump is ready to call their bluff, though? According to Fox News, the former president “loves the idea” of testifying before Liz Cheney’s farce.
Former President Donald Trump “loves the idea of testifying” before the House select committee investigating January 6th, a source close to Trump told Fox News Digital just after the panel unanimously voted to subpoena him.
The source said that if Trump complied with the subpoena and testified, he would “talk about how corrupt the election was, how corrupt the committee was, and how Nancy Pelosi did not call up the National Guard that Trump strongly recommended for her to do three days earlier on January 3, 2021.”
The source told Fox News Digital that it is unclear at this point if Trump actually will testify before the committee, but stressed that Trump “loves the idea.”
One common theme of Trump’s presidency was that his initial instincts were often quickly quelled by those around him. Sometimes that was a good thing. Other times, it led to preventable policy mistakes. In this case, if this report is true (it’s Fox News, but still), Trump might want to rethink his excitement.
Think about how the committee has functioned to this point. Edited videos and testimony, sometimes including outright deception in manufacturing “evidence,” have sustained the narratives of Cheney and her cohorts. Does anyone believe they’d treat Trump’s testimony fairly? As a bare minimum, the former president would have to insist his testimony take place in an open hearing so it can’t be edited.
But even then, the committee would then put him on the spot with edited videos in an attempt to catch him in an outburst. I also wouldn’t expect Trump talking about how “corrupt the election was” to do anything but play into the hands of the committee. That’s the spectacle they would love to see.
The biggest thing here, though, is that the January 6th committee is a failure. No one cares about it. It does not register among major issues for voters, most of which are far more concerned about their pocketbooks right now than partisan political recriminations. For that reason alone, it would be really dumb for Trump to show up and testify. Do not give these people oxygen because they are already irrelevant. The only thing that saves pulls the January 6th committee from the grip of defeat is Trump giving it new life.
I understand the former president has never met publicity he didn’t want, but this is one case where it’s far preferable to point and laugh from afar. By the time the subpoena gets through the courts, the GOP will control the House and this will all be moot. If the goal is to make Cheney and company irrelevant, that’s how you do it.
UPDATE: So the story is apparently real. Trump shared it on Truth Social.
