The 1/6 committee hearings have been riveting television and a horrifying reality check on how close our democracy came to failure.
They’ve exposed true bravery from witnesses, most not only Republicans but Trump loyalists, who dared tell the truth about the former president’s bad behavior and his false claim that the election was stolen. And they’ve revealed the depths of cynicism among the many remaining enablers in high places.
What they haven’t done is showcase the role that Louisiana’s members of Congress played in the chaos.
So it was a little jarring to see House Republican Whip Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson, appear ever so briefly on screen during Thursday night’s prime-time hearing.
Scalise was at the House mic when the committee showed a visualization of the dining room off the Oval Office, where President Donald Trump watched the entire day’s events on television, and where aide after aide pleaded with him, to no avail, to call his supporters off.
Based on the timeline presented — this was after Trump’s Secret Service detail had refused to take him to the Capitol, but just before the situation turned so dire that the proceedings were suspended — Scalise was probably arguing that Arizona’s results should not be certified. In other words, he was playing directly to the guy watching angrily from the head of the dining room table.
He turned out to be far from alone among his congressional colleagues; for every courageous Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the only Republicans who joined the committee after Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy pulled his support, there are dozens of go-along Scalise types. But that doesn’t diminish his culpability, nor that of Louisiana’s other members who saw fit to fuel Trump’s Big Lie, even — and it’s still mind-blowing to say this — after Congress was attacked by the mob.
The hearings made much of McCarthy’s immediate criticism of Trump, before he put his finger to the party wind and crawled back to Mar-a-Lago. But it was Scalise, McCarthy’s second-in-command, who not only failed to tamp down Trump’s baseless conspiracies but at times encouraged them during those key weeks between the election and formal certification of the Electoral College results. In doing so, he played an important role in signaling that mainstream leaders, not just fringe characters, believed something was amiss with the returns.
Who knows, if more people in authority like him had spoken the truth at the time, maybe some of those true believers who came to Washington on Jan. 6 might not have still believed.
There were no profiles in courage that day among Scalise’s fellow Louisiana Republicans in the House. U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson, R-Benton, who’d lined up fellow members to back a ridiculous lawsuit from Texas challenging the results in other states, voted with Scalise against certifying the full results in Arizona and Pennsylvania. So did U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, R-Lafayette. U.S. Rep. Garret Graves, R-Baton Rouge, voted against certifying Pennsylvania’s results.
Along with McCarthy, the committee had its fun with Josh Hawley, of Missouri, the first senator to announce he’d object to results, thus ensuring that the ceremonial certification would become a circus, or worse.
Hawley — the new political project of the old Bobby Jindal advising team, for what that’s worth — famously pumped his fist in solidarity with the protesters from safely behind police lines. So it was pretty amusing to watch newly released video of him running for his life once the mob infiltrated the Capitol — although the underlying point, that everyone there at the time knew the situation had turned treacherous, was well-taken.
Once Hawley and fellow Sen. Ted Cruz, of Texas, led their party down that path, a handful of senators not only followed but stayed with them after the attack. One was John Kennedy, who voted against certifying Arizona. That left only Bill Cassidy among Louisiana’s Republicans on record as fully endorsing the election results. Sad.
Cassidy wound up rebuked by the state party for voting to convict Trump, in his second impeachment trial, for inciting the attack. Kinzinger, of Illinois, isn’t running again, and Cheney faces an uphill Republican primary for reelection next month in Trump-friendly Wyoming.
Meanwhile, all of Louisiana’s House members, and Kennedy in the Senate, are heavily favored to be reelected this fall, and probably won’t have to answer for their actions a year and a half ago. At the polls, there seems to be safety in numbers.
I’m with Cheney in believing that there will be no such protection from the harsh judgment of history.