Unlikely voices break with Trump

There’s a show-biz adage about audiences that says, “Always leave them wanting more.”

That is not what the House Jan. 6 committee planned Tuesday with a televised hearing that was to start at 10 a.m. and go all day long. At the last minute, they started the hearing at 1 p.m.

When the committee got down to brass tasks, testimony painted a picture of President Donald J. Trump as a drowning man, flailing around for a life preserver to save his presidency.

The lifeguards were members of his staff, and most told him there was no escape. His last hope was Jan. 6, but that failed, too.

Amid all the talk of a democracy almost lost, let’s remember that the majority of his appointees — the men and women most loyal to him — stood up against him, and opposed him. In a few instances they threatened him, as with the walkout promised by Justice officials if Trump tried to appoint an unqualified hack as attorney general.

Instead of the usual dramatis personae of Capitol Hill staffers we are accustomed to seeing, a couple of civilians were in the spotlight, each a former Trump supporter.

The most notable, and sad, was Stephen Ayer, speaking in a Midwest twang and appearing uncomfortable in a suit.

He believed what his president told him, and he went to Washington because his president told him the election was stolen.

A “hard core” user of social media then, now Ayers says, “I feel like I had horse blinders on.”

As a result of entering the Capitol, even though he committed no violence, he pleaded guilty to entering the Capitol, he lost his job and had to sell his home.

Describing himself as a family man and working man, he had believed the election was stolen, “but not so much now.”

Off social media, when he reflects on the election, he concludes it was too big to be stolen. “All the law suits that  got shot down, that convinced me.” All of what he has now learned, “Makes me mad.”

Seated alongside of Ayers was Jason Van Tatenhove, onetime national media director of the Oath Keepers, which he described as a violent militia.

The one-time journalist offered chilling testimony.

What happened Jan. 6 “could have been the spark that started a new civil war,” he said. 

Although he says the Oath Keepers deny they are a militia, he knew they were on Jan. 6 when he saw “a stacked military formation going up the steps of the Capitol.”

He said he has seen many “red flags,” but when he heard a group of Oath Keepers talking about how the Holocaust was a hoax, that was the final straw for him.

He considers them, and Trump, a clear and present danger.

While there was testimony linking some Trump supporters, such as Roger Stone and Gen. Michael Flynn to militias, there were no dots connecting Trump with the riot, except for this. The tweet that preceded his Jan. 6 speech:

So here you can play word games with what he meant by “wild,” a term picked up by lots of his supporters.

I don’t alibi for Trump, but to a man of his age, which I am, “wild” means an exciting and enjoyable time. It doesn’t mean violence.

In an earlier presentation, the committee went over information that was previously established, plus snippets of testimony from White House counsel Pat Cipollone, which did not contradict anything previously known.

The rehash included that everyone with half a brain knew that the election had been fair and the Electoral College had decided it and it would be recorded on January 6.

Trump’s hope that Vice President Mike Pence would break his oath to the Constitution and try to stop the process was burst.

According to the polls, Pence’s chance of being nominated for president is in the single digits.

And will remain there until more Republicans come to think like Ayers and Van Tatenhove.