How the 6 January hearings may affect Trump’s 2024 prospects

The latest revelations from the congressional inquiry into the 6 January attack on the US Capitol have raised fresh questions over Donald Trump’s chance of success should he decide to run for president again in 2024.

Last night’s session heard that Trump watched the Capitol riot on television at the White House, ignoring his children and aides who “begged him” to reprimand the activists.

Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the Democratic-led committee, said the former president “chose not to act” and did not place a single call to law enforcement or national security staff, due to a “selfish desire to stay in power”.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Liz Cheney, the Republican vice-chair of the committee, described Trump’s actions on the day as “indefensible”, adding that he “made a purposeful choice to violate his oath of office, to ignore the ongoing violence against law enforcement, to threaten our constitutional order”.

In what the Financial Times described as a “clear signal to US voters that Trump’s actions during the siege should disqualify him from running for president again in 2024”, Cheney added: “Every American must consider this: can [he]… ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again?”

Damaged approval ratings

The paper said that the hearings have damaged the former president’s approval ratings and boosted the prospects of those who might challenge him for the Republican nomination in 2024.

One of those potential challengers is former vice-president Mike Pence, who is becoming “increasingly brazen” in his willingness to counter Trump, said Associated Press. Pence “spent his four years in the White House as Trump’s most loyal defender” but the hearings have shown that Trump put his deputy in the “crosshairs of a violent mob”.

The Guardian said the hearings – which “millions of Americans have watched live” – have “exposed the lengths to which Trump tried to keep himself in the presidency after losing to Biden in the 2020 race”.

The Hill agreed that the very public inquiry has “triggered fresh debate” about Trump’s viability as a candidate as he “mulls launching a 2024 White House bid”.

Republican views ‘have darkened’

Citing a new Ipsos poll, Reuters noted that Republican views on Trump have “darkened somewhat over six weeks of televised congressional hearings”.

The poll of 1,005 adults taken on 20-21 June, which was completed just before a scheduled eighth hearing of the congressional inquiry, showed that one third of Republican respondents think Trump should not run for president again in 2024, up from a quarter in June.

Some 40% of Republicans believed Trump was at least partly to blame for the riot, up from 33% in a poll conducted six weeks ago. And although a majority of Republicans – 55% – continue to believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, that share is down from 67% in early June.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing and, in a post on his Truth Social social media site, his spokesperson Liz Harrington dismissed the hearings as being “as fake and illegitimate as Joe Biden”, reported the Mirror.