It was supposed to be a simple plan for parrying the House. GOP officials would keep a close eye on rising prices and treat the hearings as a sideshow that voters wouldn't care about.
Donald Trump once again junked the script.
Trump posted a flurry of notes about the hearing on his social media site, even as the party tried to exploit a piece of bad economic news that reflected poorly on President Joe Biden: In May, inflation hit a 40-year high.
A few from Trump-world attended the hearing on Thursday. In the hours after the committee's conclusion, Trump allies began a flurry of texting and posting to their social media accounts.
Trump devoted a lot of space to a hearing that GOP operatives were hoping to ignore. The Truth Social was launched by Trump after he was kicked from the social networking site.
One former Trump White House aide said that it was fine to correct the record but that most of the energy should be spent on the economy.
Bill Barr was the former attorney general. Video testimony of Barr was played by the committee.
Trump wrote that Barr was a weak and frightened attorney general. His daughter was a senior adviser in the West Wing and he appeared to insult her by repeating the false claim that the election was stolen. In her testimony, she said she respected Barr and was influenced by his conclusion that Trump lost.
"Ivanka Trump" hadn't studied the election results and had "long since checked out and was, in my opinion, only trying to be respectful to Bill Barr and his position as attorney general"
The claim that his daughter had checked out doesn't jibe with what he had previously said about her. He said at an event in the White House that his daughter found 14 million jobs. She told voters that she had spoken to her father earlier in the day and that he would never stop fighting for them. She was in the White House with her dad.
Discrediting individual witnesses is not in line with the Republicans' plan.
The party decided to make fun of Democrats for devoting all of their time to the issue of gas prices and baby formula in January.
The GOP's approach was captured in an ad released by the RNC. The ad said Biden was responsible for inflation, crime and the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. There is a message on the screen at the end that says, "But what do Democrats focus on?"
It may be too much to expect Trump to ignore the hearings. According to people close to him, he is fixated on the idea that he was robbed of a victory. According to the committee, one of Trump's closest advisers sent a text message to the White House press secretary after the Capitol riot. The advice didn't work out.
According to a national Republican campaign strategist, the committee will have a hard time sustaining public interest in the hearings when there are so many competing storylines. Republicans don't need Trump to draw attention to their hearings, they'll fade on their own
The strategist said polling shows that the Jan. 6 committee is not a priority for voters. I don't think they can continue to break through that with everything else going on. There are a lot of other issues that are top of mind.
The GOP strategist said that he didn't watch the hearings.
Smith, a Trump ally and former member of GOP leadership, said he fell asleep watching Thursday's hearing and suggested Democrats were drawing from a tired script.
Smith told NBC News that he was not surprised that the movie was made for TV. I haven't been able to find anyone outside of Washington, D.C. who is watching them.
Many people did. Bill Palatucci said he watched the hearing with a heavy heart. The hearings aren't worth people's time.
Palatucci said that the insurrection was a seditious one. Voters can think of two different things. They aren't happy with how the Democrats have conducted the fight against inflation, and they can be angry at the former president for his conduct
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