Investigating January 6th

Will Donald Trump slip away "peacefully and patriotically"?

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Tom Joscelyn returns to talk with Steve about the reason he left The Dispatch: the January 6th Select Committee. Join the two as they break down the main characters behind the riot (can you tell the difference between a Proud Boy and an Oath Keeper?), Tucker Carlson’s war against reality, and the GOP’s attempt at a clean-up.

Show Notes:

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    This was good. Next have Tom on to talk about Iraq 20 years later.

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    Jordan

    I love hearing from Thomas Jocelyn. The way he remembers specific details of the evidence is very impressive. I'm glad he served as a senior staff member for the committee but I'm glad that he is back.

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    Mike B

    Great interview!

    I happened to listen to a talk radio segment shortly after Tucker Carlson's show aired where the host made the argument that the J6 committee had selectively edited the tapes to highlight the violence, and that all Tucker was doing was setting the record straight by "presenting the other side". This is a logical fallacy: the absence of violence in the tapes Tucker showed does not prove that no violence occurred. The common phrase is "you can't prove a negative". You could do the same with footage of the George Floyd riots and many of the same people who accept the reasoning in the case of January 6 loudly, and correctly, denounced the MSM for exactly that.

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    Michael.P.Cotter

    This was such a fantastic interview, but I was left feeling disappointed.

    Steve, you represented this loyal Dispatch member when you asked about anti-Trump conservatives who wished the January 6th Select Committee was just a little more adversarial. Tom's answer was that he thought those in my camp believed in space aliens (or something to that effect ;) and you just moved on. Boo! Everything Tom talked about involved Republican malfeasance.... I take no issue with anything he said.... there was enough malfeasance there to talk for hours and he opened my eyes to more than I was aware of. I just wish you would have followed up with asking him why he thought Nancy Pelosi and the house impeachment managers impeached Trump for inciting a riot rather than derelection of duty during the hours he did NOTHING on January 6th while the riot was going on. I don't think the Democrats can completely wash their hands of this whole mess, and I think you let Tom off the hook by not representing your loyal space-alien contingent. I believe either David French (may he rest in peace) or Sarah Isgur made the case on Advisory Opinions (very soon after the riot went down) that "incitement" is a precise legal term that requires a high burden-of-proof to prove. Nancy Pelosi is not a stupid person. It seemed obvious to even this novice that we likely could have gotten more votes to convict Trump in the senate if the bar wasn't set SO high. Lest I be accused of "What-About-ism," let me be clear that I view Donald Trump as an existential threat to our democracy, and I'm not trying to make an argument for moral equivalency. It's just that if the Democrats believed Trump was as much of an existential threat as I do (and that THEY claim he is), you would think picking up the phone after January 6th and calling congressional Republicans to ask what they might be willing to convict Trump on might have been the more "noble" course of action. If Trump had been convicted by the Senate, he would now be ineligible to run in 2024 and NONE of us would have to face the specter of Donald Trump possibly ascending to the Presidency AGAIN. I can't help think that Pelosi's move after January 6th was a cynical and deplorable one. I think Democrats like to talk about Trump as an existential threat, but it appears they can't muster up enough patriotism to let the opportunity to run against a crazy person go wasted. They did fund a number of crazy "existential threat" Republicans in the 2022 midterms, a move which in retropsect seems brilliant. However, if Trump becomes president again, I won't reserve ALL of my anger for the RINOs who got him there.

    All that said, I really enjoyed this podcast. Tom was impressive. I look forward to reading his analysis of Patriot Purge. I just wish (like I wished with the January 6th Committee) that your interview was just a tiny bit more "adversarial".

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      Ben Connelly

      Good points!

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    NashLives

    Notice: he dodged the question about having "real" Republican members on the Jan. 6 committee. There was a tradeoff rejecting McCarthy's picks from the committee, and the correct move was not obvious as he suggests. The committee succeeded in unraveling, and recording for history's sake, the events of Jan. 6. I think they did valuable work that's clearly praiseworthy. But as an exercise in convincing the mass public on the right that Jan. 6 wasn't some peaceful protest, that the election wasn't stolen, or that Trump shouldn't share in the blame for the riots, etc., it was an utter failure. And what was the downside exactly? Ds would've had a majority on the committee to run the show. Sure, they'd have to give the Rs access to materials and time to speak at hearings, but that's how bipartisan commissions have always worked. If Jordan, or one of the other Rs on the committee, became a serious problem (through leaking or whatever) for the committees procedures, they could've been removed him post facto. Anyway, I don't have an extremely strong view here, but dismissing it seems like a dodge to me.

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    Dwayne G

    Excellent interview. Even though I thought I had watched this issue closely I had no idea the depth of the planning involved in the capitol attack. This interview changed my perspective. Thank you for the work.

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  8. Steveoldh

    Great podcast! However, I wish Tom would have addressed the issue of process during the committee meetings. To the charge that another view wasn't presented in the hearings, Tom replied "What other view could there be?" He then spoke in terms of legalities and violations of the law.
    But, the best system we have for revealing legal truth is the adversarial process of prosecution, cross-examination, and defense. Certainly, Tom would not agree that we should convict people on the basis that "What other view could there be". Had it been a more adversarial hearing, there would be greater confidence that the committee's work was not partisan, at least among people of good will.

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    1. Kurt.Woolley

      That was my only issue with the podcast, when Tom said, 'what other view could there be' he highlighted all of the rationale skeptics' primary issue with the formulation of the committee. Tom 'proved' that the committee wasn't there to figure out how/why it happened. They were there to fit all of the facts into a preset narrative. The adversarial process and process generally is a feature of the constitution and our systems not a bug...I wish they would acknowledge that if the committee had been structured in a more historically normal way, we would have ended up with the same basic story (truth is truth, isn't it?) but the political buy-in would be exponentially higher and this process would have been cathartic to the republic in a way that an exclusively partisan committee never could be (not partisan by party but partisan by for/against Trump).

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    Chany Ockert

    So appreciative to hear this insight!

    In terms of the cult of personality, look at the number of local GOP committees that are hosting Lincoln-Reagan-Trump dinners.

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    Marianwcates

    Great podcast!

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