The congressional committee investigating the January 6th, 2021, attack on the Capitol promises to shock and awe the American public with its Thursday night, prime time, hearing bonanza.  Axios reports that the nominally bi-partisan committee of seven Democrats and two Republicans (one of whom is retiring) has hired former ABC News president James Goldston to “hone a mountain of explosive material into a captivating multimedia presentation.”  Democrats hope a slickly produced, made for television spectacle will ignite a firestorm of cable news coverage and provoke public fury at former President Donald Trump leading to a deluge campaign donations to Democratic coffers.

Millions are expected to tune in, but if the ratings trajectory for Trump’s second impeachment, last year, are any guide, public interest in Thursday night’s showcase is likely to be fleeting.  According to the polling gurus at FiveThirtyEight.com, “[M]any Americans want to move on from investigating the events of Jan. 6.”  Despite the Democratic Party’s fixation on what they term “The Insurrection,” a January Pew poll found that “the share of respondents who said Trump bore no responsibility at all for the attack had grown by 8 percentage points from 2021 to 2022. Notably, the share of Democrats who said that Trump bore a lot of responsibility for Jan. 6 declined by 11 percentage points.”  [Emphasis mine].  Democrats will have to set the spin cycle on high to generate any new heat.  The public is lukewarm.