Just 8 Out of 50 Republican Senators Say They Are Watching Explosive Jan. 6 Hearings

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Just eight Republican senators have said they are watching the explosive hearings from the House select committee investigating former President Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, according to a new report.

The ninth hearing, which aired in prime time last night, featured testimony from former Trump officials who described how the former president encouraged the mob and then did nothing to stop the violence for more than two hours.

Trump, according to his own advisers, watched Fox News throughout the riot, as his supporters hunted Vice President Mike Pence. The vice president’s security detail became so fearful for their lives during the attack, one official said, that they called their loved ones to say goodbye. Trump resisted calling for peace for hours, until he caved and filmed a bizarre video telling the rioters, “Go home, we love you, you’re very special.”

Very few Republican lawmakers are watching the hearings, however, according to a report from Matt Laslo in RawStory.

Laslo interviewed all 50 Republicans in the senate over the last month. He found that only eight “report actively tuning in to some or all of the proceedings.”

Another 10 senators said they’re “reading press clippings or plan to read the special committee’s report once they conclude their investigation.”

“The other 32 Republican senators have actively tuned out the committee,” Laslo reported.

“No. I have zero interest in what I think is an extended Democrat campaign commercial,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) told Laslo. “So boring.”

Hawley has no doubt heard about Thursday’s hearing. The Missouri Republican featured prominently in an exhibit showing how he fled from the rioters he had saluted with a raised fist earlier in the day.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), whose condemnation of Trump after Jan. 6 was played at the Thursday hearing, also suggested he would not be watching.

“I don’t remember saying that I would be watching,” McConnell said at a June press conference. “I’m focusing on what we’re doing here in the Senate.”

McConnell — as well as the vast majority of Republican senators — voted to acquit Trump in his second impeachment over the riot. The Kentucky senator argued against impeachment because the trial started after Trump had left office (because McConnell himself refused a request from Democrats to hold an emergency session in January.)

Before voting to acquit, however, McConnell savaged Trump in a lengthy speech.

He said Trump’s actions that “preceded the riot were a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty.”

“There’s no question — none — that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. No question about it.” he said. “The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president. And having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.”

Those comments were played at the Jan. 6 hearing on Thursday.