of big news, joe, on capitol hill. what a significant day. and i will tell you, i was away from the tv for a good part of the day, and started getting breaking news alerts about the hearings, started following some i had to come back, rewatch the entire hearing all over again. it really, yesterday, about as compelling of any hearing we ve seen on capitol hill since the days of watergate. i was young when the watergate hearings were on. i was upset because we had only had four channels then, and i wanted to see the flintstones and mr. ed, but my parents were sitting front, watching watergate. like everybody. and it was so compelling. and you see those clips, and it s history and you don t think you re ever going to see anything like that again. like a movie. but actually, willie, we did see something and we keep seeing, every one of these january 6th hearings. you re looking at history, you understand it, because, again, it drives home the point that maybe we ve
hearing number five into january 6th focused on donald trump s efforts to get the justice department to legitimatize his bogus claims of voter fraud. that includes his relentless pursuit of an attorney general, who would go along with his election conspiracies. the pressure top leaders face when they refuse to do so, and how those leaders banded together and ultimately prevailed. the committee also revealed the republican lawmakers who sought pardons from trump after the capitol attack for their roles in the election scheme, we will have all the key and extremely dramatic moments just ahead. plus, major developments on the debate over gun safety. last night, the senate passed a bipartisan gun reform bill, its most sweeping gun bill in decades. it came on the same day the supreme court issued its first major decision on guns in a decade. we ll go through it all. but, wow, yesterday, a fire hose
you had that colorful quote from eric hirschmann, your first act as attorney general would be a felony, that s not the only f word he used. everyone knew it carried criminal risk, and they pressed on anyway, and it was all personally directed by trump. let s hear exactly what amanda s talking about. yesterday in the hearing from former acting attorney general rosen and deputy acting attorney general donoghue, here s what they said. so between december 23rd and january 3rd, the president either called me or met with me virtually every day with one or two exceptions like christmas day. so the common element of all of this was the president expressing his dissatisfaction that the justice department in his view had not done enough to investigate election fraud but
who, on the republican side of the ledger, have viewed this and openly said, i can no longer support this guy. even rusty bowers, whose testimony the speaker in arizona, whose testimony was riveting. who talked about the toll it took personally on his family. and how hurt he was that someone who he himself revered the constitution was being told to trample on it, he later said he would vote for trump if he was running against biden. it s unbelievable. it s unbelievable. and i guess to a degree, this is just modern politics where it s tribal. where these things take a backseat, i suppose, to the price of gasoline. but i do think that trump has a grip. i don t think it s as strong as it was. i think these hearings have really damaged him. i do actually think that. i think a lot of republicans just don t want to deal with this stuff anymore. i think they re tired of it. at the same time, they are not
a lot of people will argue that something that the president was quoted as saying is really the direct line to him, the smoking gun. but even more so, it explains a lot about the behavior of many of his followers and you just have to wonder, not to get sidetracked here, you have to wonder how kevin mccarthy and other republicans in congress right now, how they can still bow to this man. they just can, because they are without shame. sam stein, kevin mccarthy was the one on the phone on january 6th screaming at donald trump, swearing at donald trump, saying, i m done with this guy, he has to be brought to justice. and then kevin mccarthy runs down, gets a picture with trump at mar-a-lago, because he s afraid that two or three of his followers may not like him. i mean, yeah. and this is not this is just there are so few people