again after surviving the attack in the first place and hearing the officers recount their stories in person earlier today, i mean, does it make the whitewashing of january 6th by some of your republican colleagues even more sickening to contemplate and difficult to explain? it s good to be with you tonight, anderson. and i think when you listen to the testimony today it was heart-wrenching. those officers went through a lot. the members on the select committee also shared bits and pieces of their experience that day. and in many ways we relived january 6th together. and what i think we saw was that the officers were disgusted by the fact that there are colleagues of mine who continue to try to deny that january 6th was an attack on the capitol. they feel offended that they protected these people and they fought for our democracy and now these people are trying to whitewash their experience and diminish their experience after all that they did. and obviously, from my personal
not there to serve you. and they call you nigger and they threaten to kill you and they say if you didn t have this gun on you i would show you what a real nigger is. and they go through all of this. i mean, this is what our country is. you are one of the best interviewers in all of the world. and so i have to say that when you say they re untethered from reality i think that s just not the case, anderson. because that is the new reality we live in. and that s unfortunate. jamie, just looking at the back and forth between speaker pelosi and minority leader mccarthy in the last week, did mccarthy ultimately just on the politics of this, did they get played here by allowing democrats to i mean, democrats moved ahead with this. they have two responsible republicans on the committee who are not, you know, toadying up to democrats. they are there to seek the truth about what happened. there is no question that today is a bad day for kevin mccarthy. it s a bad day for mitch mcconnell.
so you can see, anderson, just not a topic that republicans wanted to engage on today. the question has to be asked, why are they so afraid just to watch what happened today and then respond to what they saw? yeah. ryan nobles, appreciate it. thank you. perspective now from cnn senior political commentator and former south carolina democratic legislator bakari sellers. also cnn special correspondent jamie gang ll. when you hear senator johnson say that most of the people on january 6th were engaging in peaceful protest, you juxtapose that with everything we heard today including officer harry dunn explain in really horrifying detail how some of these pro-trump insurrectionists hurled racial slurs at him calling him the n word, how can some of these republicans be so i was going to say untethered from reality. but i mean, they re just living they saw what happened. they know what happened. it s just lying. well, i m not sure they re untethered from reality either. i think th
from. and we will follow the evidence to whomever or whatever it leads. and what i think we will have to do is use all the powers of the committee to bring forward anybody who was present for those conversations, whether it s the elected official or their staff or anybody else that was involved. and our committee intends to do that because we need to lay out the full set of information from the leadup to january 6th all the way through the actual events of january 6th and to see if there s continued planning for political violence to create a political outcome. congresswoman murphy, i appreciate your time today. thank you. more now on republican lawmakers, some of whom could not be bothered to hear from the officers today and some such as senator ron johnson who as we pointed out earlier declined to come on the program. cnn s ryan nobles caught up with him, though. ryan, did senator johnson have anything to say? reporter: well, anderson, he did not want to talk about the hearing. h
they feared for their lives, sir. do you think that that was true or if they said that, i agree 100%. you don t have republicans thinking they re downplaying this. it was absolutely horrible. i feel for them. officer fanone slammed his hand down on the desk and said it was disrespectful what some of your colleagues have said about what happened on that day. i don t know what my colleagues are saying. you re interviewing me. right. and i m giving you my take. on what took place. i don t do oral interviews. we re just asking some questions i don t do oral interviews. so you can see, anderson, just not a topic that republicans wanted to engage on today. the question has to be asked, why are they so afraid just to watch what happened today and then respond to what they saw? yeah. ryan nobles, appreciate it. thank you. perspective now from cnn senior political commentator and former south carolina democratic legislator bakari sellers. also cnn special correspondent