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The J6 Pilot Flopped

The pilot episode of the January 6 hearings doomed the entire season. 

The ratings don’t lie: America is not enthralled. Despite unprecedented coordination on behalf of the mainstream media to synchronize coverage of the Democrats’ mockumentary, the left-wing smokescreen failed to capture the hearts and minds of the nation. 

America does not want to J6 and chill.

Despite their greatest attempts at hyping the insufferable premier, CNN pulled in lower numbers than Tucker Carlson’s show the night before, which opened the Thursday 8 p.m. hour with a promise not to air the committee’s lies. CBS’s own “Let’s Make a Deal” and “The Price is Right” drew more viewers Wednesday night than the committee’s coverage received Thursday on the same network. More Americans watched basketball last Thursday than watched the hearings this Thursday. The only bombshells in the first hearing were the ratings.

In an uncharacteristic validation of the American peoples’ sentiment, even Bloomberg pulled away from the hearing minutes after it began to resume coverage of an abysmal economy under Joe Biden, floundering stock markets, and an America careening towards recession. Americans simultaneously began clicking away from the charade. 

The sham committee’s failure to produce a small screen sensation was not for lack of trying. They used teleprompters to read off their scripted monologues, hired former television executives to produce the drama, and selectively edited testimony from the witnesses. They refused to release full interviews from their witness testimony, and removed persons of interest from their videos to cover alternative storylines.

They had to. Otherwise, their narrative wouldn’t be compelling; the evidence would undermine the committee’s political agenda. And from a committee that already tested the waters with changing evidence to fit their narrative, their highly-produced and drastically-altered presentation of that day shouldn’t surprise Americans. As booted January 6 fact-finder Representative Jim Banks (R-Ind.) pointed out, perhaps “selective editing committee” is a more appropriate name. 

Americans watch TV and go to the movies so they can forget their worries, unplug, and disengage from reality. That’s what Democrats hoped to accomplish with their highly-produced hearing on Thursday and what they plan to display in their subsequent presentations; they want to distract the American people from their stunning failure to lead or deliver the most fundamental of necessities like affordable gas, low-cost food, and baby formula. 

Democrats can now add “televised distraction campaign sideshow” to their growing list of failures. You could find more substantive solutions for the nation by watching HGTV or ESPN. 

Democrats could be spending their time investigating the root causes of the baby formula shortage, high gas prices, and the impending recession. But that would expose their abysmal leadership failures and draw Americans’ attention from the very thing they wish to divert attention from. There has never been a clearer contrast for the American people: Joe Biden and the Democrats want to put themselves first, President Trump and Republicans want to put America First. Democrats simply cannot produce results, and so they distract. You saw this phenomenon in the Mueller hearings, during both impeachments, and now you see it in the January 6 charade.  

There will be more episodes of the January 6 committee’s hearings in the coming days. In Hollywood, this flop would be canceled. In Washington, their budget is built with your money, so expect more of the same. Each episode will have the same goal and purpose: dominate the screens of Americans to divert attention from Democrats’ cataclysmic failure to lead the nation.

But for Americans, it’s hard to enthrall yourself in revisionist history when you have overdrawn your checking account at Exxon on the way home. And with ratings like these, J6 may suffer a shorter lifespan than CNN+.

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About Barry Moore

Representative Barry Moore represents Alabama’s second congressional district in the United States House of Representatives.

Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images