What do people really think about the work the Jan. 6 Committee is doing? How many people are watching or even caring about the primetime hearings? I don’t think the committee is very pleased with how things are going, as they’ve just postponed their hearings until next month. Clearly, they see that their message is not getting through, and their Hail Mary effort to thwart Trump’s 2024 ambitions needs a Hail Mary of its own to get back on track.
The committee has every reason to be concerned. The hearings have not generated the ratings they likely hoped for, and according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll, less than 10% of Americans are following the hearings “very closely.”
Frankly, I doubt it’s even that high. In fact, I think the entire poll is likely bunk. Why? Because the same survey finds that nearly 60% of Americans think the hearings are fair and impartial.
Really? Nancy Pelosi stacks the committee with 100% anti-Trump partisans, and 60% think the hearings are fair and impartial? This is the same committee that doctored text messages to make them look incriminating, and we’re expected to believe Americans see the hearings as objective?
You know what? I’m skeptical. But wait, there’s more.
“58% of Americans think Trump should be charged with a crime for his role in the riot,” reports ABC News. “That’s up slightly from late April, before the hearings began, when an ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 52% of Americans thought the former president should be charged.”
If you think that sounds bad, the poll also found that 61% of self-described independents think Trump bears a “great deal” or a “good amount” of responsibility for the Capitol riot, and 62% said Trump should be charged with a crime.
Does this finding come across as a complete bunk to anyone else? If roughly 60% of voters overall, including approximately 60% of independents, believed that Trump should be charged with a crime in connection with the Capitol riot, then Donald Trump couldn’t possibly be a viable candidate in the 2024 presidential election now, could he?
No, he couldn’t.
But not only is Trump a viable candidate, but he also leads Biden in most 2024 hypothetical matchup polls. How is that possible? Do two-thirds of Americans really believe that he is guilty of a crime?
I say no, they don’t. If an overwhelming majority of Americans actually believe that Trump committed a crime on Jan. 6, 2021, he wouldn’t be competitive in any 2024 poll, and he certainly wouldn’t have seen his standing improve in such polls after the Jan. 6 committee started airing their hearings in primetime — which is precisely what happened in the latest Yahoo News/YouGov hypothetical 2024 matchup poll, in which Trump overtook Biden for the first time last week.
According to that poll, if the 2024 election were held today between Trump and Biden, Trump would win 44 to 42. “Since Biden took office, no previous Yahoo News/YouGov poll has shown him trailing Trump (though Biden’s most recent leads have been within the margin of error, like this one is for Trump),” Yahoo News reported last week. “One year ago, Biden led Trump by 9 percentage points.”
The Democrats and the mainstream have been pushing the narrative that Trump is responsible for the Capitol riot and is guilty of committing a crime for a year and a half now. Yet most polls show him as the preferred candidate for 2024, and his position has improved over the past 18 months. It’s quite clear that the American people aren’t buying what the Jan. 6 Committee is selling.
