(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) According to a poll conducted by Monmouth University, House Democrats’ prime-time Jan. 6 committee hearings have had no effect whatsoever on public opinion.
In fact, by some metrics, the hearings have actually worked against the Democrats as they try to rally public opinion against Republicans—specifically former President Donald Trump—before November’s midterm election.
Before the J6 hearings, for example, 42% of Americans believed that Trump was directly responsible for the uprising at the U.S. Capitol, which resulted in the shooting death by Capitol Police of unarmed protester Ashli Babbitt.
Now, only 38% believe Trump was to blame—a percentage that tracks closely with President Joe Biden’s approval rating.
Further, 65% believed that the event was a “riot” before witnessing the hearings. But that number has dropped to 64% since the show trials began.
Accordingly, more Americans have even come to believe that it was a legitimate protest, increasing from 34% to 35%.
Both fall within the survey’s margin of error, which was +/- 3.5 percentage points.
According to Patrick Murray, the leftist director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, Republicans were being let off the hook for the attack on “our democracy.”
Avoiding the logical conclusion that the falsely predicated hearings had oversold and underdelivered on their promises, Murray instead claimed calcified right-wingers simply weren’t paying attention.
“The sensational revelations during the hearings do not seem to have moved the public opinion needle on Trump’s culpability for either the riot or his spurious election fraud claims,” he griped. “This continues to give political cover to Republican leaders who avoid addressing the damage done to our democratic processes that day.”
He also noted that the success of many Trump endorsed candidates in the Republican primaries reveals that the public is quite unconcerned with the Left’s ongoing show trials.
“As we have seen from the success of Trump-endorsed candidates in recent primaries, he continues to hold sway over a large portion of the Republican base,” Murray lamented. “That doesn’t necessarily make him a shoe-in for the nomination in 2024, but he remains a formidable presence.”
