Jan. 6 hearings have wounded Trump, and more decline may be ahead
Trump’s die-hard supporters haven’t changed their view, but the steady flow of testimony has caused many Republicans to start questioning if he should be their candidate.
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WASHINGTON — Six weeks of televised hearings by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol have not collapsed Donald Trump's support, but they have left the former president politically wounded and deepened his legal jeopardy.
Yes, Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party, able to exact revenge against political figures who openly fight him. His chief Republican tormentor on the Jan. 6 panel, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, faces almost certain defeat in her primary next month — a recent poll showed her trailing her Trump-endorsed opponent by 22 percentage points.
But even before the hearings, losses by Trump-endorsed candidates in other primaries showed the limits of his power to reward or punish. At the same time, his much-vaunted moneymaking operation has slowed, with fundraising by his main political group falling sharply in the last six months and slipping behind that of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, as the Washington Post reported this week.
Against that background, Trump's widely rumored plan to formally declare this fall that he's running for the 2024 presidential nomination looks more desperate than dominating — a high-risk gambit by a politician who fears the spotlight may soon shine on someone else.
What time does it start?