By Davis Bauder
Associated Press
The sessions of the Commission of Inquiry into the assault on the Capitol had 20 million live viewers the first night, according to audience figures, 11 million in its first daytime session and almost 9 million for the third session on Thursday.
But those traditional Nielsen company counts don't come close to encompassing the real scope of what's being said there.
Memorable moments from each day become curated snippets for quick consumption on endless newscasts, sitcoms, and the internet, to the point that some have been seen more times than on live broadcast.
[TV host Tucker Carlson repeated the lie that no Capitol raider was armed. It's false]
In many ways, it's the first congressional committee in living memory designed specifically with modern media in mind, said Jeff Jarvis, a journalism professor at the City University of New York and a regular media blogger.
"
That has already worked
," he pointed out.
"I was slipping on other people's blood."
The witnesses of the assault on the Capitol reopen the wound
June 10, 202203:04
Although it is impossible to know what topic - if any - covered in the early stages of the investigation will make the news of the week, there are already some standout moments and characters.
Giuliani and alcohol
Excerpts that have been widely circulated include videos in which former President Donald Trump's former political director Bill Stepien, his adviser Jason Miller and commission member Liz Cheney said that attorney
Rudy Giuliani had had too much
to drink before advising Trump the election night 2020.
A video statement by Trump campaign attorney and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is projected before the US House of Representatives Committee of Inquiry into the Capitol storming on January 6, 2021, on Capitol Hill, Washington, on Monday, June 13, 2022. Susan Walsh / AP
Hours after the accusation was made, the videos were featured in monologues by popular comedians Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel.
His shows typically have a combined audience of nearly 5 million people each night, with many more watching the videos online the next morning.
Kimmel accompanied him with
a compilation of times when Giuliani acted strangely
in defense of Trump.
The episode resonated in part because it was an easy topic to empathize with in an otherwise very serious story, said Robert Thompson, director of Syracuse University's Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture.
"Revealing that important people at the national political level were drunk is something that people can immediately understand," Thompson said.
Barr's reality
Former Attorney General William Barr's recorded testimony
that he saw Trump "out of touch with reality"
in some of his claims about voter fraud
opened many reports on Monday's session.
He was
a vivid and troubling image of a former president
, described by the man who ran his Justice Department.
The ABC, CBS and NBC evening news featured that video of Barr's comment.
Between the three programs they usually have more than 20 million viewers, twice as many as those who saw the live view.
There are no figures on how many times it was repeated in the news on cable channels or estimates of how many people saw it that way.
[Trump advisers tried to make him see that his claims of voter fraud were false, but he was "out of touch with reality"]
Two details illustrate how much it circulated on the internet.
A video of the moment shared by Reuters on Facebook was viewed 928,000 times, while the video on The New York Times' Instagram account was viewed some 404,000 times.
daughter and son in law
The recorded statement from Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, has been especially powerful, in part because she comes from the family of a man who highly values loyalty.
Trump dismissed his own daughter's testimony before the committee investigating the Capitol assault
June 10, 202202:21
A video in which Ivanka Trump says she trusted Barr's opinion on the fraud allegations racked up more than 1.6 million views on an Instagram post by The Shade Room, a celebrity and entertainment news outlet, and one million when Bloomberg shared it on Twitter.
The tweets with the video published by MSNBC and the committee itself added more than 900,000 views between the two.
A video in which
she recalled a telephone conversation
her father had with then-Vice President Mike Pence on the morning of January 6, 2021 appeared on all three evening news Thursdays, sometimes accompanied by explicit descriptions of the vocabulary used by the former president.
Kushner's response when asked what he had told his father-in-law about Giuliani — as if he were pondering live what it meant to be under oath — became the stuff of jokes.
a new star
Former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann, little known until now, has become
the breakout star of the last week
for his recorded statement about conversations with John Eastman, the ideologue of Trump's failed attempt to cling to power.
Herschmann, who edited out his own profanity when testifying, recalled saying
"has he lost his fucking mind?"
when Eastman spoke, the day after the assault on Capitol Hill, about a possible appeal of the election results in Georgia.
Like a stern father, he told Eastman that the only words he wanted to hear from him were “orderly transition,” advising him
to “get a good criminal attorney
.
He is going to need it.”
To our fellow Republicans who defend the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but his dishonor will remain."
Commission member Liz Cheney
Cheney, who recognized the potential impact of the testimony, posted it on Twitter the day before it was to be prominently displayed at the hearing, giving it additional attention.
It also served to bolster the investigative committee's finding that Eastman had unsuccessfully sought a presidential pardon.
Politico even wrote an article about the decorative objects seen on the wall during Herschmann's deposition.
Cheney's Prediction
Cheney's presentation of the committee's arguments at the start of its only prime-time session drew a lot of attention, as did advice that could outlast his political career.
Witnesses say Trump yelled at Pence and insulted him the morning before the Capitol assault
June 16, 202202:26
"Tonight, I say this to our fellow Republicans who defend the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but his dishonor will remain," he said.
A tweet from The Associated Press with the video of those words by Cheney has been seen by more than 1 million users.
[Committee Investigating Capitol Assault Says It Has Enough Evidence to Prosecute Trump]
Someday, depending on how history views the events of January 6, 2021, it could be the most remembered moment, such as when it was claimed during the Watergate investigation that John Dean had warned Richard Nixon of a "cancer in the presidency." Thompson said.
“I see it as a classic quote,” Thompson said.
Associated Press correspondent Arijeta Lajka in New York contributed to this report.
