The Capitol riots investigations tell a shocking tale – but will it do Biden much good?

No serving president has ever wondered aloud whether their vice president should be hanged, as the evidence shows Donald Trump said about Mike Pence on 6 January 2021. But will such revelations turn voters against the Republicans in significant numbers, asks Sean O’Grady

Rioters try to break through a police barrier on 6 January 2021 (AP)

Some political pairings are happier than others. Joe Biden was a loyal vice president to Barack Obama, and the pair came to respect and even love each other. In return, Obama became a supportive ex-president after Biden’s election. Bill Clinton and Al Gore also worked well as a team. Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale was a match made in heaven. By contrast, Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon, Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, and Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush were not such close brothers in arms. Franklin Roosevelt disliked at least one of his vice presidents so much that he had him thrown off the ticket, in favour of Harry S Truman (a wise choice as it turned out). But no serving president has ever wondered out loud whether their vice president should be hanged, as the evidence shows Donald Trump said about Mike Pence on 6 January 2021.

That day was always bound to live in infamy, but the compilation of video and other evidence presented by congresswoman Liz Cheney on behalf of the congressional hearing on the attempted insurrection has reminded Americans just how close they came to a coup, and the assassination of the vice president of the United States in the Capitol itself by a baying mob believing itself, with good reason, to be acting on the wishes of the president. It is dizzying, fantastical stuff… but will it matter?

It will certainly help President Biden and the Democrats in the upcoming mid-term elections, with control of Congress at stake, and looking further out, in the 2024 presidential contest. Even now, the 45th president is still associated with, and a major influence on, the Republican Party, and many candidates acutely seek out a Trump endorsement by ritual obeisance at Mar-a-Lago. The Trump “brand” will be more strongly associated with violence and extremism up to and including treason against the constitution. For the extremists who follow him devotedly that’s not a problem, and the likes of the Proud Boys will remain unrepentant. However, for other “independent”, floating voters, moderate Republicans and especially women, the sight of a mob storming the Capitol and attacking the police is an unforgivable one.

There is also a schism opening up even within the Trump circle. His former Attorney General, for example, has denounced Trump’s claims that he won the 2020 election, and it is so bad that Ivanka Trump has also implicitly criticised her father (though her husband Jared Kushner is more loyal).

At the very least, then, the evidence presented by the Congressional investigation is hardly enhancing former President Trump’s reputation and, by extension, his vocal fans in the Republican Party. On the other hand, as one former Trump staffer (and not a fan) puts it, they’d rather have Trump’s insurrection than Biden’s inflation. Fuel prices in particular are distressing Americans, and they understandably worry about their standard of living, crime, migration and the prospect of confrontation with Russia, among other issues.

However ugly 6 January seems, the fact remains that President Biden’s satisfaction rating is close to its lowest point in his term so far. It bounced back by six percentage points this week to 42 per cent, perhaps driven by the war in Ukraine. Yet some 52 per cent of Americans disapprove of Biden’s performance, and his ratings have been below 50 per cent since last August, around the time of the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Even an appearance by Mike Pence at the congressional hearings reacting to his former chief’s reported desire to see him strung up by the Proud Boys probably won’t help Biden hang on to his precarious hold on Congress. That, in turn, will mean he will be able to do relatively little on the domestic front where the political danger is so potent. What happened on 6 January won’t change that.