Just as the Jan. 6 committee is poised to begin its first public hearings in primetime this week with promises of some “bombshells,” a new poll has found that the number of Americans who think that Donald Trump was responsible in any way for the Capitol riot is dropping.
In the new NBC poll, which was released on Monday, June 6, the percentage of Americans who say Trump was responsible for the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol has dropped to 45 percent.
About 17 percent of respondents said the former president is solely responsible for the rioting, while 28 percent say he is mainly responsible, according to the survey.
In the same poll taken in January 2021, 52 percent of respondents said Trump was responsible, with 28 percent saying he was solely responsible and 24 percent saying he was mainly responsible.
By comparison, the percentage of Americans in the new poll who say Trump was “not really” responsible for Jan. 6 grew to 35 percent, up from 29 percent in January 2021. About 20 percent of Americans now say he is somewhat responsible, up from 18 percent 18 months ago.
The findings come as the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot prepares for its first public hearing on the night of Thursday, June 9. Lawmakers are expected to present their findings to the public after collecting thousands of documents and conducting more than 1,000 interviews.
On Jan. 6, 2021, a mob of alleged Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn certification of the 2020 election, which the former president and his supporters continue to claim was stolen. The rioting came shortly after Trump held a rally, dubbed “Stop the Steal,” on the White House Ellipse.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a member of the House committee investigating the rioting, said Americans would, for the first time, get a look at a “comprehensive narrative” of the events leading up to Jan. 6.
“Our goal is to present the narrative of what happened in this country, how close we came to losing our democracy, what led to the violence,” Schiff told host Margaret Brennan on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
“Americans, I think, know a great deal already — they have seen a number of bombshells already, [but] there’s a great deal they haven’t seen,” the lawmaker continued. “But perhaps the most important is the public has not seen it woven together, how one thing led to another.”
Schiff was responding to a question from Brennan about whether the committee’s investigation would lose the public’s interest if they did not produce any “bombshells.”
Another recent poll, this one from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, shows the public is evenly divided on how much discussion should be centered on Jan. 6.
Fifty-two percent of Americans say they want to learn more about what happened that day, compared to 48 percent who say it is time to “move on.”
With polls like these clearly showing that America remains in a practically even split along party lines of what they believe or do not believe about January 6, it is doubtful that the primetime public hearings are going to change anybody’s minds.
Particularly as Americans are facing unbridled inflation, unprecedented gas prices, and no baby formula on store shelves, how interested anyone really is in rehashing the events of January 6 remains to be seen.
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