When TV writers want to ante up the suspense, they craft a series of dramatic moments known as “beats.” What we’ve seen in the summer of ’22 is that beats can pack a punch in non-fiction as well. There’s no need to make things up when so many beats abound. As evidence, I submit for your approval this season’s Treason finale.
For starters, it helps that if you’re gonna expose a detestable gang of Republicans, you do it with a Republican cast of protagonists. And of course you need a central villain – in this case, a lunatic with fascist impulses who makes Hannibal Lechter look like a vegetarian, someone who’s jonesing to gnaw the flesh off the Constitution and wash it down with a bottle of Chianti.
I’ve already written at length that the Jan. 6 committee has gift-wrapped Donald Trump for a federal prosecution, so I need not revisit that theme. What held my attention last night, and will sustain me until the hearings resume in September (Liz Cheney said “the dam has begun to break”), were all the dramatic beats that powered the narrative for nearly three hours. For instance:
* The video outtakes of Trump trying to mouth a statement on Jan. 7, the day after he got people killed and maimed at the Capitol. Turned out, he couldn’t read what his speechwriters had written for him. He couldn’t bring himself to admit that the ’20 election was over: “I don’t want to say the election is over!” And he couldn’t bring himself to admit that his rabble “broke the law.” He excised those words, too.
* The text that his ’20 campaign communications director, Tim Murtaugh, sent to a colleague after Trump refused to mention the death of Capitol cop Brian Sicknick. We read it for ourselves on the TV screen: “If he acknowledged the dead cop, he’d be implicitly faulting the mob. And he won’t do that because they’re his people. And he’d also be close to acknowledging that what he’d lit at the (earlier) rally got out of control. No way he acknowledges something that could ultimately be called his fault. No way.”
* The panicked radio transmissions of Mike Pence’s security detail, freaking out that the rampaging mob – stoked anew by Der Leader’s 2:24 pm tweet targeting Pence – was rapidly cutting off all avenues of escape.
* The testimony of an anonymous White House security professional – anonymous, because he or she fears retaliation – appearing in cartoon silhouette with his or her voice altered, like a mob witness in a 60 Minutes segment. This person revealed that Pence’s security people were reaching out to say goodbye to their families, in anticipation of being killed by the domestic terrorists – much like the plane passengers on 9/11 who phoned family members when faced with foreign terrorists.
* The comic relief of fascist fellow traveler Josh Hawley flashing a raised fist to the rabble in the morning, then shown on video in the afternoon fleeing for his life.
* The spectacle of Trump breaking bad in the White House dining room, sitting on his ass for hours watching the mayhem on Fox News, still making phone calls to Republican senators in the last-ditch hope of gumming up the ceremonial electoral-count machinery, while even his dolt son, Don Jr., was frantically texting Mark Meadows that daddy needed “to condemn this shit.”
* The sick hilarity of Trump reaching out to one of his most compliant doormats, Senator Tommy Tuberville, only to learn that the ole football coach was fixing to do a 100-yard dash. We all heard Tommy tell the tale: “He called…and I basically told him, I said, ‘Mr. President, we’re not doing much work here right now because they just took our vice president out. And matter of fact, I’m going to hang up on you, I’ve got to leave.'”
* The recorded outrage of General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about Trump’s inertia during the violence: “You’re the commander in chief, you’ve got an assault going on on the Capitol…and there’s nothing?! No call? Nothing? Zero?”
* The grand thematic summation by Liz Cheney, because a season finale requires one. She focused on Don’s biggest con, the exploitation of his own supporters: “He is preying on their patriotism. He is preying on their sense of justice. On Jan. 6, Donald Trump turned their love of country into a weapon against our Capitol and our Constitution…Can a president who was willing to make the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of Jan. 6 ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again?”
Ah, there it was. Liz knows that her House seat is probably doomed in ’22, Wyoming being the way it is, so she’s urging Republicans to break the evil spell in ’24. Fortunately, there will be new evidence, and new beats, in Treason Season Two. She signed off with “See you in September.”
It’s a be there.