Trump claims Jan 6 hearing postponed over lack of interest despite 20m+ people watching premiere

Donald Trump bizarrely claimed on Tuesday that the January 6 committee was postponing a hearing and changing course after not seeing the viewership that lawmakers had hoped for despite news that the panel’s first public meeting last week rivaled some Sunday Night Football events in terms of ratings.

The ex-president’s theory came in the form of a “Truth” from his new Truth Social platform, which the president has vowed to remain on even if he is readmitted to Facebook and Twitter, where he remains banned.

“Word out that the reason the Unselects have canceled Wednesday’s Kangaroo Court is a total lack of interest leading to very poor television ratings,” the president claimed.

He went on to add: “Maybe they should try getting a more talented Hollywood producer than the former president of ABC Fake News,” referring to the work of ex-ABC News president James Goldston to assist the committee in the production aspects of its hearings.

Mr Trump’s claim flew in the face of the reality that the primetime debut of the Jan 6 panel’s investigation drew a historic audience for a Capitol Hill committee meeting, with more than 20 million watching across all news channels and many more likely watching online. Full viewership numbers rivaled such major entertainment events as Sunday Night Football and nearly double the total viewership of Game 1 of the 2021 World Series.

But Mr Trump’s longtime obsession with TV ratings, particularly in the cable news sphere, is no secret and his concerns with the number of people watching evidence of his campaign’s efforts to overturn the election are likely very real as the former Apprentice star publicly mulls another bid for the White House in 2024.

In a second “Truth”, Mr Trump went on to viciously attack Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who is attempting to battle off a surging Trump-backed primary opponent as she continues to serve as vice chair of the January 6 investigatory committee.

Calling the congresswoman “angry and sick”, Mr Trump claimed that Ms Cheney “[l]oves sending our troops to fight and die in countries that don’t even want us to be there”, a clear reference to both her own hawkish stances and the work of her father, Dick Cheney, as an architect of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Republican efforts to offer “counter-programming” to the January 6 hearings have been undermined by the massive media and public interest in new footage and testimony released by the committee, including promises by committee leadership to reveal the names of GOP members of Congress who sought pardons after the Jan 6 attack on Capitol Hill.

Mr Trump’s own family has taken center stage in the past two hearings, causing personal embarassment for Mr Trump as he was subjected to millions of Americans seeing for the first time his eldest daughter Ivanka Trump publicly cast doubt on his long-held falsehoods about the 2020 election.