From The NY Times: In the most basic sense, any legal arguments seeking to get Mr. Trump off the hook would merely need to be weighty enough to produce two and a half months of litigation. If Republicans pick up enough seats in the midterm elections to take over the House in January, as polls suggest is likely, they are virtually certain to shut down the Jan. 6 committee, a move that would invalidate the subpoena. NY Times
A few words (my bold) in The New York Times subtitle ("If the ex-president turns down the drama of testifying, his legal team could mount several constitutional and procedural arguments in court") of all that I've seen, comes the closest to addressing my speculation though there's nothing about it in the article itself.
The photo they used does suggest how much Trump likes to have the spotlight on him.
I am stuck on this subject because it seems that anybody with a public forum is saying Trump will wait out the clock hoping that the GOP takes control of the House in January and dissolves the J6 Committee.
This presupposes he doesn't want to have the ginormous megaphone which such testifying would give him as long as the Committee acceded to his demand that his appearance be televised live. I am hearing that he could end up testifying for two or three days.
Accepting the subpoena and testifying live would make must-see television for both his cult who want to see him make fools of his interrogators and those who want to see the J6 Committee members and their lawyers eviscerate him.
He does have another option, albeit a lesser one, aside from insisting his testimony be live.
What Steve Bannon did after his trial, which wasn't televised, gives him another way to gain public attention.
Steve Bannon is a boisterous buffoon and I doubt many hardcore Trumpers take him all that seriously. Some may even wonder why Trump allows himself to have his photo taken with him, even when it looks like he's holding his breath so as not to inhale the noxious fumes I can imagine emanating from the man who looks like he hasn't bathed in a week.Click above to enlarge |
Trump could decide that he could testify behind closed doors because he knows that he'd have the opportunity to say anything he wanted and have his remarks (or rant) televised on every station afterwards.
Bannon took only a few minutes but Trump could go on like he does at his rallies for as long as he wanted to. He knows that networks, even Fox News, have stopped broadcasting his rallies. I am sure Trump misses this. Each network just broadcasts what they think are newsworthy snippets.
Trump may not be willing to admit it to himself, at least not fully, but at some level I think he knows he needs to revamp his act because his performance has gotten stale to all but his most loyal cult members.
If he made a speech after testifying in private I think it would be covered, if not in its entirety, for a long time on most networks. I can see MSNBC and other stations cutting away if and when he starts repeating himself and lapses into an unhinged string of lies and grievances.
Regardless, he would be able to star in his own show without being interrupted by pesky interrogators and, like Bannon did, he'd refuse to take questions from reporters
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