Cassidy Hutchinson: A Courageous American Patriot - Rob Horowitz

Tuesday, July 05, 2022

Rob Horowitz, MINDSETTER™

 

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Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testifying before Jan. 6 Commission

“Things will not be the same after this,” wrote Andrew McCarthy in National Review, accurately describing the impact of Cassidy Hutchinson’s recent televised appearance in front of the House January 6 select committee.   The conservative writer, Fox News contributor and noted legal expert, called the 26 years old, former aide to Mark Meadows’ testimony “devastating, because it was directly about the former president.” McCarthy noted that it provided evidence of Trump’s intent, upping his legal jeopardy.

One person who apparently agrees with Mr. McCarthy's analysis is the former president. He has spent the past week launching a series of vicious personal attacks on Cassidy Hutchinson.   Mr. Trump called Ms. Hutchinson a “whack job,” “bad news,” and a “social climber,” among other choice insults, while also professing to “hardly know her” in a series of posts on Truth Social and in a television interview on Newsmax.  His son, Don Jr. described her as the “coffee girl” in a tweet.

Poised and precise, Cassidy Hutchinson testified to witnessing first-hand former President Trump’s insistence that the Secret Service stop the use of magnetometers to detect weapons, so that people were let into his January 6th rally, even if they were armed.   "I don’t f-ing care that they have weapons,” exclaimed Mr. Trump, Ms. Hutchinson recounted. “They’re not here to hurt me. Take the f-ing mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here,"

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Among other damaging observations, Ms. Hutchinson added additional previously unknown details to the record of that day, rounding out the picture of the former president’s reckless indifference to the danger his vice-president and members of Congress were in as a result of the attack on the Capitol he incited and his corresponding refusal to take any action to stop it until several hours had passed.

In fact, as she pointed out, Donald Trump put his vice-president at even more risk by sending out a tweet attacking him after the Capitol was breached and the insurrection was underway.  “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify, Trump tweeted. “USA demands the truth!”    Cassidy Hutchinson communicated her disgust at this Tweet to the nation, calling it “un-patriotic” and “un-American.” She added, “We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie.”

The one misstep by the committee at the hearing was including Ms.Hutchinson’s second-hand testimony in which she reported that then Trump director of operations Tony Ornato told her that the former president was so irate about the Secret Service refusing to take him to the Capitol that he lunged for the steering wheel and the throat of one of the Secret Service agents.  While the agent is reportedly going to confirm that Trump was angry about not being able to go to the Capitol, he is also going to dispute the colorful details.   The salient issue in terms of establishing Trump’s intent that day is that contrary to denials by Mark Meadows and others, the former president did want to join the mob at the Capitol.  Airing that part of Hutchinson’s video testimony and asking her follow-up questions about it during the televised hearing without confirming it with the Secret Service, however, was a rare unforced error by the committee. It gave  Mr. Trump and his allies an opening to attack her credibility and distract at least a bit from the far more damaging first-hand directly witnessed parts of her testimony.

All in all, however, Cassidy Hutchinson, a committed and highly regarded young conservative, who interned for Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) before working at the White House, survived the vicious personal attacks with her credibility intact and with most of  her testimony, including the most damaging details, unrefuted.  As select committee vice-chair, Liz Cheney(R-WY) remarked during her well-covered speech at the Reagan library, delivered the evening following the hearing, “Her superiors – men many years older – a number of them are hiding behind executive privilege, anonymity and intimidation. But her bravery and patriotism yesterday were awesome to behold. Little girls all across this great nation are seeing what it really means to love this country and what it really means to be a patriot.”

Taken together, the 6 televised hearings conducted by the select committee in June --in which the overwhelming majority of the testimony has been provided by former Trump officials and state Republican officeholders, who resisted Trump’s pressure to overturn election results-- have effectively taken a sledge-hammer to the “Big Lie,” showcased the major components of Trump’s plan to cling to power, despite producing no evidence of widespread voter fraud, and hammered home his responsibility for inciting the violence on January 6, disrupting the peaceful transfer of power. 

In her speech at the Reagan library. Liz Cheney appropriately quoted the respected former Republican president on the centrality of the peaceful transfer of power: “No party and no people and no nation can defend and perpetuate a constitutional republic if they accept a leader who’s gone to war with the rule of law, with the democratic process, or with the peaceful transition of power, with the Constitution itself.”

In the wake of our celebration of Independence Day yesterday, marking the founding of this great republic, we must heed Reagan’s timeless words, which, unfortunately, are more relevant today than at any other time in our nearly 250-year history. It is also an apt time to honor Cassidy Hutchinson—a courageous American patriot.

Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits, businesses, and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island.


 

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