On Monday, NBC News received results of their poll conducted last month. A major takeaway, as highlighted by NBC News "First Read," is that less Americans now blame former President Donald Trump for the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. The most selected single response is the 35 percent of Americans who say that Trump is "Not really responsible," while the least selected single response is the 17 percent who said Trump is "Solely responsible."
According to this most recent poll, 45 percent said Trump is either "Solely responsible" or "Mainly responsible," at 17 percent and 28 percent, respectively. When NBC News conducted such a poll in January 2021, not long after the incident, a small majority, at 52 percent, said Trump was "solely" or "mainly" responsible, at 28 percent and 24 percent respectively. It also shows that 55 percent of Americans say Trump is "Only somewhat responsible" or "Not really responsible," at 20 percent and 35 percent respectively.
The poll was conducted May 5-May 7 and May 9-May 10 with 1,000 adults. There's a margin of error of plus or minus 4.38 percentage points.
As NBC News pointed out about the poll's takeaways, this decrease in blaming Trump came across all political parties.
But first: It appears the House’s Jan. 6 committee has some work to do with the American public as it begins a new round of public hearings this week on its findings.
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The erosion in those holding Trump responsible for the attack has come across the board — among Democrats (who declined from 91 percent responsible in Jan. 2021 to 87 percent now), Republicans (11 percent to 9 percent) and independents (44 percent to 41 percent).
The takeaway from our poll: Time has been on Trump’s side. The question is whether the upcoming hearings can return public opinion to where it was in early 2021.
Or close to it.
The poll comes out days before the January 6 select committee will hold its first public hearing this week, which last month stunningly subpoenaed five fellow members of Congress. The five members, all Republicans, included House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (CA) and Reps. Andy Biggs (AZ), Mo Brooks (AL), Jim Jordan (OH), and Scott Perry (PA).
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Leader McCarthy and Rep. Jordan strongly condemned the select committee's abuse of power in an op-ed published for The Wall Street Journal, as I highlighted at the time. McCarthy's attorney also doubled down on calling out the lack of legitimacy that the select committee has in an 11-page letter.
A tweet from the select committee on May 27 claimed that Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), the committee's chairman, would "formally respond."
The refusal of these Members to cooperate is a continued assault on the rule of law and sets a dangerous new precedent that could hamper the House’s ability to conduct oversight in the future.
— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) May 27, 2022
Chairman @BennieGThompson will formally respond to these Members in the days ahead.
Also on Monday came the news that Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who sits on the select committee, claimed that they have found evidence Trump supports "a lot more than incitement."
As Mychael Schnell highlighted for The Hill:
Raskin on Monday told The Washington Post Live that this week’s hearing will “tell the story of a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election and block the transfer of power.”
Asked if Trump is at the center of that conspiracy, Raskin said “I think that Donald Trump and the White House were at the center of these events.”
“That’s the only way really of making sense of them all,” he added.
He noted, however, that “people are going to have to make judgments themselves about the relative role that different people played.”
It's worth noting that Raskin was caught up in controversy to do with the select committee in that last December he incorrectly attributed text messages to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows when entering them into the Congressional record.
Rep. Raskin himself also attempted to object to the Electoral College vote that was certifying the 2016 presidential election results for Trump in January 2017, something Raskin's office touted on his official website.
Liberals have been trying to get "#TrumpCoupAttempt" to trend on Monday, but many of the tweets have been mocking the trend.
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