During an appearance on the always unhinged Deadline: White House hosted by MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace on Monday, Washington Post congressional investigations reporter Jackie Alemany almost blew her back out moving the goalpost for the Democrat-led January 6 Committee. Claiming the hearings and the point of the committee was never to prosecute a literal case against former President Donald Trump, but rather “to create a historic account” and “try this case in the court of public opinion.”
“At the end of the day, as we said a million times, the committee does not have a prosecutorial mandate. This is an explanatory process for them to create a historic account,” Alemany said, while others in the liberal media were saying just the opposite.
She acknowledged “Yes, they obviously are laying out the evidence in a prosecutorial way” but admitted it was all about getting certain Democratic policy proposals enacted. “[T]heir objective at the end of the day is to garner – to try this case in the court of public opinion and garner enough of a groundswell in support of potential legislative remedies that they're going to put forth,” she told Wallace.
This all stemmed from a question Wallace asked that was designed to tee up Alemany to spin the committee’s terrible ratings and celebrate the lie.
“Do you have any sense that that exceeded the committee's expectations for these hearings?” Wallace wondered. “They have been trying not to view this through the lens of ratings,” Alemany began to answer before admitting: “Obviously, that's a little bit hard to believe now that we know that they hired a former news executive and when you look at the actual size of the production staff.”
Adding: “We never got an explicit number laid out from them, but I get the feeling that the committee has been pleased so far with the way that this has penetrated and gotten through to the American people.”
She went on to suggest that the true victory would be that an amount (any amount really) of Trump supporters would be watching the hearings:
I mean, we – at the end of the day even if we're not talking about this through the lens of it being a media reporter, a huge portion of the committee's success is contingent on the fact that a sliver, a swath of the American public who believes that January 6 did not happen might tune in and that – that these lawmakers might be able to change their minds.
And after moving the goalpost, Alemany asserted that getting those supposedly good ratings were just icing on the cake. “Getting those ratings is definitely a plus for lawmakers whether or not, you know, they want to say that explicitly. And it's something that they have been concerned about from the very start,” she said.
And she concluded by touting how the committee was able to use the media and get their message across:
There are a bunch of elderly millennial lawmakers on the panel who are well aware of the fragmented way the media works these days, they want to be able to break through and have these sticky sound bites for people to replay and share on social media. And you know, for all of the – the blowback that they got for scheduling something in prime time, I actually think it really worked to their advantage.
This goalpost moving was made possible because of lucrative sponsorships from 4imprint and Progressive. Their contact information is linked
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
MSNBC’s Deadline: White House
June 13, 2022
4:33:32 p.m. Eastern(…)
NICOLLE WALLACE: Jackie, I want to come back to news that -- about the ratings that I mentioned and questioned to Neal earlier. I mean, 19 million people watched. Do you have any sense that that exceeded the committee's expectations for these hearings?
JACKIE ALEMANY: They have been trying not to view this through the lens of ratings. Obviously, that's a little bit hard to believe now that we know that they hired a former news executive and when you look at the actual size of the production staff. We -- we never got an explicit number laid out from them, but I get the feeling that committee has been pleased so far with the way that this has penetrated and gotten through to the American people.
I mean, we – at the end of the day even if we're not talking about this through the lens of it being a media reporter, a huge portion of the committee's success is contingent on the fact that a sliver, a swath of the American public who believes that January 6 did not happen might tune in and that – that these lawmakers might be able to change their minds.
At the end of the day, as we said a million times, the committee does not have a prosecutorial mandate. This is an explanatory process for them to create a historic account. Yes, they obviously are laying out the evidence in a prosecutorial way, but really, their objective at the end of the day is to garner – to try this case in the court of public opinion and garner enough of a groundswell in support of potential legislative remedies that they're going to put forth.
So getting those ratings is definitely a plus for lawmakers whether or not, you know, they want to say that explicitly. And it's something that they have been concerned about from the very start. These –There are a bunch of elderly millennial lawmakers on the panel who are well aware of the fragmented way the media works these days, they want to be able to break through and have these sticky sound bites for people to replay and share on social media. And you know, for all of the – the blowback that they got for scheduling something in prime time, I actually think it really worked to their advantage.
(…)
