Immediately following the first hour of Tuesday’s last minute bombshell testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, to the January 6th Committee, Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier said in no uncertain the revelations about Donald Trump’s actions on that day in 2021 were both “stunning” and “compe
“All of this is firsthand, so it’s from her listening to it,” Baier added. “That’s why it’s so compelling. And that’s perhaps why we had this hearing that popped out of nowhere.”
But just moments later, his fellow anchor Martha MacCallum seemed to undercut that characterization by dismissing the details about Trump’s demonstrably outrageous behavior as “not wholly out of character.”
ADVERTISEMENT
While MacCallum said that Hutchinson comes across as a “very credible” and seems to have a “great memory” for what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, she wasn’t quite sure that it tells the American people anything new about Trump.
“All of this is obviously riveting, it’s very dramatic, it was clearly a very difficult day for her and for all those who were involved and everybody who witnessed it,” she continued. “But the question is, in terms of the Department of Justice, does it move the ball at all on any legal action that they could pursue?”
When her colleague Sandra Smith recounted the story of Trump throwing his lunch plate against the wall in frustration after the Secret Service refused to let him to join the riots at the Capitol, complete with ketchup dripping down the wall, MacCallum said, “I’m not sure that it really shocks anybody that the president, just knowing what we’ve seen, observing him over the years if he got angry, that he might throw his lunch.”
While it’s a “very dramatic detail,” she said, “I’m not sure that any of this is wholly out of character with the Donald Trump and President Trump that people came to know over the years. And there’s a lot of people out there who obviously share his feelings of frustration over the course of those days.”
“The problem was that they couldn't back it up with anything in the courts and they couldn't back it up with evidence they produced,” she added. “That obviously was probably a source of deep frustration as well. Things were clearly not going his way.”
MacCallum did not say whether or not it was in “character” for Trump to grab the steering wheel from the backseat of his presidential limousine or “lunge towards” his head Secret Service agent’s throat, as Hutchinson also testified on Tuesday.
