‘US democracy will not survive for long’: how January 6 hearings plot a roadmap to autocracy

Trump's efforts to subvert the elections laid bare the system's weaknesses, exposing it to greater exploitation

They promised the January 6 hearings would blow the roof off the house", presenting America with the truth about Donald Trump's attack on democracy culminating in the US Capitol insurrection. In the end, the roof of the House, where the summer season of hearings reached their finale on Thursday night, remained intact, though mightily shaken.

It will take time for historians to assess whether the eight public sessions were comparable to the 1973 Watergate hearings, as Jamie Raskin, a Democratic member of the January 6 committee, predicted. Yet it's already clear that after 19 hours and 11 minutes of testimony, filmed depositions, documentary evidence and raw footage of the Capitol attack the hearings have generated a mountain of words and images that will linger long in the collective memory.