I've done as much damage as my gender impels me in my life. I'm turning the country over to my daughter, to Caroline Edwards, Cassidy Hutchinson, Sarah Matthews, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Stacy Abrams, Liz Cheney, ALL BLACK WOMEN, et al, et al, et al.
In Jan. 6 Hearings, Gender Divide Has Been
Strong Undercurrent
An investigation that has revealed grave threats to democracy, plotted and carried out mostly by men, has a heavily female cast of narrators who have paid a public price for speaking out.
WASHINGTON — Before Sarah Matthews, a former deputy White House press secretary, even opened her mouth to testify on Thursday before the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, the House Republican Conference attacked her on Twitter as a “liar” and a “pawn” of Democrats.
The group did not mention the man seated beside her, Matthew Pottinger, the former deputy national security adviser, who was also there to issue a scathing indictment of President Donald J. Trump’s behavior on the day of the riot. Nor did Mr. Trump himself mention Mr. Pottinger when he lashed out hours later with a statement calling Ms. Matthews a fame-seeker who was “clearly lying.”
The contrast highlighted...the gender dynamics that have been a potent undercurrent.
...
Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the vice chairwoman of the panel — a woman who herself has suffered heavy consequences for her insistence on publicly condemning Mr. Trump’s conduct — has been explicit about the role of gender in the proceedings. She has positioned herself as the champion of the women who have agreed to testify in public...
At the committee’s prime-time hearing on Thursday, Ms. Cheney wore a white jacket, the color of the women’s suffrage movement. She invoked Margaret Thatcher, the first woman to serve as prime minister of Britain, and the fight by American women to secure the right to vote as she described the women who had publicly appeared during the panel’s investigation as “an inspiration to American women and American girls.”
She was referring to Ms. Matthews as well as Cassidy Hutchinson, another White House aide who appeared at one of the committee’s hearings; Caroline Edwards, a Capitol Police officer who testified about how she was assaulted by the rioters, sustained a concussion and continued to fight them off; and Wandrea Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, election workers from Georgia who told the panel about how they endured harassment and death threats after Mr. Trump named them in a false conspiracy theory about voter fraud.
The result has been that as the... mostly male crowd laying waste to the Capitol in Mr. Trump’s name, with the president looking on supportively from the West Wing — many of the witnesses who have emerged most prominently have been women, with Ms. Cheney as their defender.
It is a notable strategy by Ms. Cheney, a tough and hawkish conservative who throughout her career has worked to avoid being viewed through the lens of gender.
...
It was difficult not to hear some parallels when Ms. Cheney described on Thursday how Ms. Hutchinson, the 26-year-old former White House aide who became a critical public witness, knowingly exposed herself to harsh criticism from former colleagues. Ms. Cheney said that Ms. Hutchinson “knew all along that she would be attacked by President Trump and by the 50-, 60- and 70-year-old men who hide themselves behind executive privilege.”
“But like our witnesses today, she has courage and she did it anyway,” Ms. Cheney added.
After Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony, Mr. Trump dismissed her in an interview with Newsmax as “this girl” who was making up stories. “She’s got serious problems, let me put it that way,” he said. “Mental problems.”
-30-
