Donald Trump was made fully aware that all of the stolen election nonsense was, in the words of his own attorney general, bullshit. Donald Trump told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,” and (after a big membership boost) they did. Donald Trump summoned the mob. The insurrection wasn’t a crowd that got out of control, it was a planned attack on American democracy. Although Mark Meadows tried to convince Gen. Mark Milley, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to pretend that Trump did something helpful during the attack, he never requested any assistance from the national guard or anyone else. Only Pence did. Speaking of Pence, when the attackers were chanting “Hang Mike Pence” Trump responded, “Maybe our supporters have the right idea.” We got many new details from night one of the January 6 hearings, but mostly we got confirmation of what we saw and heard ourselves. Peter Baker: “In the entire 246-year history of the United States, there was surely never a more damning indictment presented against an American president than outlined on Thursday night in a cavernous congressional hearing room, where the future of democracy felt on the line. Other presidents have been accused of wrongdoing, even high crimes and misdemeanors, but the case against Donald Trump mounted by the bipartisan House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol described not just a rogue president but a would-be autocrat willing to shred the Constitution to hang on to power at all costs.” There are plenty of leaders and journalists who have been describing Trump this way for years. My dad who lost his whole family in the Holocaust before crawling on his hands and knees into the Polish forest to join the Partisans and fight the Nazis warned me repeatedly during 2020 that Trump would never willingly leave office, regardless of the election results. Trump led a coup. His enablers are numerous. We have seditionists who are sitting senators. We learned last night that several members of Congress requested preemptive pardons from Trump (one wonders why). What you saw is what happened. Will Americans believe their own eyes? Will the doubters learn to love America more than they hate the other side? We’ll see. Trump Is Depicted as a Would-be Autocrat Willing to Hang Onto Power at All Costs.

+ NPR: New revelations and 3 other takeaways from the first Jan. 6 committee hearing.

+ CBS: 6 new things we learned from the first public Jan. 6 hearing.