Notably, most of the committee’s witnesses against the former president are or were members of Team Trump or the GOP. Look at them, the committee is saying—there is a way out. Trump, according to Representative Liz Cheney, the committee’s Republican vice chair, was advised by an “apparently inebriated” Rudy Giuliani. This description, based on the accounts of Trump-campaign figures, isn’t idle gossip, but is meant to humiliate Trump, make him seem like a puppet of the unhinged and reckless. Run away from that guy! Trump is also betrayed by his daughter Ivanka, who in videotaped testimony looks deflated and pale as she sides with the forces telling Trump to stop his madness. The implication is clear: If his own daughter isn’t with him, why should you be?

The former president’s critics may rightly ask why neither she nor Barr spoke up in the moment. But longtime Trump skeptics aren’t the committee’s target audience. The message to his remaining supporters is: Trump has peaked. His best days are behind him. You won’t be the first to take the off-ramp, but you don’t want to be the last.

Instead of subscribing to Trump’s stolen-election fantasies, Republicans can join Team Normal, the term used by the former campaign manager Bill Stepien to describe those who were not instigating violence. If these former Trump loyalists can reject the lies, the committee is effectively telling his current followers, then so can you. And by the way, there was no honor among Trump’s abettors; the committee has evidence, one of its two Republican members has said, that GOP politicians who may have been involved with coordinating the January 6 effort had sought pardons, leaving everybody else exposed to prosecution.