The testimony in a session of the House January 6 committee — a session abruptly called, reportedly due to concerns about Ms. Hutchinson’s safety — was devastating because it was directly about the former president. The day’s lone witness pulled back the curtain that countless advisers and aides kept around the mercurial Trump for four years. There are significant questions about aspects of her account, particularly where it involved hearsay — things she had been told about the president’s actions, as opposed to the things she herself witnessed. We also have to reserve judgment, even allowing that she seems impressive, because the highly partisan, unapologetically anti-Trump committee merely presents its side of the story, and has gone to unseemly lengths to exclude cross-examination and alternative perspectives. All in all, though, Hutchinson showed the nation, moment by moment, what he was like on a day when, undeniably, Trump was at his worst.

It was worse than America thought. Even Americans with extraordinarily low expectations about the former president’s previously undisclosed, behind-the-scenes behavior during the hours when the riot unfolded…

Trump, who had tweeted that his supporters should come for a “wild” time in Washington, manifestly knew things might get real, real bad. Instead of trying to stop it, he willfully exacerbated the problem — and would apparently have made it worse still if the Secret Service had not been courageously insubordinate.

That’s what we learned today. Things will not be the same after this.