In a properly functioning political system, these facts would surely disqualify Trump from holding any public office again, let alone the Presidency. But, at his second impeachment trial, in February, 2021, forty-three Republican senators prevented the two-thirds conviction vote that would have put him out to pasture. So here we are, eighteen months later, with the coup plotter indicating that he intends to run again in 2024, and suggesting he might even declare before the November midterms. If the Justice Department does eventually charge him, and a court convicts him, that wouldn’t prevent him from running, legal experts say.

Yet, even among Republican voters, the televised hearings, with their relentless drip-drip of damaging details, have certainly had some impact, surveys show. A Reuters/Ipsos poll that was completed just before the latest hearing indicated that forty per cent of self-identified Republicans now believe Trump was at least partly to blame for the Capitol Hill violence, up from thirty-three per cent before the hearings began. During the same period, the proportion of Republicans who say they think Trump shouldn’t run again has risen from a quarter to a third, the poll showed.