Donald Trump did not want to end the storming of the Capitol - the committee of the House of Representatives meticulously retraced on Thursday how the disaster on January 6, 2021 had played out.
Witnesses close to the then president described how Trump watched the riots on television, how he did not call for help from security forces or the military.
This eighth day of hearings was intended to show in minute detail that an attempted coup was underway for which Trump was partly responsible.
MEPs asked their questions again in prime time.
The Democrats hope to make as many people as possible aware of the seriousness of the situation.
While many Republicans downplay the significance of January 6, some experts see the attack as an attack on democracy embedded in a broader strategy by the country's right-wing forces.
Didi Kuo, a political scientist at Stanford, recognizes the "global pattern of threats to democracy" that can currently be observed in many parts of the world.
This was not an isolated event
Thursday's attention was focused on Donald Trump.
But the hearings show that American democracy was not dealing with a single aggressive event when hundreds of men and women stormed the Capitol on January 6th.
Back in June, retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig told the committee that American democracy was “nearly stolen.”
Luttig, a right-wing conservative admired by many Republicans, described Jan. 6 as part of a "war" on democracy.
The lawyer had also advised former Vice President Mike Pence when Trump wanted to pressure him: Any attempt to formally reject the November 2020 election results afterwards would prove to be a violation of the constitution.
Luttig, like other witnesses, told the committee that anti-democratic forces were taking strategic action in the country.
The situation described by many observers as a "split" is rather an attempt by one side to weaken and ultimately overturn the system.
Demographically speaking, this would mean that the Republicans would be ruled by a minority – their voters' share of the population would be declining.
This "minority rule" can only be achieved if the institutions are permanently weakened, as explained by civil war researcher Barbara F. Walter.
January 6 was certainly the most violent attempt, but not the only one; it was embedded in the Republicans' strategies that had been going on for decades.
Walter counts the filling of the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary with right-wing conservative judges, the curtailment of the right to vote while at the same time reorganizing constituencies, the so-called gerrymandering, the dismantling of federal political control mechanisms as well as the weakening of the public school system in favor of private institutions.