Prima facie?

The Capitol riot hearings have set out shocking evidence against Donald Trump - but in the key swing state of Wisconsin, Republicans aren't changing their views of the ex-president

- Chris McGreal WISCONSIN

Millions of Americans spent last Thursday evening stunned, appalled and amused by the season finale of the congressional hearings into the storming of the Capitol in the waning days of Donald Trump's presidency, and his part in the deadly insurrection.

The slickly planned primetime hearing showed Trump refusing to call off the insurgents for more than three hours as he watched Fox News coverage from the White House dining room on 6 January 2021. The House committee heard how secret service officers protecting the vice-president, Mike Pence, were telling their families they might not make it home alive.

Committee members said the evidence showed Trumplied, betrayed his oath of office and summoned a mob to Washington to try to overturn the presidential election. It was, said Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger, "a stain on our history".

But in the heart of Trump country, there's a different take. "I looked up kangaroo court," said Terri Burl, a Republican activist in rural northern Wisconsin, a key swing state that Trump won in 2016 but lost four years later. "I'm like: yes, that's exactly what this is. What's it supposed to prove?" Burl's loyalty to the former president - she was an early member of Women for Trump - has not been shaken by last Thursday's testimony from former Trump administration officials. She watched for almost an hour before giving up because she said that while "the violence and destruction these people perpetrated is not OK", the hearing was a one-sided attack on the former president rather than an attempt to get at the truth.

"There was an annoying and troubling Hollywood-movie look to these theatrical hearings, as if they're acting in a badly done B-list movie," she said.