Jamie Raskin

Do you want to know why the Dropkick Murphys are relevant to our primetime recap of the Jack Smith hearing tonight?

I'll tell you, the dropkick Murphys have been emphatically railing at Donald Trump throughout his second term.

They are as unrestrained in their criticism of the president as they are glorious in it.

And that may be the necessary context you need to understand why Michael Fanone, the former D.C.

police officer who defended our nation's capital on January 6th, showed up to today's hearing in an excellent Dropkick Murphys T-shirt, which says on the back of it, fighting Nazis since 1996.

That turned out to be a bit of foreshadowing for what would happen when the hearing went into a brief recess and a kerfuffle broke out in the audience.

It seemed to start when a notorious MAGA troll provocateur guy seemed to be trying to provoke Officer Fanone.

We can hear Officer Fanone there accusing the man of threatening his family and threatening to, quote, rape his children as fellow officers held him back.

You also might have heard some of the Democratic members of Congress there, including Becca Ballant from Vermont, sort of intervene and say shame to the man who was arguing and provoking Officer Fanone.

That man is an acolyte of Trump's former national security advisor, Mike Flynn.

He has helped push Trump's election conspiracies and lead up to January 6th.

When the hearing finally resumed, Republican Congressman Troy Nels decided he thought it would be a good idea to address directly and invoke the January 6th officers who were sitting in the room while he was defending the president who had sent the mob after them that day.

Once again, Officer Fanone was having none of it, and he let everybody in the room know using words that he sort of coughed and also some expressive hand gestures.

No matter how much Republicans try to rewrite the history of January 6th, they cannot ignore the fact that some of the police officers who risked their lives that day are right there in front of them, living, breathing people who will keep showing up to things like this, despite the fact that they apparently have no idea how to contend with that when it happens.

Our colleague Stephanie Ruhl has joined us.

Yeah.

And it's interesting.

You know, it's not just messaging.

It's not just discourse.

It's not just media.