Percentage of Americans who say Trump was responsible for Jan. 6 drops: poll

The percentage of Americans who say former President Trump was responsible for the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol dropped to 45 percent in an NBC News poll released on Monday.

About 17 percent of respondents said the former president is solely responsible for the rioting, while 28 percent say he is mainly responsible, according to the survey.

In January 2021, 52 percent of respondents said Trump was responsible, with 28 percent saying he was solely responsible and 24 percent saying he was mainly responsible.

By comparison, the percentage of Americans in the new poll who say Trump was “not really” responsible for Jan. 6 grew to 35 percent, up from 29 percent in January 2021. About 20 percent of Americans now say he is somewhat responsible, up from 18 percent 18 months ago.

The findings come as the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot prepares for its first public hearing Thursday night. Lawmakers are expected to present their findings to the public after collecting thousands of documents and conducting more than 1,000 interviews.

On Jan. 6, 2021, a mob of Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn certification of the 2020 election, which the former president and his supporters continue to claim, without evidence, was stolen. The rioting came shortly after Trump held a rally, dubbed “Stop the Steal,” on the White House Ellipse.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a member of the House committee investigating the rioting, on Sunday said Americans would for the first time get a look at a “comprehensive narrative” of the events leading up to Jan. 6.

“Our goal is to present the narrative of what happened in this country, how close we came to losing our democracy, what led to the violence,” Schiff told host Margaret Brennan on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“Americans, I think, know a great deal already — they have seen a number of bombshells already, [but] there’s a great deal they haven’t seen,” the lawmaker continued. “But perhaps the most important is the public has not seen it woven together, how one thing led to another.”

Schiff was responding to a question from Brennan about whether the committee’s investigation would lose the public’s interest if they did not produce any “bombshells.”

The committee has taken the 8 p.m. prime-time slot on Thursday to present its findings, hoping they can use the popular cable time to present a captivating case for Americans.

While most of what lawmakers have gathered is private, the public has already learned through the committee there was a seven-hour gap in Trump’s phone call logs on Jan. 6, when people were asking him to quell the rioting, and that Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, had pushed to invalidate the 2020 election.

But a recent poll from the University of Massachusetts Amherst shows the public is evenly divided on how much discussion should be centered on Jan. 6.

Fifty-two percent of Americans say they want to learn more about what happened that day, compared to 48 percent who say it is time to “move on.”

Trump and his supporters, despite continuing to claim the 2020 election was rigged, have moved on from the Jan. 6 rioting, accusing Democrats of using the event as a political tool against the GOP. Several former Trump aides have avoided sitting for depositions, resulting in the Department of Justice charging Peter Navarro and Stephen Bannon with contempt of Congress.

The Justice Department also continues to vigorously prosecute the rioters involved in Jan. 6, with more than 800 charged in connection to the Capitol attack.

The NBC News poll was conducted from May 5 to May 7 and May 9 to May 10 among 1,000 U.S. adults. The margin of error is 3 percentage points.