2 conservative news sites have sharply criticized Trump following Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony

• The Washington Examiner slammed Trump in an editorial on Wednesday, calling him a "disgrace."
• A National Review columnist wrote that Trump "willfully exacerbated the problem" on January 6.

Two prominent conservative news sites have published columns or editorials speaking out against former President Donald Trump, with one calling him "unfit for power" and the other saying he "willfully exacerbated the problem" on January 6, 2021.

The pieces came after Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, testified during a surprise hearing on Tuesday about the former president's behavior in the days leading up to and during the Capitol riot.

Reaction to Hutchinson's testimony, the Washington Examiner published an editorial Wednesday stating that Trump is "unfit to be anywhere near power again" and called him a "disgrace." It also urged Republican voters not to support him in the 2024 presidential elections.

Meanwhile, the National Review's Andrew C. McCarthy published a column analyzing Hutchinson's testimony, writing that "things will not be the same after this."

"And Trump, who had tweeted that his supporters should come for a 'wild' time in Washington, manifestly knew things might get real, real bad," McCarthy wrote. "Instead of trying to stop it, he willfully exacerbated the problem — and would apparently have made it worse still if the Secret Service had not been courageously insubordinate."

Hutchinson had detailed under oath how Trump raged at his "Stop the Steal" rally on January 6 that security was confiscating weapons, telling staff that his supporters were "not here to hurt me."

She said he insisted on marching with protestors to the Capitol and that she was told by security staff that Trump had an altercation with a Secret Service driver who refused to take him there.

Hutchinson's testimony was the first time a Trump staff member privy to his inner circle's deliberations publicly tied him to the attack.

In another opinion piece published Wednesday, the Washington Examiner's senior columnist Timothy P. Carney wrote that Trump's insistence on allowing armed supporters to attend his rally demonstrated "how unfit former President Donald Trump is for office."

"A good shepherd, upon learning that his flock had arrived armed, would have tried to defuse the situation," Carney wrote. "For starters, he would have cared for his followers' safety."

Outlets defend Hutchinson's testimony

While Trump and his supporters have derided Hutchinson's testimony as lies or hearsay, the Examiner wrote in its editorial that her "resume alone should establish her credibility" and acknowledged that she had "already worked at the highest levels of conservative Republican politics."

"Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson's Tuesday testimony ought to ring the death knell for former President Donald Trump's political career," the editorial reads.

"She did not overstate things, did not seem to be seeking attention, and was very precise about how and why she knew what she related and about which testimony was firsthand and which was secondhand but able to be corroborated," the editorial continued.

The Examiner called Hutchinson's testimony "disturbing," highlighting that it was "distressing to hear" her account of how Trump would throw tantrums at the dining table and send condiments and food flying.

Notably, the Examiner also published editorials criticizing Hutchinson's testimony, such as an opinion piece by Esther Wickham, which said the former aide was "simply regurgitating what she thought other people said."

McCarthy's column was also critical of the January 6 panel and its investigation. It criticized the committee — comprising seven Democrats and two Republicans — for being "highly partisan" and called its process "maddeningly opaque" for keeping testimony from hundreds of people under wraps.

While Hutchinson wasn't cross-examined during her testimony, McCarthy wrote that it didn't mean the evidence she presented was dismissable merely because they wished it to be false or "because we don't like the Democrats or the committee process."

"When we say the committee lacks due-process legitimacy, that means it lacks legitimacy as an 'ultimate finder of fact,'" McCarthy wrote. "It does not mean that we can blithely dismiss any evidence the committee discloses."

He noted that if Hutchinson had intended to lie or exaggerate, it would have been strange for her to voluntarily identify many witnesses who could refute her testimony.

McCarthy wrote that while some details of Hutchinson's testimony could be labeled hearsay, he added that "we're talking here about chain of command, where government officials are expected to report things to their superiors."

"Hutchinson showed the nation, moment by moment, what he was like on a day when, undeniably, Trump was at his worst," he wrote.