During the latest hearings Tuesday of the January 6 committee hearings, there was an unlikely reference to Game of Thrones. 

The Tuesday hearing focused on the committee’s effort to tie former President Donald Trump's calls on Twitter for his supporters to come to Washington on January 6 to the responses of various extremist groups. The session even featured testimony from a man who participated in the Capitol riot himself. 

The committee then featured a montage of reactions to the tweet by various pro-Trump online personalities. One, known as “Salty Cracker,” stated that “you better understand something, son. … There’s gonna be a red wedding going down Jan. 6.” Rep. Jamie Raskin, a member of the committee, said afterward that “Red Wedding” was a “pop culture reference.”

Indeed, the “Red Wedding” was a shocking event in the third season of Game of Thrones. The Red Wedding was a massacre in which several major characters met their ends, including Robb Stark and Catelyn Stark. It’s a crucial event in the multi-season arc known as the War of Five Kings. That wasn’t the only time the famous series was referenced. Rudy Giuliani also made reference by calling for a “trial by combat,” as noted by HuffPost. 

The Tuesday edition of the hearing hinged largely on what Axios referred to as “the craziest meeting of the Trump presidency,” in which a group of advisers to the president—including former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and attorney Sidney Powell—pushed outlandish conspiracy theories, while White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and Senior Adviser Eric Herschmann forcefully argued with them. 

The hearing also heard evidence that there was great concern at Twitter that day about anticipated violence as a result of Trump’s tweet. Trump was banned from the social network after the riot. At the end of the hearing, Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney revealed that former President Trump had attempted to reach out to a witness to the committee. 

“After our last hearing, President Trump tried to call a witness in our investigation, a witness you have not yet seen in these hearings,” Cheney said at the end of the House select committee hearing on Tuesday. “That person declined to answer or respond to President Trump's call, and instead alerted their lawyer to the call. Their lawyer alerted us. And this committee has supplied that information to the Department of Justice,” she continued.

The committee’s next hearing, the eighth overall, will take place next week and will focus on what Trump knew during the events of January 6. 

Stephen Silver, a technology writer for The National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.

Image: Reuters