Conservative Grounds co-owner Cliff Gephart won’t be watching Thursday night’s primetime televised congressional hearing on the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, labeling it as “political theater.”

“If somebody committed a crime they should suffer the consequences,” the Largo-based coffee shop entrepreneur said. “They shouldn’t suffer excessive consequences because of the optics of it. But they should suffer the consequences. But I think it’s just theater.”

Gephart was one of the tens of thousands of Donald Trump supporters who flew to Washington and heard the president speak at The Ellipse near the White House on January 6, 2021. But he said he did not enter the Capitol that day.

“You tell your kids, 'Don’t do something stupid if your friends do something stupid,'” he said. “Well, I saw something stupid happening and I left. Just like I told my kids, 'If your friends are doing dumb stuff, you need to leave.' So when I saw dumb stuff going on, I left. “

Gephart is best known in the Tampa Bay area as the co-owner of Conservative Grounds, the Donald Trump-themed coffee house in Largo that has become a gathering spot for local Trump supporters and others on the political right since it opened in 2020.

More than 800 people have been arrested in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol, including more than 250 people who have been charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement. Of those, 91 came from Florida.

Gephart said the violence that took place inside the Capitol marks a dark day in U.S. history, but he claims that there has been some hypocrisy in the media's coverage of that day, compared to the coverage of damage done to federal buildings that took place following the 2020 death of George Floyd.

“Why isn’t there a hearing on that?" he asked. "Why aren’t we talking about that?”

Polls show that the America public is divided when it comes to whether there has been too much or not enough attention to what happened on Jan. 6, and how much blame former President Trump deserves for the violence.

The Capitol riot delayed for several hours the process members of congress were using to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election.

Unlike some conservatives, Gephart said he isn’t reluctant to call the events of Jan. 6 “a dark day in American history.”

“You can’t be rational in thinking that was a good day, and I think that it did a complete injustice to America,” he said. “It set the Trump agenda back. It set the conservative agenda back. It was a terrible day.”

But in the next sentence he questions why the congressional hearings have continued on for months, and claims that it is indisputable that former President Trump has been dealt a bad hand when it comes to his media coverage. To make his point, Gephart quoted a 2017 Harvard University study of Trump's first 100 days in office, which reported that the tone of media coverage was 80% negative.

“They just gotta keep continuing on the anti-Trump, anti-Trump, anti-Trump thing because we have a midterm (election) coming up,” Gephart said.

While many conservatives say they have no intention of watching Thursday's Jan. 6 committee meeting, progressive affiliated organizations are hosting watch events to observe the hearing.

One such event will place tonight in St. Petersburg, at the Allendale United Methodist Church, co-hosted by a coalition of progressive organizations.

The House Select Committee on Jan. 6 attack is expected to hold more hearings in the coming weeks, with two already scheduled for 10 a.m. June 13 and 15.