TRUMP SUPORTERS THINK THE INSURRECTION ON JAN. 6^th WAS NO BIG DEAL

 

                                   The “delusional” Senator, Ron Johnson (R-Wis)

 

GOP elected officials seek to re-write the story of January 6^th.

 

Six weeks after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, some Republicans are taking advantage of American’s fading memories to portray the riot in a different, more benign light.  The effort comes as federal authorities begin prosecuting scores of alleged rioters.  Congressional committees seek to plug obvious security failures, and lawmakers consider establishing an outside commission to examine the matter.

On his top-rated Fox News program, host Tucker Carlson told his audience that the attack “Did not constitute an armed insurrection.”  And he accused Democrats of, “A relentless and coordinated campaign to misrepresent the riot.”

During the first public appearance of top Capitol security officials at a hearing, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) spent much of his allotted time reading an account from Jan. 6 suggesting the violence was perpetrated by “a small group of left-wing extremists, who were out of character in an otherwise jovial crowd.”

Scores of Republican lawmakers have criticized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and other Democrats for maintaining a razor-wire perimeter for blocks around the Capitol.  The Republicans are saying it was more about sending a political message than real security.  This is even as the acting Chief of the Capitol Police described receiving ongoing threats to lawmakers.

“I don’t think there’s any question that the Democrats never want to let an opportunity go to waste to try to attack conservatives, and so they want to try to besmirch, smear, demean all conservatives in the name of a handful of people who did the wrong thing on Jan. 6.”  This bazaar statement was made by Rep. Bob Good (R-VA).

The campaign to deny the events of Jan. 6 has been weeks in the making.  This is along with efforts to muddy the waters about what happened and who participated, taking shape on pro-Trump television networks.  All this, while the rioters were still on the grounds of the Capitol.

On the afternoon of Jan. 6, MyPillow CEO, Mike Lindell, who has said he spent $450,000 on rallies contesting the results of the election.  He appeared on the Trump supporter TV station Newsmax, and they made a baseless claim that would set the tone for other early efforts by the conservatives in media to deflect blame for the violence.

“There were probably some undercover Antifa people that dressed as Trump people,” Lindell said.  A claim that went totally unchallenged, if not supported, by Newsmax host, Chris Salcedo.  Later in the day, Newsmax’s star host, Greg Kelly, offered a conspiracy theory, asking hypothetically, “Did someone want this to happen?”

By the evening of Jan. 6, the most influential voices on the Fox News Channel also seemed to latch onto the theory that outside agitators could have been responsible for the violence.  This was with unfounded reports blaming Antifa and leftist radicals exploding on social media networks.  All without any proof.

“I have never seen Trump rally attendees wearing helmets, black helmets, brown helmets, black backpacks, the uniforms you saw in some of these crowd shots,” host Laura Ingraham said.  

My comment is, “So what?  Those attending Trump rallies weren’t out to execute lawmakers like those at the Capitol Riots.”

Those narratives, blaming leftists and excusing Trump, they quickly gained traction among many Republicans.  A January poll conducted by the highly conservative American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life found that half of Republicans agreed with the assessment that antifa was “mostly responsible” for the Capitol attack.  Only 15% of Republicans blamed Trump for inciting the invasion.  Another January survey, conducted by The Washington Post and ABC News, found that 56% of Republicans held Trump totally blameless for the riot.

In fact, only one of the roughly 300 rioters charged by federal authorities is alleged in public court documents to have ties to any radical left-wing groups.  Instead, many have said that they have close links to right-wing extremist organizations such as the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, and many more said they believed they “were following Trump’s orders when they stormed the Capitol.”

Charlie Sykes, a former conservative radio host who founded the Bulwark, which is an anti-Trump conservative website.  He said the right-wing media system “is building elaborate alternative narratives around scant data points.”  “They will always find a way to adapt reality to the narrative, even when it requires some pretty massive leaps of logic and fact,” Sykes said. “The further you get away from Jan. 6, the more it gets possible to say, ‘Well, it wasn’t that bad,’ or, ‘It wasn’t really an armed insurrection.’ . . .­ It feels like this massive psychological manipulation that assumes that we have really short memories, and, in some cases, that is true.”

Democrats have responded to the campaign by blasting any attempts to minimize the insurrection, urging vigilance against future violence from the political right and calling for more investigations of the attacks.  This includes investigating Trump’s actual role.  Negotiations continue on Capitol Hill over creating an outside commission, but a proposal from Pelosi that could probably stack the commission with Democratic appointees has obviously encountered strong GOP opposition.

The day after Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis) aired the false account that placed “agents-provocateurs” and “fake Trump protesters” on the scene before the riot, Senate Majority Leader Charles (Chuck) Schumer (D-N.Y.) called that suggestion “mindless garbage” and part of a “campaign of misinformation, deception and conspiracy that helped fuel the attack on January 6th in the first place.”

Several lines of pointed questioning have emerged among Republicans who are eager to deflect attention from Trump’s central role in stoking the fundamental motive for the riot.  This includes Trump’s false claim that the November election was stolen from him.

Among the most pervasive claim has been an effort to question whether Pelosi was responsible for the violence by failing to properly prepare the Capitol campus.  This push has been fueled in part by a claim from former Capitol Police Chief, Steven Sund, that one of his bosses, House Sergeant-at-Arms, Paul Irving, told him he had to “run a request for National Guard assistance up the chain of command” before approving it.

On Feb. 15, four senior House Republicans sent a letter pressing Pelosi for answers, and the concern was quickly echoed on conservative media channels.  On Sean Hannity’s prime time show that night, Fox News contributor and former congressman Jason Chaffetz said that Pelosi “is running out of excuses.”  Two days later, Fox News host, Maria Bartiromo speculated that Democrats sidestepped witnesses at Trump’s second impeachment trial because “somebody was going to ask Nancy Pelosi what she knew and when.”

Efforts to pin the blame on Pelosi were “one of the very few and clear pieces of misinformation about Jan. 6 that cut across the entire right-wing media echo chamber,” said Angelo Carusone, president of the media watchdog Media Matters for America. “They were all singing from the same page.”

At the hearing Tuesday, senators including Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who backed Trump’s challenges to state electoral vote counts, pressed Sergeant-at-Arms Irving, on whether Pelosi or her staff obstructed calls for aid in any way. Irving has repeatedly denied it, but calls for more answers have persisted.

Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said in a statement that Republicans are “trying to deflect responsibility for the Capitol attack from Donald Trump” and that Pelosi is “focused on getting to the bottom of all issues facing the Capitol Complex and the events that led up to the insurrection.”

Even that terminology has been contested, with many Republicans challenging whether the mob, which, according to law enforcement officials and video evidence, included people equipped with zip-tie handcuffs, bear spray and tactical gear.  This was all truly intended to subvert democracy.

Many others have questioned whether the rioters could fairly be described as “armed,” despite court filings that describe multiple instances of dangerous weapons being wielded on the Capitol grounds.  At least two people are facing federal firearms charges, and authorities have reported the seizing of firearms and explosives from multiple arrestees.  More federal arms charges are expected.

The riot doubters include Senator Johnson, who told conservative talk shows in his home state this past month that he rejected the “armed insurrection” label. The PolitiFact fact-checking operation termed Johnson’s comment as “ridiculous revisionist history,” but several other Republican lawmakers last week expressed doubts about calling it an “armed insurrection” 

But what else could it be called?

“If it was armed, it would have been a bloodbath,” said Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), who said this “armed” term has been embraced by Democrats to create the impression that “there’s a bunch of people running around in the woods with Army fatigues on the weekends, and they’re going to take over the country, and that’s just nonsense.”

That is a ridiculous comment as the many videos have showed many armed rioters.

But few Republicans have sought to reshape the story of Jan. 6 quite as fervently as Senator Johnson, who is mulling over whether to seek a third Senate term representing Wisconsin next year.

J. Michael Waller, a senior analyst at the right-wing Center for Security Policy who published the account Johnson read at the hearing, calling Johnson a “contrarian” but then said he accurately summarized his piece, which was first published by the Federalist…?  Waller stood by his observation that the crowd was largely jovial and said he never meant to insinuate that there were no extremists in the crowd, only that they came from both the left and the right. He criticized those who were “grabbing one small piece and falsely saying this is a discredited conspiracy theory.  If my story is debunked by the facts, that’s fine with me,” he said. “I’m just saying what I saw.”

That’s pure Bull!

Senator Johnson has also questioned other facts surrounding the riot. He sent a letter to congressional colleagues that included an inquiry about the cause of death of Brian Sicknick, the 42-year-old Capitol Police officer who died Jan. 6 and was given a hero’s farewell, including lying in honor in the Rotunda.

Conservative activists have seized on changing accounts about Sicknick’s death to suggest that the precise circumstances have been hidden to further the Democratic political agenda. Authorities have not disclosed an official cause of death, but news emerged Friday that investigators have uncovered video appearing to show someone spraying a chemical irritant at Sicknick and other law enforcement personnel.  Johnson defended his approach to the riot, saying he viewed his role as raising questions for the various investigations to answer.

“I’m not afraid of information,” he said.  “Some people seem to be afraid of the truth. I’m not.  I’m just trying to get the whole truth.”

I don’t understand how those people like Senator Johnson can continue to lie about what is so clear by all the available videos.  Just the fact that there were people that have said that their goal was to “capture and execute as many lawmakers as possible” and that they actually built a gallows with a hanging noose and the name of Vice President Pence on a sign attached to the gallows.  And according to Senator Johnson, “That the violence was perpetrated by a small group of left-wing extremists, who were out of character in an otherwise jovial crowd.

Only a delusional Trump supporter could come up with a story like that.

Copyright G. Ater 2021