6 Months Later, Republicans Have A New Jan. 6 Message: Insurrection? What Insurrection?
Donald Trump tried to overthrow American democracy to remain in power, but his party is working to make America forget all about that riot at the U.S. Capitol.www.huffpost.com
6 Months Later, Republicans Have A New Jan. 6 Message: Insurrection? What Insurrection?
Donald Trump tried to overthrow American democracy to remain in power, but his party is working to make America forget all about that riot at the U.S. Capitol.
From calls to let bygones be bygones, to punishing dissidents who dare criticize former President Donald Trump for instigating that day’s attack, to literally describing the mob as no different from everyday “tourists,” the Republican Party ― with notable exceptions ― has pushed the idea that the unprecedented attempt to overthrow American democracy was really no big deal.
Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor who believes the country barely dodged a constitutional crisis on Jan. 6, said many Americans simply would rather not think about that day.
“It’s human nature to suppress terrible forebodings that don’t quite materialize,” he said, adding that the barrage of Trump-inspired crises during his term likely laid the groundwork. “The cascade of terrible events and near-misses over the past four years has desensitized people if not entirely anesthetized them.”
Hans Noel, a political science professor at Georgetown University, said that Republicans also have an active interest in wishing Jan. 6 away.
“Generally, conservatives, particularly those who get their news from other conservatives, will come to downplay the attack,” Noel said. “Some of that is just believing it’s not a big deal. Some of it is not wanting to talk about uncomfortable facts as they come out. But this is the main thing: The partisan messaging on this has been to downplay it for Republicans, Trump supporters and others on the right.”
House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, for example, said on Jan. 13 on the House floor that Trump “bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters.” Within weeks, he had gone to visit Trump at his Palm Beach resort and posed for a photo with him. And, at the six-month mark of the mob assault, he is attacking those few GOP House members, such as Wyoming’s Liz Cheney, who refuse to bend to Trump’s will.
“If most Americans have indeed forgotten about Jan. 6, that is in part due to the tenacious efforts of the GOP to downplay it,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University. “For a party whose brand is law enforcement, Jan. 6′s murderous rage against Capitol Police could turn voters off. So they deny the violence ― Trump turned it into ‘hugs and kisses’ ― and block any investigation that would place the facts of it in the public realm.”
Though there was no legal way for Trump to undo Democrat Joe Biden’s victory after the Electoral College formally completed its tally on Dec. 14, Trump was not particularly interested in legalities. Instead, he spent weeks, according to Trump administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, pushing his vice president to simply reject enough electoral votes from states Biden had won to wind up with more and declare himself the winner.
And although Pence had no constitutional authority to do what Trump wanted, nothing prevented him from doing as Trump demanded anyway ― an action that would have unleashed unimaginable chaos, possibly including armed conflict in the streets, upon the country.
Lucky Pence didn't go along. Republican traitors to Democracy say he's a Deep State RINO. LOL
hat lack of understanding played into the hands of Republicans whose greatest success has been to obfuscate Jan. 6’s uniqueness in American history by lumping it in with other violence, such as the vandalism and looting that at times accompanied protests last summer over the police killing of George Floyd and other Black Americans.
In fact, while mayhem at protests was typically carried out at its fringes by criminals and opportunists, the assault on the Capitol was organized by Trump’s most hard-core supporters and encouraged by Trump himself, who told his followers to gather in Washington, D.C., on that specific day and staged a rally asking them to “march” on the building minutes before the Electoral College tally began.
“We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” Trump said at the rally.
After his mob started assaulting police officers defending the building and broke doors and windows to enter, Trump did nothing to dissuade them for hours. Rather, at 2:24 p.m., with his vice president and his staff and family in hiding, Trump attacked Pence on Twitter, telling his followers that Pence “didn’t have the courage” to overturn the election as Trump had wanted.
His followers responded with rage, roaming the building looking for him while chanting: “Hang Mike Pence!”
A gallows had already been erected outside.
Recently, he has started openly defending the violent mob he incited to attack the Capitol. “By the way, who shot Ashli Babbitt? Who shot Ashli Babbitt? Who?” he asked at his Florida rally on Saturday, referring to the woman who was fatally shot by Capitol Police as she tried to climb through a broken window into an anteroom from which House members were being evacuated.
It is amusing that idiots like this claim:
- Americans who walked around barriers moved out of their way by Capitol police
- Americans who walked through Capitol doors being held open by Capitol Police
- Americans incited into destructive behavior, breaking windows and entering the Capitol
- Americans who were all UNARMED
- Unarmed Americans who were escorted through the Capitol by Capitol Police
- Unarmed Americans who wandered around taking selfies on their phones
- SOME Unarmed Americans who took souvenirs
.....Constitutes an 'Insurrection', yet....
Violent, armed, foreign/Democrat-financed and supported domestic terrorists engaging in a violent terrorist event that caused the President of the United States and is family to be moved to the WH bunker for their protection while members of the FBI, Homeland Security, Secret Service, and Capitol and Local Police engaged the domestic terrorists to push them back- resulting in 14 members of the Secret Service being injured to varying degrees is NOT an 'insurrection'.
WTF?!
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi did not even consider the 1/6 event an 'insurrection' on 1/6 - she called it a violence riot attempting to prevent the certification of the election NOT an attempt tp overthrow the govt.
The Capitol Police, the Sergeants-At-Arms for the House and Senate, and the DC mayor was identified as being the most to blame on 1/6 for what happened by a bipartisan committee because of their failure to plan, prep, refusal to have the National Guard on hand, refusal to coordinate with local police prior to 1/6, lack of training, leadership, etc....
It was exposed that the FBI did not just learn about the pending violence and warn Pelosi and the Capitol police, they contacted SpecOps troops to hire them to infiltrate the crowd on 1/6 to help incite the crowd....
Again, a bunch of unarmed citizens taking selfies and souvenirs are somehow an 'insurrection', but armed known domestic terrorists (who were at the capitol on 1/6) committing an aggressive act of terrorism that required members of multiple federal agencies, the Secret Service, and both Capitol and local police to force them back is NOT an 'Insurrection'?
Snowflakes like this clown are idiots who deserve to be laughed at then ignored.
Your analysis of the Capitol insurrection by "unarmed citizens" is hogwash. Capitol police let them in because they were trying to break in and could not be stopped. By your logic, no police were needed
because it was only a group taking selfies. The police "escorted" these criminals AWAY from our lawmakers. Their purpose in being there is the issue, not selfies.
"Violent, armed, foreign/Democratic financed and supported domestic terrorists"? You are a fucking
imbecile.
