Tag: capitol riot
Three Years Later, Republicans Keep Gaslighting Themselves

Three Years Later, Republicans Keep Gaslighting Themselves

Three years after the spectacle of rioters storming the Capitol played out on television screens across America, the events of January 6 are now highly open to interpretation depending on one's partisan lean.

For Democrats, it's generally clear that a mass of MAGA supporters, provoked by Donald Trump's lies about a stolen election, launched a violent attack on the Capitol in an effort to interrupt certification of the 2020 election and the peaceful transfer of power. That, of course, is what happened, as has been proven by the sweeping January 6 congressional investigation and hundreds of convictions.

Republicans, who have had to gaslight their way to an acceptable narrative, appear to believe some combination of the following fabrications: 1) the Jan. 6 violence was justified because Joe Biden's victory was illegitimate (i.e. Democrats stole the election); 2) Jan. 6 was mostly a peaceful protest (a narrative driven by right-wing talker Tucker Carlson, among others); and 3) the Jan. 6 violence was organized and instigated by FBI plants.

Since the outset of his 2024 campaign, Trump has openly embraced the MAGA rioters, launching his latest presidential bid in Waco, Texas, a city synonymous with extremist lore. The event kicked off with a variation of the national anthem sung by Jan. 6 convicts—or "hostages," as Trump prefers to call them. Trump has pledged to pardon some or possibly even all of those involved in the January 6 insurrection if he is elected president in November.

"Trump heading into the 2024 election has decided to go all in as being the pro-January 6 candidate," counterterrorism expert and January 6 investigator Tom Joscelyn told NPR. "He's gone full steam ahead in praising and in his own way endorsing the January 6 rioters and extremists who attacked the Capitol."

Yet outside of Democrats and pro-Trump Republicans, many Americans aren't as settled about what took place on January 6 and why. A sizable swath, in fact, would simply rather move past the Capitol attack as a bygone unpleasantry.

But as President Biden wages his reelection campaign on the threat that Trump and MAGA Republicans pose to American democracy, it's incumbent on Democrats and pro-democracy voters to relay a clear and direct narrative about what unfolded on Jan. 6 and who was responsible for the worst homegrown attack ever launched on the U.S. seat of government.

To that end, the progressive consortium Navigator Research has assembled a road map for how to discuss the Jan. 6 riot in ways that resonate broadly with voters.

Here are the nonpartisan explanations of the day that resonated with broad segments of the electorate as being most true and most concerning, according to Navigator:

  • More than 2,000 rioters ultimately broke into the Capitol, many of whom vandalized and looted parts of the building (69 percent true, 72 percent concerning).
  • Approximately 140 police officers were assaulted by rioters (64 percent true, 71 percent concerning).
  • Five people died as a result of the events on January 6, including Capitol police officers (60 percent true, 75 percent concerning).
  • More than 1,000 people have been arrested for their actions on January 6 (62 percent true, 66 percent concerning).

Navigator polling shows the Republican Party is currently viewed as more prone to political violence than the Democratic Party, but only by 11 points (47 percent to 36 percent). And nearly one in five voters remains unsure about which party is more prone to political violence.

With that in mind, Navigator fleshed out how to extend culpability for the January 6 assault to congressional Republicans by raising concerns about their ongoing efforts to promote political violence. The group found that Americans' top concerns with GOP conduct include that:

  • Congressional Republicans continue to allow the white supremacist factions present at the January 6th attack to play a dominant role in deciding the direction of the Republican Party (71% concerning, including 71% of independents).
  • Congressional Republicans voted against investigating basic facts about what happened at the attack at the Capitol building on January 6th (71% concerning, including 70% of independents).
  • Some Republican members assisted or encouraged the organizers of the attack on January 6th (70% concerning, including 73% of independents).

The 2024 presidential election is shaping up to be a rematch between the pro-democracy forces who elected Biden in 2020 and the pro-Trump forces who sought to overturn the will of the people.

Trump has left no doubt about his allegiance to the people who sought to stage an insurrection on Jan. 6 at his behest and congressional Republicans have left no doubt about their allegiance and submission to Trump as the party’s standard-bearer.

That puts the preservation of democracy, January 6, and the broader matter of right-wing violence directly on the ballot this November. So it's worth all of us making an effort to have one or two fast facts at the ready when our independent-minded friends and neighbors question the severity of the deadly January 6 riot. Because if Trump wins, he and his allies will rewrite history—and alter the course of American democracy.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Flashback: What Mike Johnson Said As Mob Stormed Capitol On January 6 (VIDEO)

Flashback: What Mike Johnson Said As Mob Stormed Capitol On January 6 (VIDEO)

Fox News interviewed a shaken but unapologetic Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) live from an undisclosed secure location in the House complex as a violent mob of Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, delaying the certification of the 2020 presidential election. During the interview, Johnson, whom the House Republican caucus elected its speaker-designate on Tuesday night, defended his effort to toss the results in multiple states as “presenting our thoughtful arguments and thoughts about this whole process.”

Johnson, who made 50 appearances on weekday Fox programs (14 in prime time) between August 2017 and his run for speaker, came to prominence for his key role in Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election. He “led the amicus brief signed by more than 100 House Republicans in support of a Texas lawsuit seeking to invalidate the 2020 election results in four swing states won by Biden: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.” Johnson drummed up signatures for that brief in part by telling his colleagues that Trump had personally asked him to request members sign it. The lawsuit, which was heavily touted by pro-Trump media outlets like Fox, was ultimately rejected unanimously by the U.S. Supreme Court.

After Trump’s efforts to reverse the 2020 election through legal action failed, he and his associates sought to have Congress and Vice President Mike Pence throw out the electoral votes of key states on January 6, 2021. He also summoned thousands of supporters to Washington, D.C.

Johnson expressed solidarity with the protestors that morning and promised to take their efforts to Congress later in the day. “We MUST fight for election integrity, the Constitution, and the preservation of our republic! It will be my honor to help lead that fight in the Congress today,” he posted on social media.

Then in a speech outside the White House, Trump urged the crowd to march on the U.S. Capitol, where the joint session had assembled to certify the results. They did, assaulting scores of law enforcement officers, breaching the building, and sending members of Congress into hiding.

Fox’s Bill Hemmer spoke with Johnson by phone as the mob occupied the Capitol, shortly after 3 p.m. ET. Johnson would not identify his location, saying only that he was “with a number of members, House members” in a “secure location.”



“Well, I was in the middle of the proceedings in the House chamber down at the table. We were presenting our thoughtful arguments and thoughts about this whole process, the Electoral College, as you mentioned,” Johnson explained. “It’s a very important process for our nation. Happens every four years. And we’re going through the methodical steps. This is nothing unusual what was happening today. There have been many objections over the years. You know, we’re going through the process, and then they begin the lockdown. There’s chaos on the floor, and members get a bit alarmed. And we get multiple orders by the Capitol Police and ultimately they evacuate the chamber. It’s just a really, really sad thing.”

Hemmer then asked Johnson, “Our nation’s capitol gets massive rallies every year, all the time. How did this happen?”

“You know, it’s a great question,” he said. “The whole nation is a tinderbox right now of emotion, you know, of vitriol.”

Johnson did not blame Trump or Republican members like himself for causing that vitriol with false claims of election fraud. Instead, he said, “I’m here as one of the advocates on the Republican side, stating our concerns about this election, the allegations of fraud and the irregularity and all that.”

He continued, “But I don’t see my colleagues on the other side of the aisle making the other argument as an enemy.” He argued that the public needs to remember “the things that unite us” and that “we’re all one family in this country. And if we forget that, we lose that value, our republic is in peril.”

Johnson went on to explain that the members with him were feeling “a lot of sadness.”

“We feel like we’ve crossed a Rubicon in some way,” he said. “It’s bigger than our politics; it’s the culture itself. And we got to get back, again, to those things that unite us. If we don’t, we’re in trouble.”

Hemmer then mentioned that after a long silence while the crowd stormed the building, Trump had posted on social media that the crowd should “stay peaceful.” He asked Johnson, “Does he need to say more?”

“That’s a good start,” Johnson replied. “But I do believe, you know, I’m a supporter of the president. But this is a time for the commander-in-chief, the leader of the country — he still is that — to step up and call for calm.”

“We have to get back to basics,” Johnson concluded. “And I hope in the days and weeks, months to come — no matter the outcome of this presidential election, or any political outcome — that we can get back to these foundational ideals. Because if we don’t, again, you know, we’re going to see a lot more of this in the days ahead.”

At a news conference Tuesday night after Johnson became the fourth speaker-designate selected by his peers since a handful of Republicans ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy earlier this month, a reporter tried to ask him about his role in seeking to overturn the 2020 election. Other members of the caucus shouted her down as Johnson smirked, shook his head, and said, “Next question.”

Juicy Columns -- Like This Gift From Meadows -- Keep Landing On My Doorstep

Juicy Columns -- Like This Gift From Meadows -- Keep Landing On My Doorstep

Case in point: ABC News is reporting that former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has been granted immunity by Special Counsel Jack Smith and is ratting out his former boss, Donald J. Trump. After the Georgia plea deals of Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, and earlier yesterday, Jenna Ellis, is it possible to get any better? What could be next? Testimony about Trump laughing off his loss to Joe Biden and contemplating ways to turn Stop the Steal into a cash cow?

Actually, that testimony might be on the horizon after we learn more about what Meadows has told Special Counsel Smith during three meetings he had with prosecutors earlier this year.

Listen to this from ABC’s breaking news about the Meadows immunity deal: “Sources said Meadows informed Smith’s team that he repeatedly told Trump in the weeks after the 2020 presidential election that the allegations of significant voting fraud coming to them were baseless, a striking break from Trump's prolific rhetoric regarding the election.”

The ABC report continues, “According to the sources, Meadows also told the federal investigators Trump was being ‘dishonest’ with the public when he first claimed to have won the election only hours after polls closed on November 3, 2020, before final results were in. ‘Obviously we didn't win,’ a source quoted Meadows as telling Smith's team in hindsight.”

Wait. There’s more: “Meadows privately told Smith's investigators that -- to this day -- he has yet to see any evidence of fraud that would have kept now-president Joe Biden from the White House, and he told them he agrees with a government assessment at the time that the 2020 presidential election was the most secure election in U.S. history.”

Thunk. That is the sound of my jaw hitting the little piece of my desk in front of my keyboard.

And the thunkscontinue. ABC reports that its reporters have found numerous assertions about the 2020 election in Meadows’ 2021 book, The Chief’s Chief, that “appear to be contradicted by what Meadows allegedly told investigators behind closed doors.”

Meadows, in other words, who in meetings with Smith’s prosecutors detailed the grift behind Trump’s denials that he lost the 2020 election, has been part of the grift himself, profiting off the lies he and Trump told by publishing a book that knowingly repeats some of those lies.

Another thunk: After spending the month of November and part of December in 2020 passing along allegations of fraud in the election Trump lost, “Meadows said that by mid-December, he privately informed Trump that Giuliani hadn't produced any evidence to back up the many allegations he was making, sources said. Then-Attorney General Bill Barr also informed Trump and Meadows in an Oval Office meeting that allegations of election fraud were ‘not panning out,’ as Barr recounted in testimony to Congress last year.”

That little burst of truth telling got Barr fired, but not Mark Meadows, who stuck around for the whole thing, right up until Jan. 6. On that ignominious day, testimony to the January 6 Committee by his assistant, Cassidy Hutchinson, revealed that when White House Counsel Pat Cippolone rushed into Meadows’ office and told him, “The rioters have gotten into the Capitol, Mark. We need to go see the President now,” Meadows responded calmly, while staring at his phone, “He doesn't want to do anything.” Cippollone told Meadows, “Something needs to be done, or somebody is going to die and this is going to be on your effing hands.” By that time, Trump had already sent out a tweet essentially telling his followers that Vice President Mike Pence was a coward.

"They're literally calling for the VP to be effing hung," Cipollone told Meadows. “You heard him, Pat,” Meadows replied, still staring at his phone. “He thinks Mike deserves it.”

ABC News reports that part of what Meadows told prosecutors confirms what others, such as his assistant, Cassidy Hutchinson, have already testified to. Sources told ABC that Meadows confirmed a widely-circulated story that while the assault on the Capitol was ongoing, Trump took a call from Kevin McCarthy, who urged him to do something to calm the situation. Meadows confirmed that Trump told McCarthy, “I guess these people are more upset than you are, Kevin.”

Meadows was in the West Wing during the entire time the assault on the Capitol was underway and can doubtlessly provide more information to prosecutors about what Trump was doing and who he spoke to in his private dining room just off the Oval Office as he watched the Capitol assault on TV. It is obvious from the ABC report that Meadows has more information on Trump’s statements after he lost the election and what meetings he had and with whom about his attempts to overturn the election. The testimony Meadows can give about Giuliani alone would be voluminous, and the same goes for others who met with Trump in Meadows’ presence, such as John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark, Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn, and others.

Meadows is still facing trial on racketeering charges brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Anything Meadows tells prosecutors in Washington under a grant of federal immunity could be used against him at trial on state charges in Fulton County, so you can definitely expect that Mark Meadows will cop a plea there, too.

Splat. That’s the sound of Mark Meadows’ teardrop falling in Georgia.

Click. That’s the sound of me locking my front door so the pile of gift columns doesn’t break it down.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

Please consider subscribing to Lucian Truscott Newsletter, from which this is reprinted with permission.

Why McCarthy Gave January 6 Capitol Riot Footage To Tucker Carlson

Why McCarthy Gave January 6 Capitol Riot Footage To Tucker Carlson

If House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) interest in the more than 40,000 hours of security footage from the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol was primarily transparency, he would have made it available to the press or the public. If he believed the House select committee that investigated the storming of the U.S. Capitol by violent Trumpists bent on overturning the 2020 election had engaged in malfeasance, he’d have turned the footage over to a Republican-controlled House committee for review.

But rather than taking either of those routes, last month McCarthy instead gave Fox News star Tucker Carlson and his staff exclusive access to the footage. He’s done that because he wants what Carlson is among the best at creating: propaganda.

Carlson has spent the last two years spinning up a sinister, fraudulent alternative to the standard narrative about January 6, which he describes as a “wholly created myth.” His story conveniently excuses former President Donald Trump, other Republican officials like McCarthy, and Fox hosts like himself for promoting the lies about election fraud that brought the mob to the Capitol.

On Carlson’s show, federal “agents provocateurs” generated the attack as a pretext to purge righteous conservative patriots like his own viewers from public life. In his telling, the Trumpists who took over the Capitol were simply “a mob of older people from unfashionable zip codes” who “wandered freely through the Capitol like it was their building or something”; the law enforcement officers who risked their lives and were injured during the assault deserve mockery; and Ashli Babbit, who was shot and killed during the riot while trying to breach the Speaker’s Lobby, is a martyr.

With McCarthy’s help, Carlson is promising more of the same to come. On Thursday, the Fox host alleged that previously, “a tiny group of people gets to make up stories about what happened that day and change the country on the basis of those stories.” But now that his team has gotten access to the footage, he claimed, all that will change.

“They are lying. And we know that because we've been looking at the tape,” he claimed. “We're going to bring you information on the tape and some of it next week and we think it's going to be really, really interesting.”

McCarthy’s gift is in part a fulfillment of Carlson’s own demand. In early January, as McCarthy scrapped and clawed for the support necessary to gain the speakership, Carlson cited releasing all files and video related to January 6 online as something he could offer to win over House Republicans. Carlson’s team will get to cherry-pick what they want from the footage instead of it being released to the public, but the request is pretty close to what McCarthy eventually did. (McCarthy also carried out Carlson’s other suggestion, establishing a House select subcommittee on “the weaponization of the federal government.”)

It wasn't difficult to predict what Carlson was going to do with it. The Fox host’s history of deceptively editing and recontextualizing video to serve his false narratives is so robust that it is unwise to believe anything he says about a particular clip. And now he has more than 40,000 hours of footage to play with that no honest journalist can currently access.

Carlson will find some snippets from the footage, take them out of context, lie about what they show, and argue that this proves that everyone else has been lying about January 6. It doesn’t really matter what he seizes on to do this — the “myth” he claims to be debunking is that violent Trumpists stormed the Capitol and assaulted scores of law enforcement, so perhaps he’ll dig up some clips he will claim show calmer moments between the rioters and the police, or law enforcement using excessive force during the melee, or rioters he says looks suspiciously like feds.

More credible journalists, hamstrung in any effort to debunk his claims in a timely fashion because they won’t have access to the video until later, if ever, will be pressured by the right to promote his stories as bombshells and denounced if they show skepticism. The result will bolster Carlson’s influence at Fox and within the GOP, while sending his viewers and other Republicans deeper into the conspiratorial fever swamps.

That is apparently what McCarthy wants. It is ludicrous for the speaker to argue that January 6 was a “very serious attack” but that it is important to get “sunshine” on the situation by giving the footage to Carlson. The Fox host’s noxious conspiracy theories about January 6 are not a secret — several of his former colleagues very publicly broke with the network over them. And just days before news of the speaker’s arrangement with Carlson broke, Dominion Voting Systems released a filing in its $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox which revealed that Carlson and the network’s other stars and its top executives had been fully aware that Trump’s election fraud claims had been false, but promoted them anyway to keep their viewers happy.

There was never any plausible chance that Carlson’s team would look at the footage and decide to tell their audience that it proved they had been wrong all along. He’s not an impartial finder of fact — he’s a propagandist who is in the business of telling his viewers what they want to hear. In this case, they want to believe that they and their political fellow travelers were the victims, so that’s what they are going to hear.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.