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Morally, of course, the worst part about the Republican response to the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection is that they're trying to undermine the group's work at the behest of Donald Trump, the man who incited the violent riot in a last-ditch effort to throw out the results of his 2020 election loss. But I fully admit that, on a purely personal level, I'm deeply disgusted by just what sniveling cowards Republicans are being as they go about this.
Perhaps the most grating fact is that not one person in the party, not even the loudest mouthed jackasses or most shamelessly fascistic Republicans, will just come right out and say it: They don't like the January 6 commission because they disagree with the committee's basic premise that fascist insurrections are bad. Instead, Americans are being treated to a whirlwind of deflection, gaslighting, victim-blaming, and even victim-mockery — all in an attempt to fill the discourse with noise meant to give Republicans the space to back Trump while pretending that doesn't include backing his attempted coup of the 2020 election or any coups he may attempt in the future.
Republican leadership in the House of Representatives kicked off the efforts to undermine the hearing early on Tuesday, with a bizarre press conference that involved Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York playing the your-fault-for-wearing-a-short-skirt card against Rep. Nancy Pelosi, accusing the San Francisco Democrat of bearing "responsibility as Speaker of the House for the tragedy that occurred on January 6th."
GOP Rep. Liz Cheney says Rep. Elise Stefanik should be ashamed for blaming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the Jan.… https://t.co/eH7WKr9wkQ— The Lead CNN (@The Lead CNN) 1627422845.0
Pelosi, of course, was actually one of the primary targets of the insurrectionists, who were braying for her blood and ransacking her office in a frenzy of misogynistic loathing for one of the highest-ranking woman in the federal government.
But once the hearing itself got underway, the evidence presented exposed the GOP's gambit as the pathetic grasping that it was.
Metropolitan police officer Daniel Hodges — the victim of a vicious assault as rioters attempted to crush him in a door that day — reminded observers that there "were over 9,000 of the terrorists out there with an unknown number of firearms." It's a joke to argue, as Republicans are, that some minor tweaking of Capitol security was going to overcome what Capitol Police officer Aquilino Gonell memorably described as "a medieval battlefield."
After the powerful hearing, the deflections from Republican leaders got even dumber.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio both pretended to reporters that they were too busy to watch the hearing, the Washington Post reported, and Stefanik refused to say if she watched it. She somehow still had opinions about the thing she won't say she watched. Stefanik went on Fox News to complain that the hearing is about "trying to shame over 70 million Americans who were standing up for constitutional and election integrity," which is, of course, Republicans' code for Trump's Big Lie.
The shamelessness of Stefanik is breathtaking. She's defending conspiracy theories meant to bolster the belief that Trump is entitled to stay president despite losing an election, but doesn't have the courage to come right out and admit it, hiding instead behind voters who supposedly believe those conspiracy theories. Words like "integrity," in Stefanik's mouth, simply mean the opposite of their commonly held definition in American English. Stefanik and other Republican leaders continue to make apologies for the Big Lie and minimize the insurrection, but like cowards, they are pretending this somehow isn't the moral equivalent of supporting Trump's efforts to overturn the election or the violence that resulted from it. This is really one of those rare moments in life where there's no nuanced middle ground. Continuing to support Trump means supporting fascist insurrection, and no rhetorical games played by Republicans can change that.
Still, the dumb games go on, and not just with Republican leadership.
On Fox News, the networks' top primetime hosts rolled out more sleazy rhetorical techniques to signal support for Trump's Big Lie and the insurrection, all without having the courage to come right out and say what they meant bluntly. Instead, they mostly mocked the police officers who testified. Tucker Carlson sneeringly suggested the officers were exaggerating the trauma of January 6, while Laura Ingraham called the hearing "performance art." They're counting on viewers not watching the hearing in the first place. If they had, they would have heard that one of the police officers suffered a heart attack and traumatic brain injury, another had an emotional breakdown, another was seen on video being crushed in a door, and another provided photos of his extensive injuries from that day.
The most overtly fascist fringe of the Republican party is, it must be said, gliding closer to coming right out and saying they think that January 6 was a good thing.
As Zachary Petrizzo of Salon reported Tuesday, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-GA, Matt Gaetz, R-Fl, Louie Gohmert, R-Tx., and Paul Gosar, R-Az., attempted to hold a press conference as counterprogramming to the hearing, in which arrested insurrectionists were portrayed as "political prisoners." The presser fell apart, however, when protesters made a mockery of the situation. But while these folks are generally treated as a "fringe" of the party, it's important to remember they are on exactly the same page as Trump himself. And he has been spouting the same talking points painting the insurrectionists as the good guys.
But even Trump is too much of a coward to come right out and say that he thinks violent insurrection is good. Instead, he's been in full gaslighting mode for months, denying that the riot was even a riot, instead saying, "it was zero threat" and that the insurrectionists were "hugging and kissing the police and the guards." For his part, officer Gonell directly retorted during the hearing Tuesday, "I'm still recovering from those 'hugs and kisses' that day that he claimed that so many rioters, terrorists, were assaulting us with."
Trump's attempted coup failed. But Republicans in state governments across the country are lining up to make sure, next time he tries to steal an election, he succeeds. What's going on here is not mysterious. All these Republicans are betting that Trump will soon ascend to the dictatorial powers he aspires to, and they want a piece of the pie when that happens. But, until the day comes that a newly inaugurated Trump is declaring January 6 a federal holiday of the glorious revolution, they continue to fear that it's bad politics to just come out in favor of fascist insurrections. So here we are, in a sea of gaslighting and deflection and victim-blaming. Because Republicans aren't just villains — they're cowards.
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Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn addressed the Jan. 6 select committee Tuesday, telling harrowing stories about President Donald Trump's supporters shouting the N-word at him during the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Speaking to CNN's Don Lemon on Wednesday, Dunn explained that the GOP is blaming Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Dunn said that if the GOP and Fox News really believed that it was Pelosi's fault, they should want to get to the bottom of it with an investigation. Yet, they oppose it.
Dunn voted for President Joe Biden and he is Black. That made him a target for conservatives immediately. Fox News host Tucker Carlson not only laughed at Officer Michael Fanone for talking about his PTSD. After that, Carlson accused Dunn of being some kind of secret Democratic activist.
"Dunn will pretend to speak for the country's law enforcement community, but it turns out Dunn has very little in common with your average cop," Carlson told his audience Tuesday. "Dunn is an angry left-wing political activist."
Rep. Eric Swalwell hit back, saying that he is "forever grateful to officers like Harry Dunn."
Townhall columnist Kurt Schlichter also disagreed with Carlson, calling Dunn's testimony, "disheartening and disappointing" to "live in a country with people … that attack you because of the color of your skin just to hurt you. Those words are weapons."
"I can't believe that -- you know what hurts more than or just as much as what happened on Jan. 6th?" Dunn said. "The attacks on our credibility and that we're lying and that we don't love our country and we're fake police officers and we're not real cop -- just the stuff you were playing there, the Laura Ingrams and the Tucker Carlson. That was an act? It's frustrating. It's more than frustrating. It makes you so angry."
He was shocked that somehow he's not an American because people disagree with his political views.
"Everyone's allowed to have a different political view," Dunn continued. "That's what makes America America. That's what makes America a democracy. What are they doing to preserve dem democracy? I know what I'm doing. I know what I did to preserve democracy. I protected republicans, democrats, and independents for the last 13 years of my life.
He's said that he's still going to work tomorrow to do the same thing again: protect everyone, regardless of whether or not they hate him.
Watch the interview below:
Officer Dunn responds to Republican hate www.youtube.com
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The attacks on Capitol Police officers continued Wednesday night from Fox News' Laura Ingrahm. Tuesday, she did her own mock award show to ridicule what she said was "acting" on the part of the cops.
Wednesday, however, she took it to a whole new level blaming Capitol Police and DC. Metro cops, saying that they have no one to blame but themselves. Ingraham first incorrectly stated that they testified on Wednesday when they spoke on Tuesday, and she then claimed that police knew for "weeks" that the Capitol would be attacked.
The new GOP narrative is that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is at fault for Jan. 6 because somehow she had a death wish and wanted the Capitol to be overrun by violent Trump supporters who wanted to kill her, the vice president and other Democrats.
The House Select Committee intends to hear more about the warnings of Jan. 6. Thus far we know that the social media site Parler had been sending the FBI warnings for weeks. Those warnings never made their way to Christopher Wray or to Pelosi. The Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley also heard that there was likely to be an attack that day. He didn't brief Pelosi either.
The New York Times reported this week that three days before the siege on the Capitol, police were told to "stand down" and not use deadly force.
"In a 104-page document, the inspector general, Michael A. Bolton, criticized the way the Capitol Police prepared for and responded to the mob violence on Jan. 6," said the Times. "The report was reviewed by The New York Times and will be the subject of a Capitol Hill hearing on Thursday."
"Mr. Bolton found that the agency's leaders failed to adequately prepare despite explicit warnings that pro-Trump extremists posed a threat to law enforcement and civilians and that the police used defective protective equipment. He also found that the leaders ordered their Civil Disturbance Unit to refrain from using its most powerful crowd-control tools — like stun grenades — to put down the onslaught," the report continued.
The Sargent at Arms and the Capitol Police are all nominated by a series of Congressional committees. The Capitol Police chief reports to the Capitol Police Board, which three people run: the Senate and House Sergeant at Arms and the Architect of the Capitol. At the time, all three were appointed by Republicans. The former House Sergeant at Arms, Paul Irving, was appointed in 2011 when Republican Speaker John Boehner controlled the House.
Ingraham conveniently forgot to mention those facts.
Ingraham: Fauci has no one to blame but himself. Ditto for the Capitol police who testified on Wednesday. https://t.co/u7my1xiDgA— Acyn (@Acyn) 1627524686.0
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