Rick Wilson: Jan. 6 'was an act of terror' -- and it worked on Republicans

Republicans know the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection was an act of terrorism, and former GOP strategist Rick Wilson says it worked.

Donald Trump and his right-wing allies incited the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol to overturn his election loss, and Wilson says the violence at first spooked Republicans into condemning their actions -- but their fear has curdled into obedience to the twice-impeached one-term president's violent supporters.

Trump sat near the center of that "putrid slurry," Wilson says, but surrounding him were "his crime family, his goon squad sycophants, cosplay lawyers, leathery degenerate Roger Stone, pernicious little ratf*ckers like Ali Alexander, conspiracy loons like Alex Jones, and of course the throbbing, cancerous gristle of Steve Bannon."

But the plan wouldn't have worked without Fox News amplifying Trump's election lies, which were delivered to an even broader audience by Facebook's algorithms, Wilson says, and increasingly right-wing Republican lawmakers were happy to help carry out the plot.

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"The most important parts of the plot to break American the Republic were elected Republicans bred to a new era," Wilson tweets. "In the House and the Senate, a cadre of Republicans was eager for that day. Ready for it. Praying for the short, sharp shock of their nationalist revolutionary fantasies to come to be."

"Democracy for them is a hindrance to power," he adds. "An obstacle."

Some Republicans refused to go along with the plot to overturn Trump's election loss, especially in the hours after the rioters were cleared from the Capitol, but Wilson says most eventually gave into the mob's demands.

"The 'good Republicans' still spent the majority of the Trump era -- and that fateful day -- saying one thing and voting with him," Wilson tweets. "Backing him. Why were (and are) they so scared of his mob and his enforcers? Because the purpose of terror is to terrorize. Bannon and his ilk would have danced a merry jig if the mob had murdered a Representative or Senator. They would've loved it. Pour encourager les autres, bro."

"This was an act of terror," Wilson says, and it had the desired effect.

"It was one more in a chain of crimes and sins by Trump and his movement to break this nation into an authoritarian kleptocracy based on fear and violence. And the GOP still won't have a moment of clarity on it," Wilson tweets. "Oh, in private they still acknowledge it, but the fear of the mob is with them still. The frisson of a bullet passing close by but missing. The narrowly averted car crash. It sticks. They're trapped in a political and media ecosystem built for mob rule."