There are arguments to be made that many who participated in the insurrection of January 6, 2021 thought they were being patriots defending a nation from a stolen election, even though it was a nonsensical lie fed to the willingly delusional by an amoral narcissist who wasn’t strong enough to endure the humiliation of failure. There are arguments to be made that some sentences imposed on J6 insurrectionists were excessive, even though capital police were beaten and bloodied. But there are no arguments that January 6th didn’t happen as it was seen, experienced and suffered that day, as Trump gleefully watched.
Yet here we are, Trump re-elected and promising to pardon or grant clemency to his Hallelujah chorus. Here we are, Trump re-elected and urging the jailing of the January 6th House commission for prosecuting him too well, pretending that most of his own administration’s testimony against him didn’t exist or was somehow the result of tampering by then-Congresswoman Liz Cheney, of the radically progressive Cheney clan. Here we are, Trump re-elected as the former vice president acknowledges that the president demanded he violate the Constitution or be hung by Trump’s most violent sycophants.
January 6th happened, and it won’t unhappen because you want it to really bad. It was not a “day of love” as Trump pretends. The insurrectionists were not patriots when they broke windows to enter, stormed the Senate chamber and the Speaker’s office, tried to enter the House chamber ending in the death of Ashli Babbitt. Support Trump if you must, or if you can’t support the Democrats, but do not claim that January 6th was a “day of love.”
That day was an American calamity. Lawmakers huddled for safety. Vice President Mike Pence eluded a mob shouting that he should be hanged. Several people died during and after the riot, including one protester by gunshot and four police officers by suicide, and more than 140 officers were injured in a protracted melee that nearly upended what should have been the routine certification of the electoral victory of Mr. Trump’s opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr.
As his own Republican toadies scampered for cover and condemned his call to “fight like hell” that brought the worst of his followers to the second storming of the Capital, Trump relished in the glory of people willing to kill, or die, for him, not because he cared a whit for any of them but because he cared too much for himself.
Mr. Trump retired to the White House, where he watched the televised violence and ignored advice to tell the mob to leave. Then, after sending two tweets calling for peaceful protest, he posted a video repeating his rigged-election falsehood and saying: “We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You’re very special.”
Trump was re-elected despite January 6th, not because it didn’t happen.
Fortunately, polls show that roughly 60 percent of Americans oppose Mr. Trump’s plan to pardon the insurrectionists. Even many Trump voters didn’t like what happened that day. But the new president’s relentless salesmanship of his exculpatory narrative could fuzz up the issue. The bully pulpit is a good place to bully critics and flush the memory of a Confederate flag near the Rotunda and a noose for Mike Pence on the lawn.
If you have chosen fantasy over reality, and want desperately enough to believe in the absurd excuses constructed around January 6th, so be it. Time will judge Trump’s administration. Time will judge Trump, the vulgar, deceitful, amoral, narcissistic ignoramus. But January 6th happened.
A follow-up tweet ended: “Remember this day forever!”
Indeed. January 6, 2021 was one of the most disgraceful days the United States of America has suffered. It should be remembered forever.
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Jan 6th says “love”, the same way Dec 7th says “Surprise!”.
[Insert Orwell quote here.]
It was a bad day for the country. There have been bad days before. There will be bad days again. I still wouldn’t live anywhere else.
I was there, and I have video of the scenes being setup, filmed and broken down, and of the instigators being ignored by police as they directed people to attack them. Mace spraying everywhere, but never hitting the instigators. Surprisingly those videos are still up on my Youtube channel. It was a show, and the Trump supporters were extras. That’s why the J6 committee destroyed all of their evidence. That evidence would strip away the thin veneer of credibility that supports the “Insurrection” narrative.
[Ed. Note: Link to video?]
In this video (and at the end of the other video), you see a man in a gray sweatshirt standing on on the pedestal to the right of the stairs. This is the side where they were not welcoming people in (luckily for me; if I had been invited in I might be in some trouble). He is egging on the crowd, waving them forward and shouting instructions. You can see mace spraying into the crowd but not at this obvious ringleader. You can hear people yelling “Make room” as maced and beaten protestors retreat, but the provocateur isn’t touched.
My phone storage got full, and the video got corrupted, and the repair didn’t work perfectly, so the sound goes bad about halfway through.
In this video you see provocateurs pushing the barriers and fighting the police while most of the crowd is peaceful. Behind the provocateurs, people with expensive cameras are filming the action. The police are lobbing tear gas cannisters back into the peaceful part of the crowd. At one point the police abandon their posts and run up the stairs, leaving the door unlocked so that the crowd can enter.
Whatever it is that you think these videos prove, they don’t.
It does prove, publicly and decisively, how poor his judgment is.
I don’t think anyone who reads this blog regularly had doubts about that.
There was no insurrection on January 6, 2021. Less than a thousand unarmed idiots turned over some tables; minuscule to the 74 million people who voted for the losing candidate Trump. They should have “peacefully” protested, which is a constitutional right Trump explicitly stated in his speech to them, and were punished. Time has already judged Trump for four years and he was re-elected. As was said about Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, move on.
It is utter nonsense to claim that the rioters were not armed. Prosecutorial documents indicate otherwise.
Of course, history will be the ultimate judge, but I suspect Trump will be remembered not as the most vulgar, the most deceitful, the most amoral, the most narcissistic, or the most ignorant president, but as the one who hit the rare pentafecta (Royal Flush?) of checking off all five.
King of Vulgarity? Hard to top LBJ. Once, as president, he halted his motorcade to urinate on the side of the road. When a reporter warned him about rattlesnakes, Johnson – still mid-stream – turned and said, “Son, don’t you worry about it. Jumbo here is part rattlesnake himself.” Nixon’s Cambodia policy and FDR’s treatment of Jews and Japanese Americans were hardly paragons of morality. And in the realm of deceit, Joe Biden – with his stolen autobiographies, broken pardon promises, and senility cover-ups – is probably our reigning champ. Like Willie Mays, also a five-tool player, Trump’s GOAT claim isn’t about the depth of his “talents” but their breadth.
That’s why Jan 6 carries so much weight: Its beautiful panoply of vulgarity, deceit, amorality, narcissism, and ignorance all at once, captures the Trump essence.
The strategy backfired on everyone on both sides, just at different times. I wonder who’s working on the movie version that will probably come out in time for the 2026 midterms.
Oliver Stone
As has been attributed to (among others) Lou Holtz and/or P.T. Barnum, “All publicity is good publicity.”
Why and how the Biden administration and MSM kept a one term president relevant for the next 3+ years should be the lesson learned here.
Absolutely remember Jan 6 by celebrating and remembering officers who were there doing their jobs (similar to 9/11). Making it about ex- president elect Trump throws gas on the fire with predictable results. #goals
Jan 6th happened, it was not a day of love and more than the riots in the summer of 2020 were the “summer of love”. But it was not an insurrection. It’s long past time to drop that pretense. It was a protest that got out of hand and turned into a riot. It got out of hand largely because security was woefully inadequate. Nothing happened on Jan 6th that wouldn’t happen several times a year if measures weren’t taken to keep unruly crowds out of sensitive areas.
Having enjoyed your column for years and the comments it’s sad to see someone remove the videos. There is always controversy here but it’s always civil. The ones responsible for removing them should be ashamed. We’re for the most part adults. Very sad they treated everyone this way.