January Sixth

The House of Representatives is currently conducting hearings regarding their investigation into the attack on the Capitol last January 6th. The Republicans have been very busy in their attempts to undermine the hearings. Here are a few of their talking points:

• It's political theater

I can't disagree with that, but is that necessarily a bad thing? I concede that a lot of what politicians do is playing to their base, virtue signaling or demagoguing. Sometimes, however, the purpose of a public Congressional hearing is to get important facts in front of the country. 

• It's Old News

True, it happened 18 months ago and many of the participants in the vandalism at The Capitol have been arrested and serving time in prison. But does the fact that our short national attention span has trouble maintaining interest past the end of the week a good reason to forgo digging into all the facts and identifying all who were involved, no matter how high up they are?

• It's a Partisan Witch Hunt

It's too much to ask that today's Republican Party act like it did in the aftermath of Watergate and withdraw support from a corrupt President (in this case a former president). There's an argument to be made that the Democrats would not be pursuing this if the riot had been in support of a Democratic president. That may be true, but we don't know because that's not what happened. The motive of the investigation is irrelevant if what is being alleged is in fact true. Even if this investigation is fueled by hatred of Trump, it's irrelevant if he actually did attempt a coup and encourage the violence on January 6th as part of that attempt.

• The protesters walked right in unlocked or open doors

There is a video making the rounds that show a group of protesters doing just that. I don't doubt that the video is real, there's likely more than one way that they got in. But the focus on this one image ignores the many images of people scaling the walks, breaking windows, pushing through barricades, assaulting police and vandalizing Congressional offices.

• Trump ended his speech by telling people to "peacefully and patriotically" march to the Capitol

True, these words were included in his speech. He also, in the same speech said the following:

• "Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore and that's what this is all about. To use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with, we will stop the steal."
• "That's what they've done and what they're doing. We will never give up. We will never concede, it doesn't happen. You don't concede when there's theft involved."
• "Let them get out. Let the weak ones get out. This is a time for strength....It's all part of the comprehensive assault on our democracy and the American people to finally standing up and saying, 'No.' This crowd is again a testament to it."
• "You will have an illegitimate president, that's what you'll have. And we can't let that happen."
• "We're gathered together in the heart of our nation's Capitol for one very, very basic and simple reason, to save our democracy."
• "When you catch somebody in a fraud, you're allowed to go by very different rules."

What exactly do Trump supporters think he was talking about with these statements? Perhaps he didn't believe that it would turn into actual violence, but it's clear that many people in the crowd believed that he was telling them to do what they ended up doing. Anyone who has watched Trump and listened to his public statements over the years knows that he often engages in "nod and wink" rhetoric. His actual words are either harmless or ambiguous when removed from their context, but delivered in a sarcastic tone and very clear when considered in the context of everything else he is saying, his body language and tone of voice. 

• We should be holding hearings on inflation, gas prices, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Kavanaugh death threats, children at drag shows, and of course, Hunter Biden

Sure. Anything other than an attempt to subvert and overturn a presidential election. 

• Lock her up, what about her emails? Benghazi!

Not even going to address that.

What is important to understand is that the people who invaded the Capitol on January Sixth were merely the most visible and violent part of an attempt to nullify an election. Trump laid the groundwork months before the election by claiming loudly and often that the only way he could lose was if the election was rigged against him. He made this same claim in 2016, refusing to say whether he would accept a loss, but he won. Trump and his followers pointed to his well-attended rallies versus Biden's small gatherings as proof that he couldn't lose. He called polls that showed him behind as "fake news". On election night he pressed states that were still counting votes to stop counting while he was apparently ahead. He refused to concede. He filed around fifty lawsuits challenging election procedures in several states - only in states that he lost. He made frequent claims about election irregularities that were not true or simply weren't irregularities. When it was clear that the lawsuits were going nowhere, he began contacting state election officials, urging them to "find" enough votes to get him a win. He contemplated replacing Justice Department officials who would not go allow with his fantasy with more compliant appointees. He pushed members of Congress to object to electoral vote counts in states that he lost and tried to get Vice President Pence to invalidate the votes of states that went for Biden. His rhetoric became more and more frantic as he described his election loss as a "steal" and incited his followers to resist the inauguration of a new president - he even described his loss as a "landside win". 

Not everyone who was in Washington, D.C. on January Sixth was there to engage in violence, but every single one of them was there to in some way overthrow a duly elected president.