Republican Report Suggests They Saw Another Riot on Jan. 6 – The Virginian-Pilot

As a largely Democratic House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol building blamed former President Donald Trump for “one man,” House Republicans , found someone to blame in their own report on security failures in Congress. Houses of Parliament:

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, of course.

As anyone who has paid more than a nanosecond to the January 6th investigation knows, blaming Pelosi is a stupid logic, like blaming the homeowner for robbing his own home. standing at school.

No wonder Merriam-Webster recently chose “gaslighting” as the word of the year.

Lying, of course, is more bipartisan than any word. In Washington, we trace the current tumultuous time to Trump’s campaign, which in effect launched by claiming that President Barack Obama was not born an American citizen.

He held it with an elaborate thread about how he was sending investigators to Hawaii to search for Obama’s birth certificate, among other allegations. remembers well how much political support he gained from that lie.

Some people were so hopeful that it was true, that belief became a marker for which you It has become something of a political and cultural marker for side affiliation or which political tribe you belong to. Loyalty in Republican circles.

Just as House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy said in the House shortly after Jan. 6 that Trump was responsible for the attack, a few weeks later he was due to meet with the former president. Went to Mar-a-Lago and immediately saw everything forgiven — at least in public.

The Republican report comes from five Republicans: Rodney Davis of Illinois, Jim Banks of Indiana, Troy Nels of Texas, Jim Jordan of Ohio and Kelly Armstrong. Mr. McCarthy was initially appointed to the Ad Hoc Committee before members of his party decided not to participate. of North Dakota.

So forgive me if you read the Republican security report McCarthy filed as a supplement to the official report of the House committee as another piece of gaslighting. Trump.

From the beginning of the House investigation, a Democrat and two Republicans, Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger and Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, focused on the causes leading to the rebellion and its aftermath. Republicans have chosen to focus on the alleged breakdown of security, which is well-documented, but now there are other nasties such as what happened that fateful day in the Trump White House. The party is now able to avoid such problems.

If you want to know more about who tried to block the peaceful transfer of presidential power that day, and the role that political leaders played behind the scenes, see other sources, including the full report of the official commission on January 6. You’d better check the location of

What’s even appalling about the Republican report is that it’s not just trying to distract from Trump’s inaction, it’s actually trying to sugarcoat his efforts to incite a mob of his supporters.

Trump waited for hours before calling the mob to leave the Capitol, but the Republican report explained that Trump was encouraging his supporters to demonstrate “peacefully”, and his supporters I’ve left out some of the speeches that encouraged the U.S. to “fight like hell.”

Along with Cheney, Kinzinger, who effectively lost his seat for disloyalty to Trump, tweeted a message to McCarthy that at first sounded surprisingly benign.

“The unsung hero of the Jan. 6 Commission was @GOPL leader Kevin McCarthy, who pulled his pick to sabotage the investigation, allowing for a smooth bipartisan investigation and presentation to America. I made it,” Kinzinger tweeted. “Thank you Kevin!”

Don’t hold your breath waiting for McCarthy’s reply. Sometimes political courtesy is overly demanding.

Clarence Page Member of the Editorial Board of the Chicago Tribune.send him an e-mail cpage@chicagoribune.com.