Opinion: Ignoring 1/6 Facts Doesn’t Make Them Less True (Part 2)
The Contradictions of 1/6 Deniers
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Of all the worrisome aspects of the response to the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol and to the hearings investigating it, two stand out. First, the assertion by some Trump supporters that the rioters had the right to invade the seat of American democracy. Second, that many of those supporters dismiss the hearings as an irrelevant “show trial.”
This column is Part 2 of a series of pieces I am writing on the reaction to the 1/6 hearings. The first, titled “Ignoring 1/6 Facts Doesn’t Make Them Less True,” was published on July 13. This second column will address the above-mentioned issues and many others raised in hundreds of comments received across social media platforms in response to an earlier piece on the hearings titled “All Americans Should Be Sickened by the January 6 Attack.” Part 3 will be published later this week.
The columns should be read in the context of what a majority of Americans believe. A Morning Consult/Politico survey conducted between June 10-12 shows that registered voters support the U.S. House Select Committee's investigation of the Capitol riot by 51%-37% (11% don’t know). Also, an ABC/Ipsos poll in mid-June found that 60% of Americans view the committee’s investigation as “fair and impartial,” while only 38% disagree.
The “Right” to Attack the Capitol. A frequent theme among Trump supporters is that rioters had the right to use violence to stop the certification of the 2020 election. One reader wrote: “A ‘real’ overthrow of government is absolutely necessary and our God-given right at this point.” Another said: “We the people threw out an oppressive government once and if need be [we should again]. It’s a legal lawful duty to do so.”
In fact, no such right or duty exists. On the contrary, trying to overthrow the government is a federal felony. So is assaulting federal officers and violently damaging federal property (here’s a list of charges filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia).
Even the philosophical "right to revolution" would require far more egregious governmental violations of basic rights than a disagreement over the legitimacy of an election.
Surveys have consistently found that large majorities of Americans believe the 1/6 attack was not justified. A CBS News poll on the anniversary of the attack showed 83% of Americans disapproved of the actions of those who forced their way into the Capitol. A Yahoo/YouGuv poll conducted after the first couple of hearings in June found that only 17% of Americans believe the attack was justified, while 62% did not (the rest were not sure).
Source: Yahoo News/YouGuv, June, 2022. Courtesy: The Washington Post.
Even a plurality of Republicans (49%), believe that the Capitol riot was not justified. Only 26% believe it was, and the rest are unsure.
Bottom line: The argument that a right existed to undermine an election and prevent the peaceful transfer of power, an uninterrupted tradition in America for more than two centuries, simply does not fly with the American people.
“Insurrection,” “Coup.” Many readers have complained about the portrayal of 1/6 by Democrats and much of the mainstream media as an “insurrection” or a “coup.” On the anniversary on the attack on the Capitol, I wrote that I believed using those terms was hyperbole in the context of traditional definitions because they overstated what the rioters realistically could have achieved,
However, given the evidence presented at the hearings about the Trump post-election team’s planning and objectives, I may have to change that opinion. Americans are split on this, according to a Monmouth University poll released earlier this month. The survey found that 50% believe it’s appropriate to describe the 1/6 attack as an insurrection, while 44% do not.
In any case, Trump supporters face a clear contradiction: If they argue that the rioters attacked the Capitol because they had the right to stop certification of the election and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, then the riot was an attempted coup.
They can't have it both ways.
“Rigged Election.” The underpinning for any claim that the attack on the Capitol was legitimate is Trump’s mantra that he won the election and was cheated out of a second term. Books will be written about this, so I won’t relitigate it extensively here. However, I suggest that everyone read “Lost, Not Stolen, The Conservative Case that Trump Lost and Biden Won the 2020 Presidential Election.” The authors include former GOP senators, federal appellate court judges, and a Solicitor General.
A few sentences summarize the findings: “Of the 64 cases brought by Trump and his supporters, twenty were dismissed before a hearing on the merits, fourteen were voluntarily dismissed by Trump and his supporters before a hearing on the merits, and 30 cases included a hearing on the merits. Only in one Pennsylvania case involving far too few votes to overturn the results did Trump and his supporters prevail.”
In other words, Trump and his team failed miserably in lawsuits to overturn the election, rejected by a slew of Republican judges, including Trump appointees.
Most emphatically, the report says that “There is absolutely no evidence of fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election on the magnitude necessary to shift the result in any state, let alone the nation as a whole. In fact, there was no fraud that changed the outcome in even a single precinct.”
Polls have consistently found that a substantial majority of Americans believe Joe Biden’s election as president was legitimate, including surveys by The Washington Post/University of Maryland (69%-29%) and the University of Massachusetts Amherst (58%-33%).
A few additional points on this topic: First, if Democrats had the power to change election results, why didn’t they do it in 2016 when they held the White House and the election was far closer? Second, what will happen in November, when Republicans are likely to take back control of the House? That election will be legitimate even though Democrats control the White House, Senate, and House? The attitude of Trump supporters seems to be that elections are rigged only when they don’t like the result. Finally, for fraud to have overturned the election, it would have required a conspiracy involving thousands of people, executed seamlessly in many states (a majority of which had Republican governors and/or election authorities), and all those involved have managed to keep the secret. It’s just plain silly.
Trump supporters clash with police as people try to storm the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C., on January 6, 2021. Demonstrators breeched security and entered the Capitol as Congress debated the 2020 presidential election electoral vote certification. (Brent Stirton/Getty Images)
“Mostly Peaceful.” Some readers have insisted that the media and the 1/6 committee are exaggerating and misrepresenting what they call a “mostly peaceful” protest.
The irony can’t be understated. Trump and his supporters appropriately ridiculed CNN for an on-screen caption about the August 2020 riot in Kenosha, Wis. that followed the police shooting of Jacob Blake. It read “Fiery but Mostly Peaceful Protests After Police Shooting,” even though a building had erupted in flames behind CNN’s correspondent.
Screenshot shows CNN's broadcast on August 24, 2020, at 5:05 a.m. EDT. In it, correspondent Omar Jimenez reports live from Kenosha, Wis., with a building engulfed in flames behind him, on the second night of protests there. The much-ridiculed on-screen caption reads "Fiery but Mostly Peaceful Protests After Police Shooting."
So, when Trump supporters riot, they say a protest is mostly peaceful, but they change their tune when others are involved. Neither Kenosha nor 1/6 was “mostly peaceful.” Both 1/6 and many of the 2020 riots were violent, outrageous, and inexcusable.
Some readers even argued that the 1/6 rioters were “a bunch of tourists” and that “There was no attack.” I’m sure the 140 officers from the Capitol Police and Washington D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department who were injured on that day would beg to differ.
“Show Trial.” Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, like many of my readers, described the hearings of the U.S. House Select Committee as “a Stalinist show trial” that has “nothing to do with fairness or finding the truth.” Trump’s former White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney echoes Gingrich, writing in the Charlotte Observer that Republicans object to the hearings because they “are a made-for-TV show trial, designed to attack the former president and salvage the Democrats’ dismal prospects in the upcoming midterms.” Gingrich, Mulvaney, and Trump supporters complain about how the committee is packed with Trump-haters, that it’s not a court of law, and that nobody is cross-examining witnesses.
All those criticisms are problematic. First, select committees are not courts of law, nor are they supposed to be. The Select Committee on Benghazi, established by a Republican Congress, certainly was not.
Second, the fact that nobody on the committee is cross-examining the witnesses is the GOP’s fault. The Republican House leadership boycotted the 1/6 committee when Speaker Nancy Pelosi vetoed two of the proposed GOP members, Jim Banks and Jim Jordan. Instead of negotiating and finding mutually acceptable Republicans, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy pulled out. Banks and Jordan had been active supporters of the “Stop the Steal” movement that resulted in the 1/6 riot. They had repeatedly denied the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election and worked to overturn it. Having them on the committee to investigate 1/6 would be the equivalent of a police department naming detectives connected to a crime as investigators of that crime.
Third, most of the witnesses have been Republicans. Not only Republicans, but close Trump supporters, many of them Trump appointees who had long been loyal to the former president. And, don’t forget, many top Trump supporters have refused to appear before the committee or, when they have testified, they have repeatedly taken the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer questions. Even Mulvaney believes that Republicans should watch the hearings “because, despite all of the flaws in the structure of the heavily Democrat committee, almost all of the evidence presented so far is coming from eminently credible sources: Republicans.”
On the other hand, Pelosi is guilty of extreme partisanship in her own selections for the committee. In doing so, she ineptly gave Trump supporters additional ammunition to attack the hearings. Pelosi prejudged the committee’s findings, insisted on Democrats having an 8-5 advantage among the members (the GOP had a 7-5 split in its favor in the Benghazi committee), and then named hyperpartisans like Adam Schiff and Jamie Raskin as members.
Congressman John Katko, one of the 10 Republicans who voted for impeachment in February of 2020, reacted to Pelosi’s moves by saying the committee would be “a turbo-charged partisan exercise, not an honest fact-finding body that the American people and Capitol Police deserve.”
While there’s no doubt that the committee members are biased against Trump, the powerful testimony and facts unveiled cannot be dismissed as irrelevant. And most Americans agree that the committee’s investigation has been fair, according to the ABC/Ipsos poll cited above.
What’s Next?
Was Pelosi at fault for not more significantly reinforcing security at the Capitol? Did Trump request additional National Guard or was he derelict in his duty? Were Antifa or other left-wing provocateurs responsible for the assault on the Capitol? Did FBI agents incite the riot? Were rioters armed? Was Ashli Babbitt a blameless victim? Were the rioters welcomed into the Capitol by open doors?
All those questions will be addressed in the next column, which will be published within days of the 1/6 committee’s hearing on Thursday, July 20, 2022. It will reportedly focus on Trump's alleged inaction in failing to stop the Capitol assault.
I’ll end with the words of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy as he spoke to CBS’s Norah O’Donnell amid the 1/6 riot: “I completely condemn the violence in the Capitol. What we are currently watching unfold is un-American.”
Cover photo: A photo of a gallows and noose is displayed on the screen as the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack holds its third public hearing on Capitol Hill on Thursday, June 16, 2022. (Jabin Botsford/Getty Images)
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