There are many ways to describe what happened in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021.
It was an insurrection, a riot, an attempt to violently overthrow the results of a legitimate presidential election.
It was the predictable outcome of Donald Trump’s relentless, desperate Big Lie about Joe Biden’s victory and his thinly veiled calls for mayhem.
It was an intelligence failure of epic proportions on the part of the FBI and law enforcement agencies charged with protecting the Capitol and its occupants.
We know from multiple sources that Trump sat in his office for more than three hours, riveted by the violence on television, while advisors, his own daughter and lawmakers in mortal danger begged him to intervene.
Among those who pleaded in vain for help was House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who told his colleagues that Trump’s response was: “Well Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”
Later that day, on the House floor, McCarthy was — briefly — honest about what had just unfolded.
“The violence, destruction and chaos we saw earlier was unacceptable, undemocratic and un-American,” he said. “It was the saddest day I’ve ever had serving as a member in this institution.”
That is how the day should be remembered.
And yet, the noxious gases had barely dissipated, the broken glass barely swept away when Republican revisionism began: Yes, a handful of people died and dozens of law enforcement officers were seriously injured in hand-to-hand combat described as “medieval,” but it wasn’t Trump’s fault. Maybe the rioters weren’t even pro-Trump.
“Republicans do not join protest mobs,” opined Rush Limbaugh the next day. “They do not loot and they don’t riot. … But a tiny minority of these protesters, and undoubtedly including some antifa Democrat-sponsored instigators, did decide to go to the Capitol to protest.”
Before the month was out, McCarthy had slouched his way to Mar-a-Lago to regain the good graces of his lord and master. By October, McCarthy was actively trying to undermine the work of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, threatening to punish telecommunication companies who comply with the committee’s request to preserve phone records of a group of Republican members of Congress involved with the Trump rally that preceded the attacks.
Like so many who have wriggled under Trump’s thumb, former Vice President Mike Pence, whose life was in actual jeopardy on Jan. 6 because he refused to cheat for Trump, has decided his integrity is dispensable after all:
“I know the media wants to distract from the Biden administration’s failed agenda by focusing on one day in January,” he said in October. “They want to use that one day to try and demean the character and intentions of 74 million Americans who believed we could be strong again and prosperous again and supported our administration in 2016 and 2020.”
Ashli Babbitt, who attempted to breach the barricaded Speaker’s Lobby and was killed by an officer, has become a martyr to the Trump-loving right. In July, Trump described her as an “innocent, wonderful, incredible woman.”
