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January 6, One Year On
As anniversaries go, Jan. 6 is a pretty lousy one — especially for Republicans.
After losing the election to Joe Biden in a squeaker, then-President Trump wasted two months promoting increasingly unhinged conspiracy theories and fanned the flames of outrage among his most dedicated supporters. Some people on the fringe took this all too seriously. Following a particularly ugly Trump speech, the crowd tore down barriers surrounding the US Capitol, assaulted police officers, and forced their way in.
The paragraph above is nearly a word-for-word recap from the post I wrote that afternoon, “Impeach. Remove. Bar from Office.” As of this writing, that article has received nearly 1,200 comments. Early on, many comments were positive; by the end, it was nearly all negative. It caused a lot of controversy on Ricochet and references to it kept popping up in my posts throughout 2021.
As it turned out, the riot was President Trump’s swan song. He was banned from social media, condemned by several of his most stalwart supporters, and left Washington DC the morning Biden was sworn in. Worse still, Georgia elected two Democrat senators the day before the protest, thanks in part to Trump’s self-destructive meddling. Now the Democrats held the White House and both houses of Congress.
As the violence continued, I wondered what other horrible actions Trump had planned for his last two weeks in office. I thought it best to immediately remove him, preferably within a day or two. Instead, Nancy Pelosi intentionally slow-walked it for maximum partisan advantage, losing most Republicans in the process.
Thankfully, the reaction to Jan. 6 was enough to chasten Trump. He ended his rabble-rousing speeches and quietly went about his business until it was time to leave. Truly, a relief.
After Trump removed himself, Pelosi presided over a meaningless impeachment of an ex-president. Her party, along with legacy media, has milked the riot to spread blame over the entire Republican Party. The Jan. 6 Committee remains a meaningless kangaroo court providing fan service to #resist types who still think Trump colluded with Russia.
The Capitol Hill riot was bad; really bad. As was the congressional baseball shooting, which was quickly memory-holed. And the DC riot during the Republican National Convention. And 2020’s summer of anarchy that sparked a major increase in homicide ever since. There have been all sorts of terrible moments in the past few years, but only one stays in the headlines — the one that might harm the GOP.
The George Floyd riots caused $1 to $2 billion in damage while the Capitol riot caused $1.5 million. That’s 1,300 times more costly. Of those arrested in the summer 2020 riots, the vast majority of charges were dismissed. The Capitol rioters have been held in jail ever since, with prosecutors dropping only a single case. And Kamala Harris didn’t fundraise for their bail money as she did for Antifa.
The Democratic Party supports political violence; they just don’t like it when Republicans engage in it. Call me old-fashioned, but I think political violence is bad when either side does it.
Everyone understands today’s hyperbolic Jan. 6 coverage is a purely political play. Politico Playbook even admitted as much:
Democrats are hoping that Thursday will be more than just a day of remembrance. In the Senate, we hear from well-positioned sources, there’s a desire to take the opportunity to supercharge the party’s long-stalled voting rights legislation — possibly even using the anniversary to try to get Sens. KYRSTEN SINEMA (D-Ariz.) and JOE MANCHIN (D-W.Va.) to go nuclear on the filibuster or embrace rules changes.
That Democrats believe this is a winning strategy beggars belief. Terry McAuliffe focused on the issue and it failed miserably. Some of those Virginian voters can see the Capitol from their homes and they still picked Youngkin. How many votes will it net in Nevada or Wisconsin 11 months from now? If anything, the electorate will be angry to see Dems focused on Jan. 6 instead of inflation, Covid policy, immigration, and every other Biden disaster.
The Capitol riot was a disgusting scene that was rightly condemned by people across the political spectrum. Today’s histrionic reaction by Democrats and the media is cynical politics that won’t distract voters from Biden’s disastrous record.
Published in Politics
There is no way to prove Trump’s innermost thoughts on that day, but his two-month campaign to discredit the election and refuse to concede leads me to believe ill intent. People can definitely disagree on this, which is what Ricochet is all about.
Definitely agree with that point.
Interesting that Pelosi’s dereliction of her responsibility to properly protect the Capitol Building with the tools and information entrusted to her doesn’t fall within the top three failures of the day for those pretenders among us. So very telling…
No, no, no. I am Trumped out for now. I just wanted to point out that Pelosi was not blameless.
It was so much more gratifying to post about my AA 21st birthday. https://ricochet.com/1116100/xxi-21-years-of-sobriety-2/
You could be right. I really think that Pelosi was a narrow partisan by not including Republicans as the House Managers.
It is great to hear from you; I think about you frequently.
Who is Ray Epps?
Thanks, buddy.
My suggestion is that you (and Jon) try listening a bit more to your friends. Anyone can be wrong about anything, including me, I think. I seem to recall being wrong once. My wife probably has a somewhat higher count. :)
But seriously, if you find yourself in significant disagreement with your friends, and find yourself on the same side as, say, Rachel Maddow and Nancy Pelosi, I think that you should reconsider your position very carefully. Ask yourself whether your conclusions are actually based on the facts, or based on inferences that may or may not be warranted. Give the benefit of the doubt to people, like President Trump, who have been pretty solid and have done a pretty good job. Be skeptical of media narratives promoted by Leftists, which are so often wrong.
Flag thrown on Gabriel. False moral equivalence. 20 yard penalty and loss of 1st down.
I have a better idea, how bad does the Impeach, Bar, Remove From Office post look in retrospect?
If he invoked Liz we must really be in trouble…
His comment is too dangerous for me to even comment back
There was plenty of reason to believe that the election result was tainted by fraud or irregularity. Trump did overstate his case substantially, which is unsurprising, either as a litigation tactic or from the “Art of the Deal” guy. Others, including folks at NR, adopted a “nothing to see here” attitude that I found to be surprising, from supposedly thoughtful people. Appalling, actually, given the legitimate concerns about the integrity of the election result, in my view.
To jump from this, to a specific intent to incite rioting and terrorism in order to mount a coup, is quite a leap. It brings to mind the Fonz on water skis, in my estimation. You can believe whatever you want.
But I get to criticize you for making unwarranted inferences, on a matter of the gravest importance. Presidents should not be removed on the basis of conjecture as to motive. I do think that it is quite irresponsible to hold the opposite opinion. We are supposed to be serious, sober adults.
To do so on the very day of the event, as you did in your post, Jon, was intemperate. I told you so at the time, quite calmly, in the third comment to your post. You had rushed to judgment, before the facts were in. No facts supporting your position ever came in.
I admit to being frustrated about this, though I think that I remained calm and respectful. How many times have we seen such a reaction, from George Floyd to the Covington Kids to Jacob Blake, and on and on?
I am mindful that it is probably pointless to argue about this.
But here we are, on the first anniversary of the event, and we have competing narratives. The Leftist narrative is that Trump, and his supporters, were a grave threat to the Republic, and that a coup was narrowly averted. Unfortunately, Jon, I think that your post today supports that narrative, though I don’t think that this is your intent. It is unfortunate. Perhaps it is better to say nothing in such circumstances.
I hesitate to comment because I am weary of fighting and arguing. However, the issue was raised of what has happened in with the people who have been arrested, and I just came upon a in-depth article about that from Slate. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/01/jan-6-capitol-riot-criminal-prosecutions-status.html. While it is frequently snarky, it has the best summary so far about the defendants. There were 733 defendants; 702 have been charged in the D.C. Federal District Court, and 32 in the D.C. Superior Court, mostly for lesser offenses such as curfew violations and unlawful entry on Capitol grounds.
Of the 702 defendants in Federal District Court, 99 have pled guilty and are awaiting sentencing. 72 have pled guilty and have been sentenced. Two died, two are fugitives and one pled “no contest.” The remaining 526 have pled not guilty.
At this point, about 85% have won some type of pretrial release. Only 15% have had to await trial while in jail. By contrast, in 2019, only 42% of defendants had pretrial release, while 58% were made to await trial in jail. Slate blames “systemic racism,” as you can well imagine. Among the people released are the following:
“Gregory Nix, allegedly attacked one officer with a flagpole seven times. Paul Rae, a Proud Boy charged with assaulting a police officer, was warned at one point by the judge that he had violated the conditions of his pretrial release, only to be given yet another chance. He then allegedly crashed his speedboat into an island while drunk. Bryan Betancur is an avowed white supremacist who declared he wanted to be a ‘lone wolf killer’ and was already on a GPS ankle monitor when he was arrested on Jan. 6. Luke Coffee, the Friday Night Lights actor, is accused of attacking a police officer with a crutch. Robert Sanford is a retired firefighter alleged to have thrown a fire extinguisher at police during the mob assault. Michael Joseph Foy allegedly attacked police with a hockey stick wrapped in a Trump 2020 flag and then complained that his jail conditions presented a ‘grave human rights abuse’ because there was ‘no time in front of the television.’ All of these men were eventually granted some form of pretrial release.”
If memory serves, last month or so there was a post about a Timothy Desjardins and allegations of his mistreatment. The Slate article states the following about him:
“Timothy Desjardins allegedly attacked officers with a broken wooden table leg and carried multiple axes to the riot. After the insurrection but prior to his arrest in November on Capitol riot charges, Desjardins was arrested in an armed standoff with police after violating the terms of bail from a prior incident in which he allegedly shot a man in the head.”
The article notes which defendants violated the conditions of their release, (Pauline Bauer, Brandon Fellows, and Thomas Robertson) and who got into trouble while out on bond (Mark Sahady, Elias Costianes, Patrick Montgomery, Jeremy Vorous, Matthew Eugene Loganbill, Patrick Stedman, and Kene Brian Lazo). It also talks about some of the more notorious individuals such as Robert Keith Packer, Kevin Seefried, James Rahm, Jr., Karol Chwiesiuk, Riley June Williams, Couy Griffin, Samuel Fisher, Stephanie Baez, Eric Munchel and Lisa Marie Eisenhart.
Props for the listing. There are still a lot of people not covered, and two dead is…interesting.
I think that only 2 people dead out of 733 is less than most people charged with crimes.
I read in a different article that since some 97% of the prisoners in the DC jail are black or hispanic, and the DC defendants were overwhelming white, out of an abundance of caution, they are all housed together. That makes sense. They have also brought needed attention to the squalid conditions at the DC Jail.
I really appreciate your outlining many of the details of the charged defendants in the January 6th riot. I have only read spotty information so far. However, I’m going to challenge the comparison you made above.
I’m no lawyer but I am guessing that the reason that a far higher percentage of all defendants in 2019 were held without bail than the January 6th rioters, is because the average crime that is prosecuted in this country is far more serious and dangerous than what the January 6th defendants were charged with. You yourself admitted that most of them were charged with lesser crimes such as “curfew violations and unlawful entry on Capitol grounds.” And this is in light of the fact that the Gubmint is piling-on as many charges as they can dream up for these rioters. It would be interesting to compare the percentage of people arrested during the Black Lives Matter riots who were let out of jail before their trial dates, or even the percentage who were charged at all to begin with as opposed to having their charges dropped.
Jerry, you have been the very model of graciousness, politeness, and reason. We may, at times, arrive at different conclusions, but I greatly respect your contributions to this and other subjects. You might be right and I might be totally wrong.
Outside of this particular issue, I want to explain how I view my opinion pieces in general. Let’s look at when I submit a piece to the local paper. I provide the best op-ed I can, then I forget about it. A few days later, it’s published and people (almost always from the left) scream and caterwaul and attack me (AzCentral and Twitter don’t have a Code of Conduct). It doesn’t upset or offend me because I expect most people won’t agree with me and I’m fine with that.
A lot more folks at Ricochet will agree with this piece or that, but I still expect a healthy group here to disagree. And I think that is great, although we always want it to be respectful as you always are. I give my opinion and readers can take it or leave it. I make my best case, then everyone else makes theirs.
In 2016, I thought a President Trump would be a disaster. I didn’t blame my many friends who voted Trump, stayed home, or voted for that Libertarian stoner like I did. It was a tough call for many of us and I was in no place to judge. The day after he won, I posted congratulations to his many supporters to the main feed and wished the new prez the best. And you know what? He was pretty darn good. He’s a goofy son of a gun, but I looked at the results and ended up voting for him in 2020. The majority here at Ricochet were right and I was dead wrong.
On this issue, I said what I thought last Jan. 6 and I did it again today, especially since that first piece caused so much controversy. I knew some would agree, some would disagree, and let me know either way in the comments. That’s the beauty of Ricochet.
And I thoroughly denounce the narrative that Trump supporters are a grave threat to the nation, especially since the rioters were a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of his voters. To claim otherwise, I would be denouncing myself since I voted for him in 2020.
Thank you for your comments here on Ricochet; you may criticize my views but you always do so in a smart, respectful way.
I love h0w Trump keeps getting blamed for the loss of the two senators in the run offs. I mean he only held rallies in support of the two candidates, kept sending out social media posts and asked all his supporters to vote for them. I mean thats exactly what I would do when I want to sabotage people.
It had nothing to do with two senators being massively incompetent corrupt idiots who used their insider knowledge from their committees to enrich themselves in advance of a pandemic.
It certainly had nothing to do with the fact that the entire Atlanta election machinery had been taken over by Facebook. The ‘election fortification’ had nothing to do with anything.
Nope this is not a link to Trump holding a rally in support of those two Candidates.
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-55206015
WTF is an SSR? You need to quit smokin what you are smokin.
Oh I think what they did was totally wrong spurred on by people lying who knew better. I think it was a lawless act and it was pretty shocking that only one of them got shot (not saying that wasn’t terrible enough). I think it is also wrong when people try to justify it by basically saying BUT THE DEMS DO BAD STUFF TOO. My point was that every Jan 6th we are gonna get our noses rubbed in it, hopefully to no lasting ill effect and every Jan 6th some will feign surprise that we are getting our noses rubbed in it. It’s like the people that are locked up for ransacking the capital…..what the heck did they think was gonna happen?
It’s an acronym I invented which I referenced in a previous comment. A Stockholm Syndrome Republican.
Smoking weed is actually a performance enhancer, but I am perfectly ‘sober’ at this moment. You might want to try it sometime. It may give you some insights, as it has to me.
I’ve never seen any indication that Mitch contributed one red cent from his war chests [to] either race. Seems that help is held back to use against conservative challengers in the primaries…
Being on the ground in GA I agree with the assessment with the man from Canada.
McConnell floated a huge bill a couple of days before the Georgia vote which gave most of the proceeds to corporations. My wife and I wondered why we take the time to vote Republican. We can always count on the congressional R leadership to spit in the faces of their most loyal supporters. But this was a particularly ill timed stupid action on his part.
I wouldn’t classify “they did it so we can do it” as insight. I’m a borderline Republican at all, let alone whatever insulting acronym you made up. lol I am also not thinking its a good strategy to let the MSM smear me. I just think its ignorant and somewhat ridiculous/disingenuous to claim to be surprised by it. Enjoy next the next year/decade with your yearly outrage. I live in reality so I can see obvious crap coming. Also, not sure where I blamed any conservatives of anything. There can be arguments made for overturning an election but by definition that is not conservative.