Tucker Carlson ran a lengthy segment last night arguing the January 6 Capitol attack was not a violent insurrection – an attempt to rewrite history and erode our precious democracy. I am furious. I was here on January 6 – as I ran for my life within a few feet of these criminals.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (March 7, 2023)
Tucker Carlson’s J6 video didn’t prove anyone’s innocence, but it sure humanized the folks who’ve been on trial for two years. Here’s Jacob Chansley in a horned helmet thanking God for the kindness of Capitol Hill police. There’s the Capitol police chaperoning a chubby couple through doors and hallways. In a 100 years, historians will reach a four-part consensus on the 2020 election and its aftermath:
- Democrats used smart lawyer tactics to gain a voting advantage
- Trump’s lawyers knew they couldn’t prove election fraud
- January 6 was not the worst attack on our democracy
- Democrats trampled the civil liberties of US citizens
We should know better than to trust Chuck Schumer’s – or Carlson’s – snippets from 40,000 hours of January 6 video, because the former gained from the smart lawyer tactics and the latter aired those election-fraud theories. Guess what? Monmouth University polls find that “Jan. 6 hearings have no impact on opinion” today, and voters have moved on. If the public sees the entire video, only 33% will believe Schumer ran for his life. In time, voters will blame J6 on both Trump and Biden.
Few now believe Joe Biden’s claim that Jan. 6 was the “worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.” In part, because he’s a serial liar, but mostly it owes to most of the Capitol intruders being charged with misdemeanors for disorder (not felonies for insurrection) and the public’s memory of the May 2020 Antifa assault on the White House, which Democrats dismissed because it was Trump. It begs comparison to the January 2021 Capitol riots.
The videos show Antifa encircling the White House, pushing against the barricades, and chanting “f**k Donald Trump.” The threat was so great that Secret Service agents rushed President Trump into a bunker and the violence so real it left “multiple” agents and officers injured (source: The Guardian). In spite of this, local cops largely stood down. Arlington (VA) recalled its officers, and US Park Police said their “officers made no arrests” (source: The Guardian).
In contrast, 1,100 local cops were dispatched in 2021, arresting 1,003 Capitol intruders (source: CNBC). Republicans rightly have questions. Why isn’t terrorizing President Trump as bad as obstructing Biden’s installation as president? Did the response of the police on January 6 influence how the Capitol intruders reacted? Is Biden exaggerating to say the day was “worse” than April 15, 1865, or November 22, 1963?
What could be worse than the assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy? The political consequences of the former was the failure of Reconstruction, and the latter was LBJ’s inflationary war on poverty and escalation of the Vietnam War (note to Biden: you’re still president and alive). Biden is guilty of spin that’s invited every Democrat to craft a personal war story (Schumer was “within feet” of criminals, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was “nearly assassinated”).
Ocasio-Cortez thinking she “was going to die” and “many” House members were “nearly assassinated” is regrettable, but March 1954 was worse: Puerto Rican separatists with semi-automatic pistols fired 30 rounds onto the legislative floor, wounding five members of the House. AOC’s very bad day was akin to the storming of the Capitol in 2018 by hundreds from the Sunrise movement, who occupied the offices of House Democrats to protest climate change.
AOC is not taken seriously because of what she says. On January 6, she said “I work with [Republicans] who wish me harm – frankly white supremacist members of Congress who would create opportunities to allow me to be kidnapped” (source: NBC). A year later, she said “Republicans want to date me” (source: Daily Mail). She proves Trump isn’t the only one pushing wild-eyed conspiracy theories. What’s worse is how her party has trampled civil liberties.
Democrats have cherry-picked video to portray a “violent insurrection” and withheld video that could have exonerated Jan. 6 defendants, who are now in prison. I have no problem with President Biden saying the Capitol riot was ugly or shaming those who attacked police, but he is wrong to allow the lengthy pretrial detention of non-violent defendants and ignore the unjust and cruel treatment described in Due Process Denied, a new book by Cynthia Hughes.
Hughes is the aunt of a J6 prisoner held in the Central Detention Facility in southeast Washington; a “gulag” so hell-like one defendant committed suicide rather than go back to jail. Hughes found “the majority of defendants in the DC jail were active or reservist military or veterans.” She observed how these men were treated on Veterans Day 2021, when a pre-trial detainee wouldn’t wear a COVID mask.
“The female guard became so enraged with the detainee that she unloaded several cans of Mace, and filled the entire pod with fumes. She had a gas mask on, but the men were dropping to their knees. Several of them were taken out on stretchers.”
She’s describing veterans awaiting trial – not convicted felons – in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day in a “generally unsanitary” section of the prison, denied adequate food and medical treatment, and still Hughes observed them gathering every night at 9 PM to sing the national anthem (this is confirmed by defense attorneys Joseph McBride and Bill Shipley). How can you read this and not want answers?
The abuse inside the J6 Block of the Central Detention Facility is in the USA – not some banana republic or Russia – but have either Biden or Trump said a damned thing about it? Those are veterans, Mr. Biden. Those are your supporters, Mr. Trump. Reduced to political pawns, and still they sing the National Anthem. But – now we know better – like don’t nominate Biden and Trump again.
America’s two political parties had better stop dividing America into Capulet and Montague voting blocs, because China and Russia plan on waging WWIII against a house divided. We need so-called liberals to support free speech and due process, and oppose prisoner abuse – and so-called patriots to accept election outcomes, avoid violence, and nominate statesmen that want to unite us.
And, if a Republican is elected president in 2024, her or his first act should be to pardon almost all of the January 6 intruders.
