They Were Not Tourists: The Radicals At The Heart Of The Capitol Riot
HuffPost
On the six-month anniversary of the insurrection, Republicans are trying to convince America it wasn't that big a deal.
A collection of rightly concerned patriots. Confused tourists. A motley band of hapless, harmless dopes. In the six months since the dramatic conflict at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, large parts of the Republican Party, working alongside the right-wing media machine, have labored to make the case that what happened that day was no big deal. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) argued that it was not an insurrection, but a “largely peaceful protest.” Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) — who can be seen in photos from Jan. 6 looking horrified as he rushed to barricade the House gallery doors to stop the rioters from entering — called the riot a “normal tourist visit.” Fox News megastar Tucker Carlson has even asserted that perhaps the uprising was a false flag event orchestrated by the FBI. There were indeed some people at the Capitol who were basically harmless and have claimed they didn’t realize what would happen. A 49-year-old Indiana woman was sentenced this week in federal court on a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge for being inside the Capitol for only 10 minutes, during which she didn’t break anything or assault anyone, prosecutors say. She won’t serve prison time. “I would have never been there if I had known it would turn out that way,” she said at her sentencing, while apologizing to the “American people.”More Related News