It’s ‘Stunning’ How Republicans Are Silent on Pro-January 6 Rally
Capitol Police chief: The department has been ‘working to ensure that we do not have a repeat of January 6’
Washington DC is girding Saturday for the return of supporters of Donald Trump — including potentially the same violent domestic terrorists who took part in the storming of the US Capitol Building on January 6.
Protective fencing — which was omnipresent around Capitol Hill for months following the January 6 insurrection — has gone back up in anticipation of the Saturday event, which organizers say is in “solidarity” with those who took part in the January 6 riots and many of whom remain behind bars or are receiving stiff prison terms for the roles they played.
More specifically, the “Justice for the J6” event seeks to portray those violent extremists who destroyed property and beat police during the insurrection of January 6 as persecuted “political prisoners.”
The insurrectionists took part in the events of January 6 in the hopes of overturning the legal and legitimate certification of Joe Biden as the next president of the United States.
“The U.S. Capitol Police Department has been working around the clock for the last several weeks to ensure that we have a safe event tomorrow, but perhaps more importantly, over the last eight months, the leadership of the U.S. Capitol Police Department has been preparing, working to ensure that we do not have a repeat of January 6,” said Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger.
A few elected Republicans, such as Rep Matt Gaetz of Florida, are speaking up about the “Justice for J6” event.
However, many Republicans have decided that it's politically smarter just to remain silent, according to Katty Kay, a British journalist who regularly appears on MSNBC's Morning Joe program.
“On the one hand, they can’t afford to totally alienate the base that still thinks and Trump supporters who still think that the people who are here on January 6 were righteous in some way or justified in some way,” Kay said. “They still see them as sort of heroic, which is why they planned this rally in the first place for Saturday. So, they don’t want to alienate those folks, but on the other hand they realize that every time they’re talking about January 6, it's a win effectively, just politically for Democrats. Republicans would much rather be focused on Joe Biden, on the problems in the administration, on Afghanistan, on budget issues, on big spending, on socialism, that kind of thing.
“They don’t want to be focused on January 6. So it is no surprise that Republicans are kind of scampering away from this one, but it is tricky for them to come out outright and condemn it when you have Donald Trump dropping a statement the day before saying, effectively, he supports the righteousness of the people who are doing this,” she added.
Correction: An early version of this story misidentified Katty Kay. It is now corrected.
Do you find this post of value?
Please share it…