Shortly after the dust settled on Jan. 6, 2021, Donald Trump\u2019s allies went to great and strained lengths to distance the then-president from the insurrectionists who had stormed the U.S. Capitol. They falsely linked the attack to antifa and supposed government \u201cprovocateurs\u201d \u2014 claims that had no basis then and still don\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese people don\u2019t look like Trump supporters,\u201d Newsmax host Greg Kelly claimed. Fox News host Laura Ingraham declared rioters to be \u201cpeople who can only be described as antithetical to the MAGA movement.\u201d Trump\u2019s impeachment lawyers claimed he was \u201chorrified\u201d by the violence.<\/p>\n
In the intervening four years, though, Trump himself has expressed an increasing amount of sympathy for the rioters \u2014 not just for their humanity and purported legal persecution (he has repeatedly floated pardons), but also for their actions. He has clearly sought to retcon that day from one of national shame to one that is to be, in many ways, celebrated.<\/p>\n
That culminated Wednesday night with a very choice word: \u201cwe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Appearing at a town hall hosted by Univision, Trump was confronted by a self-identified Republican named Ramiro Gonz\u00e1lez who cast Trump\u2019s actions surrounding Jan. 6 as a dealbreaker for him. Gonz\u00e1lez challenged Trump to win his support.<\/p>\n
But Trump made no apologies for that day. What he instead did was actually link himself to the rioters \u2014 stronger than he ever has before.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were no guns down there; we didn\u2019t have guns,\u201d Trump said, before repeating: \u201cThe others had guns, but we didn\u2019t have guns.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first thing to note is that\u2019s false; Trump supporters did have guns and many other weapons. But also consider what Trump has done rhetorically. He cast the insurrectionists as a \u201cwe.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s actually not the first time Trump has seemed to do this. But the last time, Trump\u2019s comments weren\u2019t so clear, and he apparently caught himself. At last month\u2019s presidential debate, Trump cited \u201cwe\u201d before shifting to \u201cthis group of people.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd nobody on the other side was killed,\u201d Trump said during the debate, while noting the death of his supporter, Ashli Babbitt, who was shot while crawling through a broken window close to the House chamber. Trump added, \u201cBut we didn\u2019t do \u2014 this group of people that have been treated so badly,\u201d without finishing the thought.<\/p>\n
In fact, five police officers died shortly after the Jan. 6 attack. And if Trump\u2019s meaning during the debate wasn\u2019t clear, it became abundantly clear Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
The police are the \u201cother side\u201d and \u201cthe others.\u201d The insurrectionists are \u201cwe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Given his stilted response at the debate, there\u2019s some question about how intentional this is and whether Trump merely slipped up by calling the rioters \u201cwe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump clearly wants people to forget and misunderstand the events of Jan. 6, because it was the biggest stain on his presidency; a historic number of Republicans voted to impeach and convict him over it, and many others acquitted him only on a technicality \u2014 while still blaming him to varying degrees.<\/p>\n
You could also certainly argue that Trump casting this as a day to celebrate serves his more authoritarian impulses; these were people who rose up in his name, and there\u2019s plenty of evidence that he liked that and wants to promote that sort of impulse in his base.<\/p>\n
And there\u2019s evidence that his and his allies\u2019 efforts at Jan. 6 revisionism have blunted its impact on the 2024 campaign. Republican voters have effectively dismissed this as a concern and overwhelmingly embraced him. The most striking poll, in mid-2022, showed the percentage of Republicans calling it a \u201clegitimate protest\u201d had surged, while those calling it an \u201cinsurrection\u201d and even a \u201criot\u201d fell sharply from just a year prior. More actually labeled it a \u201clegitimate protest\u201d than a \u201criot.\u201d<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s also danger with the broader electorate in so closely associating yourself with the rioters, whom Americans writ large have little sympathy for.<\/p>\n
A Washington Post\/University of Maryland poll this year showed just 12 percent of Americans said the rioters \u201cdefended democracy,\u201d while a clear majority \u2014 58 percent \u2014 said they \u201cthreatened democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are also limits to an embrace of the rioters even in the GOP. Fewer than half of Republicans in that poll agreed with Trump that the Jan. 6 defendants\u2019 punishments were \u201ctoo harsh.\u201d Another poll last year showed just 24 percent of Republican primary voters preferred a candidate who supported those who entered the Capitol.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s possible that has changed somewhat as Trump has increasingly bear-hugged the rioters as the 2024 election has worn on; we don\u2019t have a lot of good, more recent data.<\/p>\n
But those numbers would seem to confirm that Trump is truly testing Americans\u2019 willingness to write off that day and his supporters\u2019 willingness to lump themselves in with that \u201cwe.\u201d And it\u2019s not just a 2024 election issue; it\u2019s also a more lasting test for the strength of our democracy.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Shortly after the dust settled on Jan. 6, 2021, Donald Trump\u2019s allies went to great and strained lengths to distance the then-president from the insurrectionists who had stormed the U.S. Capitol. They falsely linked the attack to antifa and supposed government \u201cprovocateurs\u201d \u2014 claims that had no basis then and still don\u2019t. \u201cThese people don\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11252,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}