A Commemoration of January 6, 2021: ‘A Date Which Will Live In Infamy’

Never Forget. Never Forgive. And hold everyone involved in the violent MAGA/QAnon seditious insurrection on January 6, 2021 accountable at law. Every one of these traitors must pay the price for their crimes against the American people.

Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced plans for the Capitol to commemorate the horrific failed coup d’etat on January 6, 2021 – “a date which will live in infamy.” Pelosi announces plans to commemorate January 6 anniversary at US Capitol:

“These events are intended as an observance of reflection, remembrance and recommitment, in a spirit of unity, patriotism and prayerfulness,” Pelosi said in a letter to her Democratic colleagues.

Starting at noon on January 6, there will be a prayer and a moment of silence on the House floor followed by a “Historic Perspective” conversation between historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Jon Meacham “to establish and preserve the narrative of January 6th.”

Lawmakers will then share their accounts of the attack in a session presided over by Colorado Democratic Rep. Jason Crow, followed by a prayer vigil with members of the House and Senate on the steps of the Capitol.

The insurrection, which began as members of Congress worked to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election, commanded the nation’s attention as violent scenes of rioters attacking officers and destroying parts of the Capitol were broadcast live across the country. The ensuing chaos led to the deaths of multiple people the day of the attack or shortly thereafter, while several officers who responded to the Capitol during the attack later died by suicide.

More than 700 people have been charged by the Justice Department in connection with the riot, and the House select committee tasked with investigating the attack has interviewed scores of former President Donald Trump’s allies with a goal of providing an interim report with initial findings by next summer.

“January 6 was one of the darkest days in our democracy,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said. “It was a day when our nation’s capital was under attack, and I think there’s no question you’ll see us commemorate that day.”

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will deliver remarks on Thursday to mark the one-year anniversary of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, the White House said Sunday. Biden and Harris to deliver remarks on January 6 anniversary:

Their remarks will come alongside a slate of events prepared by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to commemorate the insurrection, including a moment of silence on the House floor and a prayer vigil on the steps of the Capitol.

UPDATE: Associated Press: “The president plans to deliver a speech on January 6 focused on sustaining democracy — voting rights won’t be part of the remarks but will be the topic of another speech soon.”

The failed coup leader who incited the MAGA/QAnon violent insurrection against the Capitol, now living in exile in Mar-a-Lago, plans counter-programming to promote his Big Lie. I’m certain that his fascist propaganda network will carry his counter-programming (“White Power Hour” host Tucker Carslon already produced and aired an alternate reality “false flag” conspiracy theory version of January 6, Tucker Carlson and the desperate, shoddy search for Jan. 6 ‘provocateurs’.)

Politico reports, At time of Capitol prayer service Jan. 6, Trump will deliver remarks doubling down on the ‘Big Lie’:

Donald Trump has already telegraphed the remarks he plans to give at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday, the anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

If he follows the script laid out in his announcement of the news conference, he will commit a whitewashing of the day, repeating the lie that the 2020 election was rigged and defending his part in fomenting the insurrection — all while a solemn prayer service is held at the Capitol, in a vivid split-screen moment. And, as Trump castigates Republicans not toeing his line, his event will also serve as a marker of Trump’s extraordinary dominion over the GOP.

One year ago, many prominent Republicans predicted Trump’s behavior on and ahead of Jan. 6 would relegate him to the fringes of the right, shaming the GOP back into the mainstream. Instead, the opposite has happened. When Trump speaks, he will set the table for a midterm election year with him firmly at the Republican Party’s center.

“It’s become almost a religion in the Republican Party,” [It’s a personality cult] said Jason Shepherd, the former Cobb County, Ga., GOP chair, who resigned from his local party after it voted to censure Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, one of Trump’s political enemies. “You have your believers, and you have your heretics, and anyone who isn’t willing to follow Trump 100 percent, or wants to question Trump, that’s now the new definition of a RINO“ (Republican in Name Only).

One year after the riot at the Capitol, nearly three-quarters of Republicans still believe Trump’s baseless claim that Joe Biden won the presidency due to voter fraud, according to a Monmouth University poll. Rank-and-file Republicans’ interest in litigating the events of Jan. 6 has faded. And according to a Quinnipiac University survey, nearly 8 in 10 Republicans want Trump to run for president again in 2024.

“It’s extraordinary,” said Ralph Reed, the Republican strategist and founder of the Faith & Freedom Coalition. “You could make the argument that he’s in a stronger position within the Republican Party today than he perhaps ever has been.”

“In many ways,” Reed continued, with Republican candidates across the country all clamoring for Trump’s endorsement, “the party may be moving in a more conservative fascist, more populist and more Trumpian direction with him out of office” than if he had been reelected. [There is nothing “conservative” about what is happening in hte GQP.]

[A] year later, Trump’s leadership of the party is indisputable. His political committees have amassed more than $100 million. His allies have expanded their reach throughout the party’s infrastructure in the states. And together with Trump, they are methodically running Trump-critical Republicans from the fold.

* * *

Early last year, Republicans’ enthusiasm for Trump appeared at least tempered by the events of Jan. 6. But evidence is everywhere that no longer is the case. In March, 79 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said it was important to prosecute people who rioted at the Capitol, according to a Pew Research Center poll. But by September, that percentage had fallen more than 20 percentage points, to 57 percent, and a majority of Republicans say too much attention is paid to the riot.

And among Republicans, the rear view of the riot has only gotten better for Trump. In a Quinnipiac University poll last fall, two-thirds of Republicans said they don’t view the riot at the Capitol as an attack on government, and 77 percent of Republicans say Trump bears no responsibility or not much responsibility for the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6. (Indeed, in a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll, more Republicans said congressional Democrats were responsible for the events of Jan. 6 than said Trump was responsible for it.) [They are all quite insane, living in an alterate reality.]

Nor is Trump shying away from that day. In announcing his “news conference” last month – it’s not a news conference if he does not face questioning from the media, and I do not mean the softballs lobbed by Peter Doocy from Fox –  Trump wrote, “remember, the insurrection took place on November 3rd, it was the completely unarmed protest of the rigged election that took place on January 6th.”

Trump’s “brand is fighting back on political correctness, and when you’re fighting like that, everything you do is on brand,” said a Jeff Roe, a Republican strategist who managed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign in 2016. “So it’s kind of hard to screw it up, because he’s always fighting.”

Of Trump’s ability to maintain support and generate crowds while out of office, Roe said, “It’s insane what he can do. Crazy. It’s almost like we’ve gotten used to it, but you stand back from it, it’s insane.” [He is correct, it is all quite insane.]

* * *

[T]he Jan. 6 select committee investigating Trump’s effort to overturn the result of the 2020 election is still working, with the potential that its findings will spark criminal prosecutions. In mid-December, the committee released a series of text messages from lawmakers and Fox News hosts urging Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to press Trump to do more to end the violence.

Huffington Post adds, Cheney: Trump Watched Jan. 6 Violence On TV, Ignored Pleas To Intervene:

President Donald Trump watched the Jan. 6 violence unfold at the U.S. Capitol from a television inside the White House and repeatedly resisted pleas for him to intervene, including those made by his own family, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said Sunday, citing what she called “first-hand testimony” obtained by the House committee investigating the attack.

“We know, as he was sitting there in the dining room next to the Oval Office, members of his staff were pleading with him to go on television to tell people to stop,” Cheney, who is vice chair of the committee, said in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.

“We know [House Republican Leader Kevin] McCarthy was pleading with him to do that,” she continued. “We have first-hand testimony that his daughter, Ivanka, went in at least twice, to ask him to please stop this violence.”

“The president could have at any moment, walked those very few steps into the briefing room, gone on live television, and told his supporters who were assaulting the Capitol to stop,” she said.

“We entrust the survival of our republic into the hands of the chief executive, and when a president refuses to tell the mob to stop, when he refuses to defend any of the coordinate branches of government, he cannot be trusted,” she continued, calling him “clearly unfit for future office.”

Politico continues:

“This Jan. 6 committee is going to have an impact on how everybody sees what happened that day, and how everybody sees Trump,” said Heckman, the Republican consultant. “Some of the stuff we’ve seen — the emails and texts that were going to Trump — have rattled a lot of people on the Republican side.”

You mean like this? Bernard Kerik provides batch of documents to Jan. 6 select committee:

A key adviser to Donald Trump’s legal team in their post-election quest to unearth evidence of fraud has delivered a trove of documents to Jan. 6 investigators describing those efforts.

Bernard Kerik, the former New York City Police commissioner and ally of Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, also provided a “privilege log” describing materials he declined to provide to the committee.

Among the withheld documents is one titled “DRAFT LETTER FROM POTUS TO SEIZE EVIDENCE IN THE INTEREST OF NATIONAL SECURITY FOR THE 2020 ELECTIONS.” Kerik’s attorney Timothy Parlatore provided the privilege log to the panel, which said the file originated on Dec. 17, a day before Trump huddled in the Oval Office with advisers including former Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, where they discussed the option of seizing election equipment in states whose results Trump was attempting to overturn.

Or like this? Donald Trump Planned to Stoke Unrest, Call Out Troops, General Milley Feared:

If law enforcement officials were all underplaying the possibilities for violence on January 6, Army Gen. Mark Milley was practically panicking. Milley had told his closest aides that he believed President Donald Trump was stoking unrest with the hope of using it as an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act, and thereby call out active duty military troops. Under the Act, those troops would then be relieved of the restrictions of Posse Comitatus, the Civil War-era law which limits the powers of the federal government to use military personnel to enforce the law. (One of the exceptions to Posse Comitatus is specifically when the president invokes the Insurrection Act.)

Milley told his closest colleagues that listening to the president was like reading George Orwell’s “1984”: “Lies are truth. Division is unity. Evil is good,” he said, according to Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker’s “I Alone Can Fix It.”

Breaking down the Trump conspiracy theories (lies), the Associated Press reports, Conspiracy theories paint fraudulent reality of Jan. 6 riot.

The Huffington Post adds, Some Of The Biggest Lies Being Spread About The Jan. 6 Insurrection.