Former State Senator Kirsten Engel challenged Juan Ciscomani and State Senator Kelly Townsend to disavow the Republican National Committee’s recent statements calling the January 6th attempted coup a “legitimate public discourse.”
“We all saw what happened 13 months ago. Barricades were toppled, police officers beaten, and the halls of Congress stormed by insurrectionists attempting to prevent Congress from doing its job. The building was overrun, lives were lost, and millions around the world watched an angry mob seize control of the United States Capitol,” Engel said.
“The January 6 attack was domestic terrorism, plain and simple.”
Engel is an educator, environmental attorney, and a mom who has spent her career fighting for the public interest. She’s running for Congress in Tucson to fight for a better, safer, and more equitable city.
The Republican Party declared on February 4, 2022, that this attack on our democracy was “legitimate political discourse.” The Republican National Committee also voted to censure two House Republicans who participated in the subsequent investigation, which the RNC claimed “crossed the line,” claiming the investigation was “persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse that had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol.”
“This vote declaring the January 6 attack “legitimate political discourse” was not taken at a meeting of the John Birch Society. It wasn’t taken at a Q-anon gathering or even at a Freedom Caucus meeting. No, this vote legitimizing the attack on our capitol was taken by the Republican National Committee,” Engel said. “Which begs the question, do my Republican opponents agree with their party? I am calling on State Sen. Kelly Townsend and Juan Ciscomani to immediately and unequivocally disavow this reprehensible vote.”
“I understand we have political disagreements. Those disagreements are legitimate and frankly healthy in a campaign like this. But we should all be able to come together to denounce domestic terrorism when we see it.”
Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) criticized the Republican National Committee and broke with their language on the Jan. 6, 2021 riot, calling it a “violent insurrection.”
“It was a violent insurrection with the purpose of trying to prevent a peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election. … That’s what it was,” McConnell said.
For more information visit www.EngelForArizona.com.
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The problem Kirsten Engel faces is Republican voters in the new GQP-leaning district created by the “Independent” Redistricting Commission that she is runnng in.
The Washington Post reports, “Almost half of Republicans say Trump bears no blame for Jan. 6 — and that he likely won in 2020”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/09/poll-trump-riot-election/
Nearly two-thirds of Republicans think that Trump probably or definitely won the election. And nearly 6 in 10 think he bears no responsibility at all for the violence and destruction of Jan. 6. In total, about half of Trump’s party hold both views.
On Tuesday, the Pew Research Center released new polling that shows how the false belief that Trump actually won in 2020 overlaps with skepticism about both Trump’s role in the day’s violence and the efforts to understand fully how it occurred.
Pew found that only about 1 in 3 Republicans think Joe Biden won the 2020 election, and only about 14 percent of them say he definitely won, which he did. In other words, six out of every seven Republicans are unwilling to say that Biden definitely won. Instead, a third say Trump probably won — somehow — and almost another third say Trump definitely won. By now, this position is simply an act of faith, a rejection of all available evidence in deference to a feeling. It’s still remarkable in scale.
The polling also found that people whose views were furthest from reality on the results of the 2020 election were also those most eager to downplay what occurred at the Capitol. For example, 7 in 10 Republicans who say Trump probably won in 2020 think that too much attention has been paid to Jan. 6. That position was held by 9 in 10 of those who say Trump definitely won.
Predictably, those two groups were also more likely to say they have no confidence that the bipartisan House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack would act in a fair or reasonable way.
-Republicans have fully embraced the Big Lie and resorting to mob violence as a means of obtaining political power. They are a MAGA/QAnon cult and defending the cult is their only motivation.