Politifact’s 2021 Lie of the Year: Lies about the Jan. 6 Capitol attack and its significance

Politifact is out with its annual lie of the year. It’s really all part of the same Big Lie from too many sources to choose just one, but all of them come from anti-democracy seditious insurrectionist Republicans. The 2021 Lie of the Year: Lies about the Jan. 6 Capitol attack and its significance:

Shortly after 2 p.m. on Jan. 6, supporters cult followers of President Donald J. Trump breached the U.S. Capitol, turning the seat of American democracy into the scene of an unforgettable crime.

Inside, lawmakers had been preparing to count the Electoral College votes that would bring Trump’s presidency to a close. Outside, the rioters erected a hanging gallows. They waved “Trump 2020,” “Blue Lives Matter” and Confederate flags. Some were armed.

After marching down Pennsylvania Avenue at Trump’s urging, the rioters had overwhelmed police surrounding the Capitol. They pushed past them, stripped them of their weapons, dragged them to the ground, sprayed them with chemical irritants, beat them, bludgeoned them, or tased them.

Through clouds of smoke, they broke down barricades. They scaled the walls. They shattered windows. Congressional staff took cover in offices and closets, piling furniture against doors as the crowd snaked through the building’s historic hallways. The rioters forced their way into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. They entered the Senate chamber. They reached the dais, where Vice President Mike Pence had sat moments earlier.

Network and cable TV, plus internet sites, broadcast it all live for hours.

Around the nation, people called friends and family as the attack unfolded right before their eyes, expressing a mix of disbelief, horror and fascination:

“Can you believe this?”

Members of Congress, evacuated from their chambers with gas masks in tow, could hardly believe it themselves.

U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., called into CNN as the attack was happening. “I have not seen anything like this since I deployed to Iraq in 2007 and 2008,” he said. “I mean, this is America. And this is what’s happening right now. The president needs to call it off. Call it off. It’s over. The election is over.”

On the phone with Fox News that afternoon, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., condemned the attack as “un-American” and “unacceptable.”

“I have been in this Capitol for more than 10 years. I’ve never seen anything like this,” McCarthy said.

“Traitor” Kevin McCarthy then later lead 139 House Republicans in carrying out the insurrection plot from Trump lawyers John Eastman and Jenna Ellis (and others) to vote not to certify the Electoral College vote, even after the violent insurrection in the Capitol that threatened all of their lives, and resulted in five deaths, with more than 140 Capitol Police officers injured defending their sorry traitorous asses.

As the insurrectionists forced their way into the building, they chanted, “Fight for Trump!” and “Hang Mike Pence!”

Pence, as vice president, had the constitutional responsibility of overseeing the typically quiet certification of state election results by Congress. Although Trump urged Pence to reject results from the battleground states that gave Joe Biden his victory, Pence said he would not intervene, enraging the pro-Trump crowd.

As the chaos unfolded, Trump’s [propaganda] media supporters [and seditious insurrection collaborators] — who would later downplay and deny what happened in various ways — grew concerned and tried to get messages to the president.

Fox News personalities [seditious insurrection collaborators] went through his chief of staff Mark Meadows. ​​”Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home,” Laura Ingraham of Fox News wrote. “This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.” Sean Hannity and Brian Kilmeade sent similar messages to Meadows.

Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House leader, was able to reach the president directly to ask him to put a stop to what was going on. McCarthy would later evade questions about the call, but other House members said Trump told him, “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.“

[Shortly after] 4 p.m. [187 minutes of failing to defend the government of the United States against his private militia of domestic terrorist organizations and MAGA/QAnon thugs, in violation of his oath of office in an attempted coup d’etat], Trump finally asked his supporters to go home. “This was a fraudulent election [i.e., the original Big Lie]. But we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home, we love you. You’re very special” [he told his private militia of domestic terrorist organizations and MAGA/QAnon thugs.]

By the night’s end, democracy was still standing. But the manipulation of the narrative was already underway.

In the days that followed, Trump, some of the loudest and most influential members of the Republican Sedition Party and vocal partisan media personalities [propagandists] offered a deluge of justifications, excuses and conspiracy theories to reframe the events of Jan. 6 as no big deal.

• • • They said Jan. 6 was instigated by undercover left-wing activists who were part of antifa. That was proved false.
    • They said the rioters hadn’t used force and one Republican congressman likened the events to “a normal tourist visit.” Video proved that wrong.
    • They claimed the attack on the Capitol had nothing to do with race, even though white supremacists and far-right militia groups were among the most active participants, and many rioters wore racist t-shirts.
    • They suggested the whole affair was staged by the government, a false flag operation. Others suggested it was entirely a peaceful protest. All of that was wrong.
    • They said that the rioters were political prisoners and shouldn’t face serious charges. A host of federal judges and courts have held otherwise.

The political shapeshifting was striking. McCarthy at first said that “the president bears responsibility” for the riot. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called it a “failed insurrection,” said that “the mob was fed lies,” and argued that Trump was “practically and morally responsible for provoking the event of that day.”

But soon they tolerated bizarre claims from lawmakers in their ranks, such as that those arrested for rioting were treated worse than prisoners at Gitmo and that federal agents may have been instigators.

The two Republican leaders disparaged bipartisan efforts to investigate Jan. 6. “There is no new fact about that day that we need the Democrats’ extraneous ‘commission’ to uncover,” McConnell said in a statement.

Even Pence, whose [own] life was in danger, downplayed the unprecedented attack as just “one day in January.”

PolitiFact had many options to choose from for our Lie of the Year: claims that the 2020 election was stolen, claims that the COVID vaccine didn’t work, and this one, lies about the Capitol insurrection.

We picked these lies for two reasons. First, the attack was historically important; a federal judge called it “the most significant assault on the Capitol since the War of 1812.” While some members of Congress lodged protests when the Electoral College count was close, as in 2000, or when individual states had close margins, like Ohio in 2004, never before had Americans overtaken the Capitol to hold up electoral proceedings and threaten lawmakers. In fact, “the peaceful transfer of power” has long been a hallmark phrase in describing, with pride, the American experience.

Second, the events of Jan. 6 were widely broadcast on that day and many days afterward, allowing the public to see for itself exactly what happened. The body of evidence includes direct video documentation and many eyewitness accounts. So efforts to downplay and deny what happened are an attempt to brazenly recast reality itself.

“It’s meant to sow doubt and make us unable to react in the ways we need to react to what is actually a threat to democracy,” said Kate Starbird, an associate professor and expert in misinformation at the University of Washington.

Lies about the Jan. 6 Capitol attack and its significance is the 2021 Lie of the Year. 

Politifact then goes through a litany of the many lies told by anti-democracy seditious insurrectionist Republicans and by their fascist propaganda media personalities and seditious insurrection collaborators. It’s a long disturbing read about morally depraved Republicans without conscience who are disloyal and traitors to their country, in thrall to a personality cult of Donald Trump and QAnon.

Politifact concludes:

It’s a sign that elections could remain a contested space for years to come, as Republican grievances about the outcome of the 2020 election fuel the rewriting of election laws around the country. And it’s a sign that Jan. 6 downplay and denial could be hardening into yet another litmus test for Republicans. Primaries in 2022 are shaping up to be contests where pro-Trump loyalists challenge anyone who dissents.

“We are in an extremely dangerous place,” said Thornton. “An attack on your Capitol where people are threatening to murder the vice president is bad enough, but when you have a political party — one of two in our country — that are downplaying or diverting or misrepresenting, it’s extremely upsetting. I don’t know how we come back from that.“

There is only one answer to this question: loyal patriotic Americans who love their country, the Constitution, and American democracy must reject Sedition Party candidates at every level of elected office from president all the way down to your local school board and fire and water districts. The fascist Sedition Party must be soundly defeated and rejected at every level of elected office, or the great American experiment in democracy will fail (temporarily).

Even if the fascist Sedition Party is rewarded by disloyal Americans who have lost faith in America and prefer white Christian nationalism under an authoritarian GQP regime, they will quickly come to find that there are a large number of loyal Americans who are true to our American ideals who will form a Resistance movement to their fascist GQP authoritarian regime, as French citizens formed a Resistance movement to the Vichy Nazi collaborators during World War II. The fascist GQP’s temporary victory will be short lived. Loyal Americans will rise up and take back their country from these fascist traitors and restore American democracy.

The personality cult of Donald Trump and QAnon will be consigned to the ash heap of history in the end, I promise you.