Jan. 6 video is damning. Let's make a similar one about the summer 2020 riots
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There are plenty of Republicans who don’t like Donald Trump and believe his “Stop the Steal” was unalloyed B.S.; that the Capitol riot was Trump’s doing and should have carried the T*R*U*M*P brand as much as any of his jumbo jets or luxury towers or vulgar products from vodka to steaks to phony university degrees.
We probably represent one-third of the party.
A much larger segment, 80% of Republicans, told a PBS NewsHour Marist poll soon after the riot that they “oppose/strongly oppose” “the actions of Trump supporters who broke into the U.S. Capitol.”
If the Democrats and their House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack were trying to convince all Americans that the riot was an outrageous violation of American norms, they were preaching to the choir. The vast majority of even Republicans already believe that.
Democrats and the media acted 'hand in glove'
I agree with former “Fox News Sunday” moderator Chris Wallace – who is no fan of Trump – when he told his now CNN audience it was “a bad look” for the Democrats and the sympathetic mainstream media to seem to collude on Thursday night’s prime-time special. As the Hill reported:
“Wallace cited a couple of reasons, including the 'hype' and 'over-selling' of the committee.
“You’ve got Jamie Raskin, one of the members of the committee, saying ‘this is going to blow the roof off the House,’ you’ve got Adam Kinzinger saying ‘It’s going to change history.’
“He also mentioned the hiring of a former ABC executive to produce the event. ‘I think that’s a bad look both for the committee and the mainstream media to seem that they are hand in glove with each other.’ ”
Hand in glove.
Meanwhile, New York Times ignores Kavanaugh
Many on the right noticed that while The New York Times splashed the committee hearings all over its front page, it consigned the story of the would-be murder of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to page A20 on the very day the hearings opened.
Had a man dressed in commando black shown up at the house of, say, liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor, and told investigators he planned to break into her house and kill her, The Times probably would have cared.
Another view: Trump trashes daughter Ivanka for being honest about Jan. 6
But Kavanaugh is a conservative justice who seems poised to join the court majority in overturning Roe v. Wade. So The Times and other major newspapers couldn’t work up much interest in a would-be killer in the judge’s neighborhood armed with a Glock 17, two magazines loaded with bullets, a tactical knife and what could have been the accoutrements of torture – zip ties, duct tape, a hammer, screwdriver and nail punch.
Had all the roles been reversed, The Times’ stable of liberal columnists would have harrumphed for days that a Republican White House had not only refused to condemn the conservative protesters who descended on liberal justices’ homes, but even encouraged it – paving the way for a guy with a Glock.
They would have thundered against a Republican Senate majority leader who had, Chuck Schumer-like, threatened Sotomayor by name with “(you’ll) reap the whirlwind” and “pay the price.”
What the Jan. 6 committee's video didn't show
The point here is not to accuse the national media of bias. It is biased. That’s the nature of the beast. But it is to expose the appalling lack of self-awareness on the left when it comes to political violence.
The centerpiece of Thursday’s prime-time hearing was a video that took some of the very worst images of violence on Jan. 6, 2021, and compressed it into an 11-minute montage of visual TNT.
It was an impressive display of media manipulation that would have shaken me had I not known some larger truths.
First, that all that mob violence that day led to what? A Mexican stand-off? A shootout with the National Guard? An indisputable insurrection and occupation of the U.S. Capitol?
No.
When the National Guard finally showed up, five hours late, they cleared the grounds quickly and without much incident. Congress took up the business of the Electoral College and completed their task that night.
Second, in all the violence at the Capitol that day, from the assaults on police officers, to the breaking into buildings, to the gallows and noose, you can find the precursor by a factor of 10 in the summer riots of 2020 – a montage of left-wing violence the Democrats choose to ignore.
The left reacted to its own violence with a yawn
Conservatives should respond to Thursday’s 11-minute video with 11 minutes of its own – visual TNT that depicts the summer of left-wing violence in all its 25 deaths and $2 billion worth of damage, including:
The driver who ran down and maimed three police officers in Buffalo, N.Y.
The protester who struck a federal marshal in the head with a four-pound metal hammer in Portland, Ore.
The mob in Chicago’s Grant Park that threw fireworks, frozen water bottles and other projectiles at police officers, injuring 49 of them.
The person who gunned down an elderly Black Trump supporter in Milwaukee.
The guillotines, not nooses, in Ferguson, Mo.; in Portland; in Washington, D.C.; and in Phoenix.
How did the left react to all this violence committed by its own mob?
It yawned.
No, it more than yawned. In fact, the right could take the best sound bites of the summer of 2020 and play them over images of burning police precincts and toppling statues:
Hawk Newsome, president of Greater New York Black Lives Matter: “If this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it.”
Chris Cuomo, CNN news anchor: “Show me where it says protesters are supposed to be polite and peaceful.”
We must condemn violence on both sides
After using those quotes, the right could do like the select committee and spice up its film with tweets like this one written after photos showed rioters spray painting “1619” on toppled statues of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln:
Nikole Hannah-Jones, editor of The New York Times’ 1619 Project: “It would be an honor (to call them the ‘1619 riots’).”
I will gladly join the American left in condemning political violence that shook the foundations of our country on Jan. 6, 2021, and throughout the summer of 2020. In fact, we should condemn all and any violence used to press a political agenda.
The moment is prime.
Even as the Jan. 6 committee prepares to reconvene, leftist thugs are attacking anti-abortion pregnancy centers and churches all across the country.
This would be a good moment to care.
Phil Boas is an editorial columnist. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Jan. 6 video is damning. Make another one about the 2020 riots
