Dinesh D'Souza Pretty Sure Capitol Attack Just Kids Bein' Rowdy!
On January 6, a MAGA mob attacked the Capitol on behalf of the previous White House occupant. Violent thugs shouted “Hang Mike Pence!" because the former vice president refused to overturn President Joe Biden's completely legal victory. This was without question an attempted insurrection and failed coup. Seven people died as a result. It was a dark day for the United States after a four-year presidential eclipse.
We have to keep repeating this because Republicans would prefer we forget. I used to find it tiresome that people insisted we #NeverForget September 11, because how could a major terrorist attack on US soil ever slip our minds? Politicians don't wear those flag pins for nothing. But January 6 is politically inconvenient for Republicans.
Republicans, including Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, have shamelessly suggested that the people dressed like Trump supporters and clearly acting on his behalf weren't really Trump supporters. That's just one part of the GOP disinformation campaign. They're also downplaying the entire attack. Last week, during a radio interview, Johnson questioned whether you could even call it an “armed insurrection," asking, "When you hear of armed, don't you think of firearms?"
Uh ... no.
In fact, last summer, police claimed protesters were attacking them with “pre-staged bricks" and “cement-filled water bottles." The previous White House occupant declared that protesters had weaponized cans of soup. Conservatives insisted the hatchets and knives found at campsites for the homeless in Seattle were “deadly weapons."
Johnson had more questions:
"Here's the questions I would have liked to ask. How many firearms were confiscated? How many shots were fired? I'm only aware of one, and I'll defend that law enforcement officer for taking that shot, it was a tragedy, but I think there was only one."
There were very few actual shots fired during the unrest in Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle, and Kenosha, Wisconsin, but Republicans declared those cities disaster areas and "anarchist jurisdictions."
Which brings us to Dinesh D'Souza.
I usually make a point of ignoring conservative Twitter troll Dinesh D'Souza, but the bullshit he's spouting about the January 6 siege is consistent with the developing Republican party line. D'Souza told his college ex Laura Ingraham that the insurrection we saw with our own eyes didn't actually happen. Reality is just a leftwing narrative.
D'SOUZA: As you mention, the only shot fired in the Capitol on January 6 was the shot fired by a policeman into Ashli Babbitt's neck.
Ingraham spent the better part of last year denouncing riots where zero shots were fired. She conflated peaceful protesters with looters and called them “domestic terrorists" out to “murder America." She stated that "These ... acts of violence are part of a coordinated effort to eventually overthrow the United States government. It's well-funded and it's well organized on social media." That's what she said when random people burned a CVS.
Now she smiles and nods when D'Souza shrugs off a violent mob attacking the US Capitol.
D'SOUZA: This was a bunch of rowdy people walking through a hallway.
IN THE US CAPITOL! WHICH THEY BROKE INTO!
Congressional staffers were hiding for hours under tables in the dark. The vice president was relocated for his own safety. Deranged thugs shouted, “Where are you, Nancy?" while stalking the hallways like killers in a slasher movie.
The McCloskeys, that gun-toting St. Louis couple, freaked the fuck out when “rowdy people" walked down their private street, and they warned Americans at the Republican National Convention about how their personal nightmare could become everyone's normal Tuesday if Joe Biden became president.
D'SOUZA: And yet you will notice there never was any video of Brian Sicknick being hit on the head with a fire extinguisher. The New York Times made that up, attributed to unnamed sources and never published a correction, they just later said, "well the story has been updated because there's been new facts that have come in.
This is just sick. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick was murdered on January 6. Maybe he wasn't hit in the head with a fire extinguisher. Bad New York Times! Maybe he died in some other, equally horrible way. But the man is dead, and he wouldn't be if that piece of shit Trump hadn't incited a mob to attack the Capitol.
The Washington Post reported that 140 officers were injured during the siege. Officers sustained head injuries, cracked ribs, and smashed spinal disks. One officer was stabbed with a metal fence stake. Sicknick died at the scene, but two other officers later died by suicide.
"I've talked to officers who have done two tours in Iraq who said this was scarier to them than their time in combat," acting D.C. police chief Robert J. Contee III said at a news conference earlier this month.
Your Fox News-viewing relatives won't immediately cancel D'Souza for his garbage, nor will they boycott Ingraham's show because she agreed with him. But they are the same people who insisted that Barack Obama “hated cops" if he didn't make the sign of the cross and kneel whenever discussing the police.
I hate to break it to you, but these people never cared about “blue lives." They're only afraid of Black lives. A mostly white mob storming the Capitol and hunting down elected officials doesn't keep them up at night.
And that should scare us all, because it means they won't care if/when it happens again.
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Stephen Robinson is a writer and social kibbitzer based in Portland, Oregon. He writes make believe for Cafe Nordo, an immersive theatre space in Seattle. Once, he wrote a novel called “Mahogany Slade,” which you should read or at least buy. He's also on the board of the Portland Playhouse theatre. His son describes him as a “play typer guy."
