New House Committee To Answer Burning Questions: What Did Nancy Pelosi Coup, And When Did She Coup It?
It's time to investigate the investigators! Again! And likely for the next two years, as Republicans take advantage of their exceedingly slim House majority to to try to prove that actually they're the real patriots, not a pack of fascists who tried to overthrow democracy. Toward that end, Republicans have established yet another subcommittee dedicated to probing the events of January 6, because Rep. Jim Jordan's whistleblower clown show over at the Judiciary Committee isn't stupid enough. This one is housed at the House Administration Committee and it's denominated the Subcommittee on Oversight, a title so un-catchy it could only have been cooked up by the backbench dinguses Speaker Kevin McCarthy parked in the hinterlands.
The subcommittee is chaired by Rep. Barry Loudermilk, who famously got crosswise with the real House January 6 Select Committee when he accused them of lying about him giving a tour to insurrectionists on January 5, only to have the committee release footage of him doing just that.
In his defense, Loudermilk really only let the "tourists" into the building on January 5, when the Capitol was closed to visitors. He abandoned them after about five minutes, leaving the group, which later swelled to 15 people, to wander unchaperoned for two hours and take pictures of the layout so they'd know where they were going when they came back the next day. Checkmate, libs!
And Loudermilk isn't subtle that his purpose is to undermine the January 6 Committee's work while simultaneously seeking revenge on people who were mean to him.
"Americans have very little confidence in the report that they put out," he whined to CBS. "And there's good reason. I mean, you even consider what they did to me, the false allegations that they made against me regarding the constituents that I had in my office in the office buildings — accusing me of giving reconnaissance tours."
"What I'd like to do is show what really happened on Jan. 6," he went on, explaining that his inquiry will focus on "where was the security failure and why were we not ready."
By which he means, he'd like to recast this whole thing as Rep. Nancy Pelosi's fault for not anticipating that Donald Trump would send a mob of crazed lunatics to overthrow the government.
"If we need to, we would like for her to come and talk to us about it," he blustered, promising to interrogate the behavior of January 6 committee members as well.
“We’re going to be looking at what happened in the Capitol. What happened leading up to it? How did we have such a security failure,” Loudermilk told CNN, which broke the news of the subcommittee's formation. “The January 6 committee, they didn’t take that approach. That should have been something that they looked it. I think they looked more on the political side of it.”
Loudermilk's efforts are being met with tepid response, even among his Republican colleagues.
“I think they need to watch a little less cable TV,” snarked Senator John Cornyn, while Rep. David Valadao wondered “if there’s anything legitimate that could come out at this point.”
And Speaker McCarthy teaming up with Tucker Carlson to whitewash the attempted coup by airing clips of the times when the mob wasn't screaming to hang Mike Pence or beating the shit out of cops isn't helping Loudermilk's efforts.
“I thought it was an insurrection at that time. I still think it was an insurrection today," Senator Mike Rounds told CNN.
“I think it’s bullshit,” Senator Thom Tillis agreed.
Even Loudermilk had to admit that giving the footage exclusively to Tucker so he could selectively edit it was slightly sub-ideal.
“I’ve seen videos of some terrible acts of violence. I mean it will turn your stomach,” he told CNN. “But the majority of the crowd here was not here doing that. And so I think the truth is going to be somewhere between the violent videos and the supposedly peaceful actions there.”
For their part, Democrats are coming out swinging.
“Extreme MAGA Members of Congress can try to spin Jan. 6, but they will hit a wall — because once you look at the video that the January 6 Select Committee showed (after security clearance from the Capitol Police), you can clearly see a mob viciously attacking police officers after being spun up by lies told by the ex-President,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a member of the January 6 Committee told Roll Call.
And Rep. Norma Torres, the ranking Democrat riding along for Loudermilk's dipshittery, was even more scathing.
"It serves no purpose other than if you are an insurrectionist or if you support an insurrectionist and want to portray a different story than what truly happened that day," she told CBS.
"It's unfortunate that this has become a political theater for them," said Torres, who was trapped on the upper balcony of the House chamber during the attack. "For them, it is a show. They want a different ending to the movie, to the horror show."
Which might shame a normal person, but no one's calling Loudermilk "normal." Nor are they calling him "competent" — he's one of the only people for whom the phrase "he's no Jim Jordan" is actually an insult.
Expect MEH things.
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Liz Dye lives in Baltimore with her wonderful husband and a houseful of teenagers. When she isn't being mad about a thing on the internet, she's hiding in plain sight in the carpool line. She's the one wearing yoga pants glaring at her phone.
