What Are Republicans Giving Trump For Three-Year Anniversary Of January 6? Undying Loyalty!
Third anniversary gift is also 'leather,' so whooo boy.
A new poll shows that, three years after the violent attempt by Donald Trump’s invited mob of insurrectionists to overturn the 2020 election, Republicans are actually more loyal to Trump (Washington Post gift link). They’re also more willing to say he bears no responsibility for the January 6, 2021, invasion of the Capitol, which maybe was done by Antifa, federal agents, or GCI special effects experts working for George Soros. (We made up that last one. OR DID WE?)
The Washington Post-University of Maryland poll found that Republicans are
now less likely to believe Jan. 6 participants were “mostly violent,” less likely to believe Trump bears responsibility for the attack and are slightly less likely to view Joe Biden’s election as legitimate than they were in a December 2021 Post-UMD survey.
One of the poll’s top-line findings was that repeating the Big Lie for years has been successful: Fewer Republicans now believe that Joe Biden really won the 2020 election than they did in December 2021, a year after J6, slipping from 39 percent to just 31 percent now. All in all, 35 percent of Americans don’t believe Biden won legitimately, Crom help us. WaPo breaks down the results a bit further:
Older Americans are slightly more likely than younger ones to say Biden was legitimately elected, as are voters with college degrees. About 3 in 10 people who get most of their information from Fox News think Biden won legitimately in 2020.
And in follow-up interviews, “several” voters told the Post they believe the conspiracy lie — even though it’s been disproven again and again, including in the recent defamation lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani — that the election in Georgia was stolen by Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss and a “suitcase” full of fake ballots.
In terms of national sanity, the poll does at least show that a majority of Americans (just 55 percent, though) agree that the January 6 storming of the Capitol was “an attack on democracy that should never be forgotten,” but only because a large majority of Democrats (86 percent) and a slim majority of independents (53 percent) agree. 72 percent of Republicans and 80 percent of Trump voters selected the other option, that it’s “time to move on,” because why are Democrats stuck in the distant past, at least when they want to erase history by removing Confederate monuments? Here is some graph porn for you:
Years of rightwing media and politicians lying that the Capitol invaders were merely tourists or elderly folks visiting their elected representatives have also had an effect, with only 18 percent of Republicans saying the rioters were “mostly violent” (way down from 26 percent in 2021). Democrats (77 percent) and independents (54 percent) largely agree the protesters were violent, basically unchanged from 2021.
As for Trump’s responsibility for January 6, the man who urged his MAGA Chud followers “Be there, will be wild” gets even more of a free pass than he did in 2021. Back in those ancient times, only 28 percent of Republicans said Trump bore “a great deal” or “a good amount” of responsibility for the attacks, but now that’s slipped by almost half, with only 14 percent saying it was his fault.
Isn’t propaganda amazing?
“In the beginning when I heard about it, I was very upset that Trump didn’t come out and say, ‘Stop,’” said Gloria Bowden of Jacksonville, Fla., a 68-year-old independent voter who leans Republican. But now, having seen video clips of police using tear gas and rubber bullets on rioters, she thinks the attack was instigated by law enforcement.
“I still wish he would have [told people to leave the Capitol earlier], but I don’t know that it would have mattered,” Bowden said. “It was planned.” She found the House hearings “totally one-sided,” and criticism of Trump over the past three years has led her to empathize more with his reluctance to intervene during the riot. “The man had been through so much in four years that at one point you finally say, ‘Let them do it,’” she said.
That poor man. Maybe he should be king forever.
Also too, most Americans (56 percent) believe Trump is guilty of a crime related to January 6, but only 18 percent of Republicans do. But at least there’s broad agreement on one thing: 71 percent of Americans believe that if he’s not the winner in 2024, Donald Trump won’t accept the results of the election. That belief is even shared by almost half of Republicans (45 percent) while 73 percent of independents and 93 percent of Democrats expect him to be a sore loser.
This is where we add that we bet a lot of Republicans had their fingers crossed when they said sure, the Great Man would concede, plus whatever percentage might think he’d concede if he lost, but there’s no way he could lose.
[WaPo (gift link) / Poll results (PDF) / Crosstabs]
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A third of Americans are completely out of touch with reality. Yes, we knew that, but it's still jarring to see evidence.
Jeff Tiedrich has something to say:
"if you can’t denounce slavery, because doing so would anger your base, you’re on the wrong side.
if you can’t denounce Nazis chanting “Jews will not replace us,” because doing so would anger your base, you’re on the wrong side.
if you can’t denounce razor wire death traps in the Rio Grande, because doing so would anger your base, you’re on the wrong side.
if you can’t denounce a bunch of elderly white men deciding which women get to have healthcare, because doing so would anger your base, you’re on the wrong side.
and if you can’t denounce a certain 91-criminal-count fluorescent tangerine fuckface for stealing classified war plans and trying to overthrow his own government, because doing so would anger your base, you are definitely on the wrong fucking side."