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July 27, 2021 08:30 AM UTC

Witness The Depth Of Republican Depravity

  • 20 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik.

Today, the U.S. House select committee investigating the deadly pro-Trump assault on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th is holding its first hearings, taking witness testimony from U.S. Capitol Police officers who defended the building and helped lawmakers flee to secure areas as insurrectionists stormed through smashed windows and doors.

Outside the hearing, as Fox News reports, Republicans who tried desperately to stop this investigation from taking place at all offered their latest spin on the events of January 6th. We had to read this twice to make sure it wasn’t a parody:

House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and other House GOP leaders blasted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Tuesday morning, accusing her of being ultimately responsible for security failures at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6…

“Dec. 14, the leadership knew there was a problem,” McCarthy said. “Even prior to that, an Inspector General report told us there was failed leadership at the top of the police for the training.” The minority leader noted that no hearing was held to address that report.

House Republican Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., echoed this, claiming that in December 2020 Pelosi “was made aware of potential security threats to the Capitol and she failed to act.”

Insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, January 6th 2021.

The New York Daily News has the quote from Rep. Elise Stefanik today that has jaws agape from coast to coast:

“The truth (is) that Nancy Pelosi bears responsibility as Speaker of the House for the tragedy that occurred on Jan. 6,” said Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the No. 3 House Republican. [Pols emphasis]

On January 13th, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy stated unequivocally that “the president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters.” The insurrectionists who smashed their way into the U.S. Capitol on January 6th were not random tourists, they were there with the expressed purpose of disrupting the certification of the 2020 presidential election in hope that might somehow help defeated Republican President Donald Trump cling to power.

You know that. We know that. Kevin McCarthy and Elise Stefanik know it too.

So what’s going on here? It’s simple, really: the GOP is a party completely given over to post-truth reinvention of history, so turning the story of January 6th on its head to recast the victims as guilty for the attack is as natural for them as it is outrageous to everyone else. By giving voice to the utterly outlandish idea that Democrats somehow brought this violence on themselves, Republican leaders have given Republican voters desperate to reconcile these events with their own values will something–anything–to cling to. And that’s all it takes.

In the end, what “post-truth” Republicans say doesn’t have to make sense. If you’re outraged, you’re just not the target audience for it. Republicans who know what their leaders are saying is preposterous fiction, and they most certainly do exist, cannot say anything for fear of ending up the next Liz Cheney.

Whatever happens next, today marks another low moment: for Kevin McCarthy and Elise Stefanik, for the GOP, and for American democracy as a whole. Unless American voters stop rewarding Republicans’ increasingly diabolical behavior in the era of Trump, we are all debased with them.

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20 thoughts on “Witness The Depth Of Republican Depravity”

  2. Depravity, sedition, treason.

    And the response from McCarthy and Stefanik is: Pelosi is to blame for letting us do what we did.

    To be a follower of the Seditionist Trump is to be as anti-Constitution and as un-America as it is possible to be in 2021.

    2. The Republicans are worse than the seditious Southerners at the start of the Civil War. At the start of the Civil War the Southerners were honest about their sedition and left Washington to return to the South.

    1. No, that would be assaulting an elected official, but if you want to tweet out Pelosi's whereabouts during a violent insurrection, that would be OK.

    2. Nah, that smirk is proof positive that she knows that McCarthy knows that everything he’s slinging is unserious blargle and steaming crapola . . .

      . . . She doesn’t play poker.

      She’s as good as any fact-checker right there.

  4. I'm watching the Jan 6th hearing and it's heartbreaking and sobering.  I'm so grateful to these police officers for their actions that day. 

  5. The Capitol Violence Select Committee is very consciously modeled on the Benghazi Select Committee. 

    Republicans are choosing poorly in comparison.

     * There had been multiple previous investigations of Benghazi completed, yet Republicans in the majority voted for another.  While several committees are looking at the Capitol violence, I don't believe any has completed work and issued a report.

     * For Benghazi, there was Democratic consideration of a boycott, not participating because it would be a naked exercise in partisan "fact" finding.  But they eventually assigned a full complement of Representatives who wanted full disclosure.  McCarthy chose to pull Republicans and threatened to punish any who joined without his appointment.

     * For Benghazi, one relevant factor was the diminished security budget for the State Department facilities.  While some partisans pointed to that, I don't believe any Representative, let alone one in leadership, attempted to lay blame for the events on Republican priorities.  There was inquiry into why the Americans were there and what resources they had, and what could be found out about the attackers.  As pointed out in this article, Republican leaders are already trying to assign blame to Pelosi, inaccurately assigning control.  As was reported shortly after the event,

    Capitol Police are responsible for security on the grounds of the Capitol and protecting Congress, along with the House and Senate sergeants-at-arms. 

    “No one person oversees USCP — the oversight apparatus includes representation from the Architect of the Capitol, the House and Senate Sergeants at Arms, as well as committees from both Houses of Congress,” Bee Barnett, director of communications and programs for the U.S. Capitol Historical Society, said in an email. 

    While the Capitol Police budget is approved by both chambers of Congress, Pelosi does not control day-to-day operations or officer assignments.

  6. Neo-fascism is Anti-truth, rather than "post-truth".

    The goal is to destroy truth, by "Throwing shit into the zone" – Steve Bannon,

    My neo-nazi FB friend serves as my canary in the covid-mine. I can usually get a read on what Trump will say three or five days before by watching her feed.  She was pushing the wild week of Jan 6 days before it happened. She's all over the execute Fauci movement, and the free the Jan 6 political prisoners.

    She surely gets newsletters from Bannon, Brietbart, Epoch. 

    1. You are entirely correct, Invalid, but I would also point out that if they thought Pelosi was culpable, they also would not have:

      – said Trump was to blame immediately after the insurrection.

      – said it was Antifa.

      – said it was the FBI.

      – said it was a peaceful protest.

      Consistency, rationality, and truth are not their strong suits.

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