THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME: Jan. 6 Followed Years of Political Violence. The Committee Should Investigate Leftist Violence, Too.
There is an enduring infamy to Jan. 6, and rightfully so. Yet, the madness of the mob is not unique to Trump and his “Stop the Steal” adherents.
Trump’s “coup in search of a legal theory,” as Chairman Bennie Thompson called it on Thursday night’s session of the January 6 Committee hearings, is unique in its scope, but not in its assault on American democracy.
There has been a trajectory of modern mob formation over the course of the Trump years that the January 6th Select Committee would do well to explore in further hearings.
Civil unrest may have culminated on Jan. 6, but it started much earlier. And the potential for its continued activation has been with us ever since. If those on the January 6 Select Committee fail to take a deep dive into mob events leading up to Jan. 6, they will be missing half the story.
Fortunately, it can be found on Twitter. And what you learn when you cover these protests is that neither the Right nor the Left has a monopoly on political violence.
Why would Democrats want to investigate how much violence and destruction their supporters have caused at their own show trials? It’s simply a 21st century extension of the Watergate hearings, where no word of the previous presidents’ crimes were allowed:
The Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities was created on February 7, 1973, following the convictions of the Watergate burglars. The vote was 77-0, since twenty-three GOP senators abstained rather than join in the political witch hunt. Their abstentions followed party-line votes, giving Democrats a voting majority and limiting the committee’s investigation to the 1972 presidential election instead of chancing any second look at those from ’60, ’64, and ’68, in which Nixon and Barry Goldwater were on the receiving end of campaign improprieties. The 1976 Church Committee hearings included testimony indicating that Nixon’s campaign was bugged in 1960 and again in 1968 and that the FBI had forwarded derogatory information on Goldwater’s staff to the Lyndon B. Johnson White House.
Related: Report: There Have Been 76 Attacks on Churches and Pregnancy Centers, Not One Attacker Has Been Sent to Prison.
UPDATE: Summer rerun ratings are down: J6 witch hunt ratings dropped 21%.