“I would like to begin by addressing the heinous attack on the United States Capitol. Like all Americans, I am outraged by the violence, lawlessness, and mayhem.” — President Donald Trump speaking to the nation on January 7, 2021
Yes, someone wrote this speech for the then-president. He didn’t. The words were a response to a huge backlash to the January 6 violence. And of course Trump is a prodigious liar. But (whether speaking sincerely or cynically) in acknowledging the violence, his statement articulated the consensus view of what we had all seen with our own eyes the day before. Not just from Democrats or liberals or the mainstream media, but observers across the political spectrum. What we saw was a violent mob attacking the Capitol, climbing walls, busting through doors and windows, and savaging beating the police. (The January 6 Committee compiled much of this video history, while laying out the conspiracy that began months earlier to delegitimize the 2020 election). Americans at home watched this assault unfold on TV and the Internet, in real time and afterwards.
So too did many elected leaders of the Republican Party (including those in Congress who had hidden and fled in fear), who condemned the violent attack on the Capitol in the weeks following. A few, Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham, Kevin McCarthy placed blame directly on Trump. (So too did Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, whom the party repudiated for their consistency.)
Who could doubt what we all witnessed? Not many, back then. But a few. From day one and throughout the spring, as Dan Barry and Alan Feuer reported this week, MAGA allies were trying to purge the truth.
By mid-afternoon on January 6 Congressman Paul Gosar on Twitter sought to shift blame to antifa. That evening Fox News host Laura Ingraham spread the message: “some reports that antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd.” This baseless fabrication would fall to the wayside just as other lies, which took its place, have been debunked in turn.
As months passed, gaslighting and concocting new stories — waving away what we had seen and inventing phony scenarios — were the order of the day for Trumpists. In May Congressman Andrew Clyde likened January 6 to “a normal tourist visit.” By June, Tucker Carlson was promoting a “false flag” conspiracy theory shifting blame for the rioting to the FBI. In July, Donald Trump invoked Ashli Babbitt as a blameless heroine, misstating the facts surrounding her death.
Within a year of the violent assault on the Capitol, the jailed rioters had become for Trump, “political prisoners.” He scapegoated Nancy Pelosi for the decision of his own acting defense secretary not to station troops to protect the Capitol. And, by the time he recorded a song with the “J6 Prison Choir” the whitewashing was well advanced with a false history in place for folks eager to believe.
Like the planning for January 6 over many months, the Big Con –the lies, conspiracies, pretexts, excuses, and whataboutism in seeking to diminish into oblivion the heinous assault on our democracy directed by Donald Trump — didn’t fall into place by happenstance. There was a relentless effort — deliberate, with malice aforethought — to erase history and replace it with a tall tale. In Sarah Longwell’s words:
At the time, everyone, including Republicans, understood how bad it was. Then, brick by brick, they built a foundation of lies to justify doing what they know, deep down, to be wrong. Trump betrayed the country. And so do they.
And finally Trump arrived at his revisionist history. In a Univision town hall on October 16, 2024, Trump declared January 6 “a day of love.” From an account in the New York Times:
“They thought the election was a rigged election, and that’s why they came,” Mr. Trump said at the town hall, adding falsely, “There were no guns down there. We didn’t have guns. The others had guns, but we didn’t have guns. And when I say ‘we,’ these are people that walk down, this was a tiny percentage of the overall, which nobody sees and nobody shows. But that was a day of love from the standpoint of the millions, it’s like hundreds of thousands.”
And at an event at the Chicago Economic Club this week, Mr. Trump said: “People were angry. People went there. And I’ll tell you what, they never show that, the primary scene in Washington was hundreds of thousands, the largest group of people I’ve ever spoken before, and I’ve spoken before, and it was love and peace. And some people went to the Capitol, and a lot of strange things happened there.”
As crude as it was, the Big Con was effective: millions of Americans accept Trump’s revisionism. The fabrications and conspiracy theories, unsupported by evidence, were flimsy at best. To believe them requires denying what we witnessed, which is well-documented. The confirming evidence is readily accessible to this day. Yet a huge proportion of Republicans accept Trump’s fraudulent narrative.
From a PRRI survey in October 2024:
Views on whether Trump broke the law trying to stay in power after losing the 2020 election, whether the election was stolen from Trump, and whether those convicted in the Jan. 6 insurrection are being held hostage by the government are strongly shaped by partisanship and news viewership.
- A slim majority of Americans (53%) agree it is likely that Trump broke the law to try to stay in power after losing the 2020 election, though just 17% of Republicans agree. Americans who most trust Fox News (12%) or far-right news outlets (4%) are the least likely to believe Trump broke the law to stay in power after losing the election.
- More than six in ten Republicans (62%), compared with 27% of independents and 4% of Democrats, believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Americans who most trust far-right TV news outlets (84%) and Fox News (64%) are the most likely to agree with the statement that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
- Only one in four Americans (25%) agree with Trump’s frequent claim that “the people convicted for their role in the violent Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol are really patriots who are being held hostage by the government.” Republicans (46%) are more than twice as likely as independents (20%) and about seven times as likely as Democrats (7%) to agree with this statement.
I regard these survey results as astonishing. The 2020 election was free and fair. Trump conspired over many months to cast doubt on election integrity and, on January 6, intended to stop Congress from certifying his defeat. He incited violence to this end. And violence there was — committed by his supporters.
Republican voters are way off base regarding these factual matters. A huge chunk of the Republican base has been bamboozled.
How did we get here? Political scientists often cite the failures of the leadership of the Republican Party to defend democratic norms (including truth) if that meant crossing Trump. Others point to the effectiveness of Fox News Channel (and other right-wing media) within a closed information silo that shields viewers (and listeners and readers) from inconvenient facts, meaningful context, and balanced coverage. And tribal leaders within the Red camp have waged a campaign for decades to disqualify their political opponents (and constituents) of legitimate political standing: Democrats have become the other, not real Americans.
People look to leaders whom they trust to establish and confirm facts and beliefs. Within a closed system, it’s easy to be misled or mistaken. Solidarity within a group can encourage fear and antagonism of others. These phenomena are true of all of us, not just of MAGA Republicans or Fox News viewers.
In future posts I intend to explore these themes in more detail.
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