Republicans need to do themselves a favor and end the melodrama over what happened on Jan. 6 by rejecting yet another investigation into it. They took a big step on that Friday when they blocked the Senate from setting up a supposedly “independent” commission.
In the months since the riot happened at the Capitol, the public has been tortured with black-and-white collages of melancholy Democrats, weepy testimonials from on-site journalists, and moaning accounts from inconsolable Hill staffers, who apparently just can’t get over it.
In truth, they don’t want to get over it. Journalists like the attention too much, and Democrats know that it turns the legs of Republicans into Jell-O.
Roll Call this week offered yet one more opportunity to more than a dozen random congressional staffers to share their sob stories. In what could only have been an effort to make things even more ridiculous, the publication granted all of them anonymity.
Of particular concern for these drama queens are Republicans, such as Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia, who have accurately stated that the riot on that day was not the bloodbath that the media and Democrats insist it was. Clyde has pointed out that what appeared at the Capitol that day was “an undisciplined mob” but that “there was no insurrection.”
Roll Call quoted one staffer saying, “When I see those members in the hallway or the basement, I think to myself that they wouldn’t care if I was dead.”
Ah, so we’re still pretending that rioters were bloodthirsty wolves on the prowl for indiscriminate violence? Rather than, you know, irritated Trump voters who had just been through months of pandemic lockdowns and Black Lives Matter violence? Got it.
To get a true sense of what happened on the day that has so traumatized Democrats and needy Hill staffers, here’s a headline from the very-not-conservative Buzzfeed: “Alleged Jan. 6 Rioters Tried To Steal Signs, Booze, And A Fox News Football From The Capitol.”
The animals!
The report further describes “the scale of the chaos at the Capitol, from kicked-in doors to a stolen bottle of bourbon.”
The carnage!
True, the riot caused $2.5 million in estimated damages, in large part because the Capitol building is very old and upkeep is painstaking. But this wasn’t 9/11. It wasn’t even 1992 in Los Angeles.
During the L.A. riots, “more than 50 people were killed, more than 2,300 were injured, and thousands were arrested,” according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. “About 1,100 buildings were damaged, and total property damage was about $1 billion.” And that was over the arrest of one man who was resisting the police.
In contrast, a grand total of five people died as a consequence of the Jan. 6 riot. All of them were Trump supporters, including Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who, apparently by coincidence, died of a heart attack. The only one to die due to intentional violence was Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed Trump supporter who was shot in the neck by a police officer and bled to death.
The riot was bad. Rioting is bad. No one disputes that. But a commission to investigate Jan. 6, which has already been investigated through congressional hearings, the news media, and the prosecutions of those involved, would be just one more way for Democrats to continue their hysterics. It’s long past time to move on, even though they don’t want to.
