26/06/2024

Why would he celebrate the rioters as “warriors”?

A kind of sequel to «Why are business-leaders writing cheques...»

«Here is a thought experiment. Try to put politics and the presidential race out of your mind and give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt about the attack on the Capitol on January 6th 2021. Accept that he believed the election was stolen and that he meant it when he told the crowd that day to march from the White House to Capitol Hill “peacefully and patriotically”. Accept that he believed none of his supporters was carrying weapons or intended violence of any sort. Accept that he has since come to conclude, as he has claimed, that Nancy Pelosi, then the speaker of the House, somehow “caused” the violence, that the police “ushered in” the crowd, that they were “a loving crowd”, indeed, “patriots” who have since become not just “victims” but even “hostages” of a weaponised system of justice.

Then ask yourself this: after embracing all of those assumptions and assertions, why would you celebrate the rioters as “warriors”, as Mr Trump did during a rally earlier this month?

To call them warriors is not simply to insist their cause was just and that they were somehow tricked into entering the Capitol with the guns, bats, knives and other weapons that Mr Trump once maintained they did not have; it is not just to ignore or minimise the violence that day, which resulted in five deaths; it is not even to shift the blame for that violence to others, whether police officers (some 140 of whom were assaulted), or Ms Pelosi (whom the rioters were hunting, and who can be seen on video from that day urging Mr Trump’s acting secretary of defence to dispatch troops to the Capitol). It is instead to praise the people who attacked the Capitol precisely—definitionally—for their capacity to wage war. That is to move the understanding of what happened on January 6th, at least for Mr Trump’s supporters, onto new and even darker ground.»

Excerpt from «Donald Trump has finally got it right about the January 6th insurrectionists»

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