A recurring theme of this blog is that Republicans have gone off the rails; innumerable posts illustrate this theme. What follows is an overly long account of the January 6 violence, the responses of Republican elites (finally, rejecting truth for lies); placing violence at the center of Trump's conspiracy to overturn the November 2020 election; and suggesting reasons why Republican voters -- apart from the leadership -- accept the lies about January 6, 2021 and November 3, 2020. All this prompted by my consternation that folks on opposite sides of a political divide can't even agree on what's in plain sight.
Violent attack on the Capitol
Sarah Wire, who was in the House chamber on January 6, 2021 to cover Congress's formal acceptance of the Electoral College results, texted about the violent chaos at the Capitol. As rioters fought with police and stormed the building, folks inside (the Vice President, the Speaker of the House, rank and file representatives, senators, staff members and others) sought safety. On the third anniversary of the riot, she provided a more expansive account.
What happened on January 6, 2021 at the Capitol was clear enough at the time. The nation watched the brutal spectacle on TV. What we witnessed was mob violence on a scale few of us have ever experienced. We watched hand-to-hand combat as members of the mob crashed through barricades, scaled walls, and broke through doors and windows; attacked men and women in law enforcement with makeshift weapons ranging from clubs, flag poles fashioned into spears, and bear spray; resulting in injuries to 140 police officers. Five officers died in the aftermath and one protester there in answer to Trump's call lost her life that day. More than 1250 people have been criminally charged at this point, for the savage assaults on the police and the obstruction of certification of the election (among other offenses), resulting in nearly 900 convictions. Leaders of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers have been found guilty of seditious conspiracy.
There was no doubt, no ambiguity during the attack or in the immediate aftermath. We watched it as it played out. We have seen the graphic videotape footage, which is extensive and indisputable. The January 6 Committee hearings and final report were compelling, but far more supportive evidence has come forth since then. Both the Justice Department and the media have continued to add to our knowledge of the clashes that occurred on that day (and the months-long planning that brought them about).
Outrage from both sides of the aisle
In early January 2021, Congressional Republicans as well as Democrats were enraged by the rampage, which put their lives in danger. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader of the House had pleaded with the Republican president during the riot to call off the violent mob, to which the commander in chief responded, "Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are." (This fit the presidential pattern that day. When told that his vice president was in danger -- as the crowd took up the chant, "Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence!" -- Trump responded, "So what?")
The following week, McCarthy condemned the violence in no uncertain terms on the floor of the House:
Madam Speaker, let me be clear: Last week's violent attack on the Capitol was undemocratic, un-American, and criminal. Violence is never a legitimate form of protest. Freedom of speech and assembly under the Constitution is rooted in nonviolence. Yet the violent mob that descended upon this body was neither peaceful nor democratic. It acted to disrupt Congress' constitutional responsibility. It was also an attack on the people who work in this institution: Members, staff, and the hundreds who work behind the scenes so that we can serve the American people.
He added, after praising the bravery of the Capitol police, "The President bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters. He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding. These facts require immediate action by President Trump: accept his share of responsibility, quell the brewing unrest, and ensure President-elect Biden is able to successfully begin his term."
Trump celebration of the assault
Briefly, a cleavage appeared between Republican leaders (who saw what we all saw) and the outgoing president, who continued to deny what was plain to see. On January 6, 2020, Donald Trump told the participants in the riot, "We love you. You're very special." Trump's campaign kick-off in Waco, Texas, featuring the "J6 Choir" (rioters jailed in D.C.) singing the national anthem, celebrated the violence at the Capitol. More recently, the former president, who is expected to garner the party's 2024 nomination, has referred to supporters convicted for the events of that day as "hostages."
Republicans circle back to embrace Trump's lie
Within a short time, Republicans jettisoned the truth, bending to the will of their leader. GOP officials in Washington and throughout the country abandoned a commitment to democratic rule and bowed to Trump's lies. The representative from Bakersfield, whose overweening ambition trumped fidelity to facts and the rule of law, was among the most prominent to submit. Other Republicans -- save for a handful, most of whom have been summarily drummed from the party -- have followed suit. Two weekends ago, Elise Stefanik, the fourth-ranking House Republican, referenced "the January 6 hostages" and declined to agree to certify the 2024 election no matter who wins.
The Grand Old Party -- that is, the leadership, the party elite -- is foursquare in step with Donald Trump, who blusters that the 2020 election was stolen and that the January 6 riot was a peaceful assembly.
January 6: part and parcel of elaborate conspiracy to overturn the election
Today we know much more about the January 6 assault, which aimed to disrupt the peaceful transition of power after Joe Biden's victory over Trump. The former president, who had a history of election denial going back to 2016 (including rejecting the results of the Iowa caucuses and of the popular vote in the general election), had anticipated a loss in November 2020. His plans to overturn the election (through persuading or intimidating election officials in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania; creating fake electors in seven states; filing a lawsuit, Texas v. Pennsylvania et al, rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court; pushing his Attorney General Bill Barr and the Justice Department; and finally taking extraordinary efforts, including pressuring Vice President Mike Pence, to stop Congress from certifying his election loss on January 6) were months in the making.
Violence planned and promised
The violent clash on January 6 was not a peaceful gathering that somehow got out of hand. The violence was planned as a belated effort to overturn Trump's loss. There were many co-conspirators. Among the folks who foresaw what was to come prior to January 6:
- Steve Bannon, January 5, 2021: "All hell is going to break loose tomorrow. Just understand this. All hell is going to break loose tomorrow. It's gonna be moving. It's gonna be quick."
- Donald Trump, December 19, 2020: "Big protest in D.C. on January 6. Be there, will be wild."
- Roger Stone, the day before the November 2020 election: "Fuck the voting, let's get right to the violence."
Just what Trump wanted
In March 2021, Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker interviewed the former president for their book, I Alone Can Fix It. Trump insisted on mischaracterizing the mob violence, but made it clear he approved of the folks who acted out:
“Personally, what I wanted is what they wanted,” Trump said of the rioters. “They showed up just to show support because I happen to believe the election was rigged at a level like nothing has ever been rigged before. There’s tremendous proof. There’s tremendous proof. Statistically, it wasn’t even possible that [Biden] won."
Of course there was (and is) no proof, nor even any evidence, of a rigged election. That's Trump's big lie. That's what brought the crowd to the Capitol. And on the shoulders of the big lie, after the convulsion into violence, Trump has constructed the false narrative that the mob consisted of "a loving crowd," a peaceful gathering of his supporters (who, after convictions in federal courtrooms, are now "hostages").
"Who are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?"
While the McCarthys and Stafaniks (among many, many others) appear to have abandoned the truth out of personal ambition -- a practical, if not principled, choice since the alternative is likely to result is losing ones job and being drummed out of the party -- the same isn't true of grassroots Republicans. Yet a significant chunk of the base has accepted Trump's lies and followed the leaders of the party.
When asked (in a recent Washington Post-University of Maryland poll), "Which comes closer to your point of view: the storming of the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 was an attack on democracy that should never be forgotten, or too much is being made of the storming of the United States Capitol on January 6, 2024?" 24% of Republicans responded should never be forgotten (compared with 55% of Americans overall). Seventy-two percent of Republicans responded too much is being made.
Contrast, however, the responses of Republicans to this question: "Do you think the legal punishments for people who broke into the U.S. Capitol have been too harsh, not harsh enough, or have they been fair?" Although 42% of Republicans said too harsh, 17% said not harsh enough and 37% said have been fair. While Republicans' viewed the participants more favorably than other Americans, Republicans did not go all-in regarding the criminal prosecutions.
When asked (in another survey by the same outfit) whether Biden's election as president was legitimate, only 39% of Republicans (and 26% of Trump voters) responded affirmatively. Furthermore, 62% of Republicans (and 64% of Trump voters) asserted (erroneously) that there was "solid evidence" of election fraud.
The man who boasted, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters,” appears to have been vindicated at least in terms of an ample chunk of his voters. They accept the lies. In accepting the lies, they reject the truth (which is not at all difficult to verify).
Misinformation carries the day among much of the base
The events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and the nature and outcome of the November 3, 2020 presidential election are well-established by ample, unrefuted evidence. Apart from lies, hokum, conspiracy theories, trolling, wishful thinking, and the like, there are no grounds for rejecting that Biden was the legitimate victor in an election untainted by fraud and that a mob staged a riot at the Capitol in an effort to block certification of the election. Yet there is a stark contrast between the views of Trump's most fervent supporters regarding these events and the views of Americans not in Trump's camp.
A significant segment of Republican voters denies the truth of these events. This may be confounding to those of us in "the reality-based community" (as designated by the George W. Bush White House), but perhaps it should not be.
Following the leaders
First of all, the true believers in Trump's alternate reality are following their leaders. Congressional Republicans have been among the worst of the bad examples, though Republican officials (elected and appointed) throughout the nation have not fared much better.
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have observed that political parties and their leadership play a critical role in safeguarding democratic institutions.
Potential demagogues exist in all democracies, and occasionally, one or more of them strike a public chord. But in some democracies, political leaders heed the warning signs and take steps to ensure that authoritarians remain on the fringes, far from the centers of power. When faced with the rise of extremists or demagogues, they make a concerted effort to isolate and defeat them. Although mass responses to extremist appeals matter, what matters more is whether political elites, and especially parties, serve as filters. Put simply, political parties are democracy’s gatekeepers. -- Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die
There have been few Republican leaders willing to stand up for truth, for democratic institutions, and for the rule of law in the face of Trump's MAGA lies -- making it easier for voters to accept the lies without question (though many grassroots Republicans have not been led astray). What's clear: as gatekeepers, Republican elites have been utter failures.
Praetorian Guard of conservative media
Fox News Channel's starring cast is every bit as influential as Republicans who stand for election (Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Mark Levin, and other luminaries count as Republican leaders), a fact illustrated by Ron DeSantis's remarks on the "Praetorian Guard of the conservative media — Fox News, the web sites, all the stuff." The failure of the DeSantis campaign undoubtedly has many authors, but it's hardly far-fetched to suggest that the influence of FNC (and conservative media overall) has the potential to overwhelm tens of millions of campaign dollars, personal visits to all 99 Iowa counties, and smug trolling of the libs.
Anyone -- whether Democrat, Republican, or even the Trumpiest MAGA Republican -- aware of the $787 settlement Fox paid to Dominion, and the revelations about the willingness of the FNC millionaires (on air and off air) to lie to retain viewers, has more than sufficient reason to question the reliability of the channel as a source of information. But perhaps the Fox News audience, taught for generations to distrust the mainstream media, wasn't paying attention to the devastating portrait of Fox painted by the unseemly saga. Regardless, they are standing with Republican leaders (prominent figures in the party in virtue of their elected positions or advocacy).
Doing the research
Among MAGA voters who take matters into their own hands -- putting in the work, double checking the conspiracy theories they have found online -- they are even less likely to figure out that they are deep into a rabbit hole than folks who don't take the initiative. Their 'research' reinforces their belief in the misinformation they plugged into a Google search. Sad but true. This is the conclusion of a scholarly review of online research and misinformation. The report at the Nieman Lab offers details and a link to the paper in Nature.
Doing the research, it turns out, reinforces the lies, at least among folks who believe the lies.
Striking a tribal pose
Nearly two years ago, Sarah Longwell hosted a focus group "to find out why Trump 2020 voters hold so strongly to the Big Lie." (That is, the Big Lie about the election outcome. I suggest that the same dynamics apply to false beliefs about January 6.)
What she found was that their belief was less "a fully formed thought" (which might be refuted with facts or evidence), than "an attitude or a tribal pose" that they bought into as a matter of course. (It's tough to refute an attitude or tribal pose. So trying to reason with these true believers is highly challenging.)
They simply couldn't accept the election results, and were angry and mystified that others rejected their view, offering comments such as:
- “I can’t really put my finger on it, but something just doesn’t feel right.”
- “Something about it just didn’t seem right.”
- “It didn’t smell right.”
Longwell noted that "the Big Lie has been part of their background noise for years." (Jonathan Chait has observed, "Many conservatives have believed for decades, without requiring any evidence for their conviction, that Democrats in cities, especially cities with large non-white populations, engage in massive, undetected voter fraud routinely.")
"Attempts to set the record straight tend to backfire," Longwell explained. Tell a Trump supporter that Biden won the election and they take that pushback as evidence that the election was stolen. She concludes:
These voters aren’t bad or unintelligent people. The problem is that the Big Lie is embedded in their daily life. They hear from Trump-aligned politicians, their like-minded peers, and MAGA-friendly media outlets—and from these sources they hear the same false claims repeated ad infinitum.
Four Corners of Deceit
More than a decade ago, Rush Limbaugh warned his listeners about the four corners of deceit. They were government, academia, science, and the media. Each of them represented sources of information that conservatives should not trust. They represented liberal ideology, which should be rejected out of hand.
Newt Gingrich was onboard with this campaign. And Republicans have embraced it. Fox News Channel carved out an arena apart from the mainstream media that Limbaugh, Gingrich, et al. loathed. Conservatives have been taught: Don't believe what you read or hear from any sources likely to stray from the party line. Government, academia, science, and the media: across the board, these sources are untrustworthy.
The classic critique (overdue by 2012, when it was presented) by Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, which described the Republican Party as an insurgent outlier, included the observation that the GOP was "unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science."
Today, much of the Trump MAGA base rejects sources of information that challenge their partisan convictions. They have placed themselves inside a conservative media silo. There is ample evidence to justify challenging Trump's big lies (about the 2020 election and events of January 6). But if the MAGA response to this evidence begins and ends with rejection of the source (because it is on Limbaugh's list), then finding the way to the truth is blocked. (This is likely a factor in the failure of doing the research as a path to finding the truth.)
The contemporary Republican Party
The willingness to reject truth, principle, and commitment to democratic institutions is endemic among the leadership of the contemporary Republican Party. Rather than defending democracy and the rule of law, the party has taken an authoritarian turn. MAGA Republicans do not accept the outcome of elections that Republicans lose. They justify violence to overturn elections by pretending that there was no violence. Hence the big lies about November 3, 2020 and January 6, 2021.
For much the base: Following the leader (and leaders) and expressing agreement with ones tribe is the way to go.