Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has had just about enough of this talk about the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
“The American people are fed up with this over-dramatization of a riot that happened here at the Capitol one time,” the Georgia Republican told NBC News recently. “They are sick and tired of Jan. 6 — it’s over, OK?”
Oh well, since it only happened just the one time. …
Let’s go over a few facts, shall we?
Fact #1: Five people died that day.
Fact #2: More than 100 police officers were injured by the rioters.
Fact #3: More than 750 people from 48 states have been charged for their roles in the riot, according to a database maintained by USA Today.
Fact #4: It was the first time the Capitol had been breached since the British did it in 1814 as part of the War of 1812.
Fact #5: The rioters broke into the building with the express goal of stopping the certification of the 2020 election that had been won by Joe Biden and lost by Donald Trump.
This was, in short, a cataclysm aimed directly at our democracy. It was a violent uprising urged on by the then-President of the United States because he was unhappy that he didn’t win the election.
Greene is far from the first Republican to attempt a whitewashing of what happened that day.
Last May, Georgia Republican Rep. Andrew Clyde said this about the riot:
“Watching the TV footage of those who entered the Capitol and walked through Statuary Hall showed people in an orderly fashion staying between the stanchions and ropes taking videos and pictures. You know, if you didn’t know the TV footage was a video from January the 6th, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.”
And, just a month after the riot, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson insisted that “this didn’t seem like an armed insurrection to me.”
(About that claim, PolitiFact wrote this: “We still can identify accounts of numerous weapons found in and around the Capitol, brought there in some cases by people who saw themselves as soldiers in a war.”)
The Point: Greene – and the likes of Clyde and Johnson – would do well to remember this maxim: “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”