Five years later, Donald Trump still trying to sell Jan. 6 as ‘peaceful’

Today is the five-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection. You remember Jan. 6, 2021, well: as the day Democrats tried to steal the 2020 presidential election.

“In truth, it was the Democrats who staged the real insurrection by certifying a fraud-ridden election, ignoring widespread irregularities, and weaponizing federal agencies to hunt down dissenters,” a new web page launched by the White House tells us, taking the concept of gaslighting to a whole ‘nuther level.

“The Democrats masterfully reversed reality after January 6, branding peaceful patriotic protesters as ‘insurrectionists’ and framing the event as a violent coup attempt orchestrated by Trump – despite no evidence of armed rebellion or intent to overthrow the government,” the new White House webpage tells us.

I wish I was making this up.

Your tax dollars at work there, right, selling outright, bald-faced lies to the QMAGAnons about the attempt – poorly thought out, even more poorly executed – by Donald Trump and his team of MAGA clowns to strongarm Vice President Mike Pence into using the ceremonial certification of the presidential vote into a coup.

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ICYMI

• Shocker: Jan. 5 pipe bomber believed 2020 presidential election was stolen
• Senate Republican blocks effort to repeal $500K windfall related to Jan. 6 investigation
• Locals among the 1,500 J6ers pardoned by Trump: ‘Hostages’ who were done a ‘grave injustice’

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“Five years ago today, Donald Trump incited thousands of his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol and try to block the peaceful transfer of power,” U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said in a statement on the anniversary.

“The targeted attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, at the direction of President Trump, remains one of the darkest days in our country’s history,” said Elaine Luria, who served on the House Select Committee that spent a couple of years and $17.4 million investigating the insurrection, and is running for a return to the House from the Second District, which is based in Hampton Roads.

The mistake made by Democrats in the wake of Jan. 6 is similar to the mistake made by Republicans after the Civil War, when the thrust of the political elites of the time was to focus on reconciliation with that generation’s insurrectionists.

The Southern Democrats of the 1860s and 1870s took advantage of the Republican side’s naivete, and used the reluctance of the Reconstructionists to demand a total rebuild of Southern society to put into place the system that we came to know as Jim Crow, which was very thinly disguised Slavery Lite, and was the law of the land south of the Mason-Dixon for 100 years.

The Joe Biden-Merrick Garland approach to the Trump insurrection was to lightfoot around doing anything of substance with the obvious high crimes and misdemeanors, which is why we are where we are.

“Trump has spent the intervening time trying to rewrite history,” said Kaine, noting that Trump, on the day of his inauguration to a second term last January, “pardoned or commuted the prison sentences of more than 1,500 of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists – including those convicted of crimes like seditious conspiracy, assaulting law enforcement, and using a deadly weapon.”

“These are the actions of a weak, small person,” Kaine said.

Fact-check: Trump, yes, weak, but small, not so much – he’s 5’10” and at least 315, depending on which McDonald’s meal he’s on at the moment.