Ben Cline, you may remember, voted to decertify the 2020 election just hours after violent mobs overran the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, attacking police and threatening members of Congress and their staffs.
Cline’s office put out a statement after the attacks, quoting the congressman condemning the J6ers and saying “those who breached the Capitol and assaulted Capitol Police officers should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” but that was after he had already voted to decertify the election, which was what the rioters wanted as well.
Muting the condemnation and the “should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law” line was the silence from Cline four years later on the move by Donald Trump, on Day 1 of his second term, to pardon the 1,500 J6ers who had been convicted of crimes in the aftermath of what transpired that day.
One hundred seventy-four police officers were injured; one died on Jan. 7, and four others died by suicide in the months that followed.
If you really had a problem with the J6 riots, maybe say on Jan. 20 or thereafter that you had a problem with the pardons, but our Ben Cline couldn’t bring himself to do that basic, decent thing.
I mean, I get why he remained silent there – 92 percent of the J6ers who were convicted and later pardoned are White, and they’re all MAGAs.
White MAGAs attacking the foundation of democracy are patriots, right?
Brown people protesting government overreach at a Home Depot are “violent mobs.”
ICYMI
- ‘No Kings’ protest in Staunton on Saturday set against backdrop of what’s going on in LA
- Trump orders National Guard to Los Angeles: This feels like a dry run for something
“Violent mobs assaulting law enforcement in Los Angeles is unacceptable,” Cline wrote in a statement on Twitter on Monday.
The “violent mobs” didn’t emerge from a vacuum; the LA protests were clearly escalated by the decision of Trump to send in National Guard troops, in much the same way Trump escalated Jan. 6 with his speech on the Ellipse, after weeks of falsely claiming the 2020 election had been stolen.
The protests in LA over the weekend began with small groups tailing ICE officers who were preparing for raids at several locations across the LA area, then moved downtown to a detention facility, with around 100 people there at a scene that the LAPD would quickly declare an “unlawful assembly.”
The scene moved to a Home Depot on Saturday morning, with around 400 protestors amassing, at one point blocking a U.S. Marshals bus, leading to another declaration of an unlawful assembly, which led to sporadic clashes throughout the day and into the evening hours.
Trump, in his infinite wisdom, decided on Saturday night that he needed to call in the National Guard, despite the LAPD reporting that it had only arrested 29 people related to the demonstrations, which hardly seems the flashpoint for putting 2,000 National Guardsmen into the situation.
Seriously, if that’s the bar, we’re going to need the Guard on the streets the next time the Philadelphia Eagles win the Super Bowl.
As it turns out, the Guard troops haven’t been needed in LA – California Gov. Gavin Newsom said last night that only 300 of the Guardsmen had actually been deployed, the other 1,700 left to twiddle their thumbs without food, water or bedding, left to collect dust in federal buildings, even as Trump has now called in an additional 2,000 Guardsmen and 700 U.S. Marines.
This is a made-for-TV spectacle, a point underscored by the presence of TV’s Dr. Phil McGraw, who was embedded with a unit for Friday’s raids to get footage for his streaming network.
Trump is not so much president as he is the executive producer of a bad reality show.
But let’s get back to Cline, with whom we have to pretend that this is all on the up-and-up – not egged on by the Trump administration with a solution in search of a problem – and that it’s not weird at all that Trump never called in the National Guard on Jan. 6, 2021, as his MAGA supporters were threatening to hang his vice president and kill members of Congress, but did call in the Guard because of a few hundred people surrounding a Home Depot and a detention center.
ICYMI
“I fully support President Trump’s decision to send in the National Guard. It’s time to restore order and hold those responsible for these attacks accountable,” Cline said.
Now he wants to restore law and order.
Share
Chris Graham
