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Trump’s January 6 victory lap
Five years later, the White House is still rewriting January 6.
Cameron Peters is a staff editor at Vox.
Welcome to The Logoff: Today marks five years since the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters. To commemorate the occasion, the White House launched a new page promising the “TRUTH” about “a date which will live in infamy.” Put simply, it’s bonkers.
How does the White House describe January 6? The page, which prominently features a black-and-white image of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi looming over other members of Congress, claims that “it was the Democrats who staged the real insurrection” and describes the 2020 election as “stolen.” (They did not, and it was not.)
It also claims, falsely, that no law enforcement officers lost their lives and suggests Capitol Police “escalate[d] tensions” with rioters. In reality, three officers who died in the days following the attack are considered to have died “in the line of duty.”
The full list of distortions and false statements is too long to get into here, and it might be easier to list the things the page does get right. For example, the correct date, January 6, 2021, is in block letters at the top of the page.
Why does this matter? Trump and the Republican Party have both taken many swings at rewriting the narrative of January 6, but this is their most comprehensive effort to date. Notably, it’s not merely coming off the cuff in a Trump rally speech. This is a deliberate, taxpayer-funded attempt to rewrite history (and, seemingly, to troll Trump’s opponents).
What’s the big picture? In many ways, Trump has already succeeded where it counts on January 6. He’s president again, and he has his party fully behind him on this issue. Marco Rubio, who was a senator on January 6 and described it as “anti-American anarchy,” is now his secretary of state. And while the attack still isn’t popular with voters writ large, it’s also fading as an animating issue. The White House page may be best viewed as a victory lap.
And with that, it’s time to log off…
Boy, that was a bleak one. Let’s end with one quick good thing and get off the internet. I really enjoyed this week’s New Yorker cover, which depicts a cat in a window as passersby trudge through winter weather outside. It’s the kind of small moment that always brightens my day when it happens in real life, too. Have a great evening, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!
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