Accountability

Re “Carlson presents a different Jan. 6 narrative” (March 10): Although every person is allowed to form and share his or her own opinions about news stories and events, this “opinion” by Cal Thomas was at the very least misleading and misguided, and to some reasonable Americans, downright dangerous and just another example of the “alternative facts” espoused by many former President Donald Trump supporters that has gotten our country in the dysfunctional mess that we find ourselves in today.

Those people who stormed the Capitol and assaulted the security officers were there to stop the certification of the election, period. Some were armed (which former President Donald Trump allegedly was aware of ) and determined to do anything in their power to do what they were instructed to do by the many speakers at that rally: “fight like hell” to take back what was stolen from them.

For Thomas to lament that “some who breached the Capitol but didn’t cause damage have also been prosecuted and jailed” is just total baloney. They breached the Capitol, meaning they broke through barricades and security officers to get into the Capitol.

Those rioters were not just normal, everyday tourists as some people, even some in Congress, have suggested. The participants who attended that rally knew why they were there, and the speakers that day did everything they could to stoke the flames, the hatred and the vitriol that inspired the mob to storm our Capitol. Only those who did not enter the Capitol building that day should go unpunished.

— Rodney Whitt, Norfolk