Trump allies defend with denial, deflection
This was one mob they found a way to excuse.
Even as scores of President Donald Trump’ s usually unfailing loyalists condemned him for moving too slowly to call off the swarm of demonstrators that stormed and ransacked the U.S. Capitol, many of his most vocal and visible allies in Congress, the media and conservative politics still could not bring themselves to fault him for the surreal and frightening attack carried out by people he had just urged to “fight like hell.”
They downplayed the violence as acts of desperation by people who felt lied to by the news media and ignored by their elected representatives. They deflected with false equivalences about the Democratic Party’s embrace of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Some even tried to dispute the fact that Trump supporters were the perpetrators, suggesting that far- left activists had infiltrated the crowd and posed as fans of the president.
These were not isolated or trivial assertions from littleknown people on the fringes of Trump’s movement. Rather, they came from some of his highest- profile allies who helped enable his rise in the Republican Party and have aided him in his unrelenting assault on anyone who questions his actions.
“To any insincere, fake DC ‘ patriots’ used as PLANTS — you will be found out,” wrote Sarah Palin, the Republican Party’s vice presidential nominee in 2008, who demanded that the media look into the allegiances of the people who smashed their way into the Capitol.
Responses like these — full of misdirection, denial and specious comparisons — sounded almost like typical fare coming from stalwart defenders of a president who considers admitting fault to be a sign of weakness. That they persisted in the face of such an extraordinary and unsettling strike on the seat of U. S. government is a sign of how premature it may be to conclude that Trump’s iron grip on his followers is loosening, although some prominent Republicans are distancing themselves.
Trump’s behavior drew strong rebukes from allies like Sens. Lindsey Graham, R- S. C., and Tom Cotton, R- Ark. A handful of lawmakers decided that in light of the day’s terrorizing events, they could no longer back the president’s spurious claims that the election was stolen and vote against certifying the results. But at the same time, 139 House Republicans — almost two- thirds of the caucus — still voted to reject the certification.
Palin’s surfacing amid the fury was a reminder that no matter how many Republican officials speak out against Trump’s reckless and dangerous insinuations, the party has often looked the other way as grassroots activists and far- right leaders used militant language and imagery to rally their followers. An early figure in the tea party movement, Palin often summoned Revolutionary War metaphors and other phrases in her speeches and social media posts that led critics to accuse her of glorifying violence, like “Don’t retreat, reload.”
And she was hardly alone among fellow tea party leaders like former Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, who once urged people who opposed the Affordable Care Act to “find members of Congress, look at the whites of their eyes and say, ‘ Don’t take away my health care.’ ”
That was 2009, and Bachmann was giving an interview to Sean Hannity of Fox News. More than a decade later, just after a pro- Trump mob breached the security perimeter at the Capitol on Wednesday, Hannity was hosting his afternoon radio program. He spent no time reflecting on Trump’s role in inciting the riot, which some conservative Trump allies — including some of Hannity’s colleagues at Fox News — were already calling a dangerous, needlessly provoked insurrection.
Hannity made a f ew brief, l argely perfunctory comments against the violence before spending several minutes unloading on Democrats in Congress, President- elect Joe Biden and the mainstream media for refusing to acknowledge that Trump supporters had legitimate reasons to doubt the outcome of the election.
“People feel like their voices aren’t being heard, and they’re angry,” Hanni ty said, reminding his millions of listeners of the “hundreds and hundreds” of people who claimed to have witnessed fraud or irregularities in the November election and what he called “four years of utter, breathtaking hypocrisy” of the president’s critics.
Many Trump sympathizers tried to shift the focus from the mob scene in Washington and revive monthsold stories about the fires and looting that accompanied some protests over police brutality following the killing of George Floyd in May. Those chaotic scenes became a central piece of the Republican Party’s messaging to portray the Democrats and Biden as weak on public safety and captive to far- left extremists.
Elsewhere in pro- Trump media, the idea that antiTrump infiltrators were actually responsible for the attack that left four people dead — not the president who teased that the day’s events “will be wild” or the marauders inside the Capitol waving flags and wearing hats emblazoned with his name — was widespread.
Mark Levin, whose radio program reaches 11 million people each week, told his listeners that while he thought the rioters were “idiots” who had hurt the Trump movement, there was a possibility that they were not really Trump supporters.
“We need to know exactly who these people are who did this,” Levin said. “Some people are saying it’s a false flag movement and sending me pictures of antifa,” he added, referring to a loosely organized far- left movement that Trump has often blamed when demonstrations supportive of him turn violent.
Referring to the president’s opponents, he added, “They’re the ones who pull down monuments. They’re the ones who burn down stuff. We’re not them. We’re us.”
Erick Erickson, a conservative commentator who has vacillated between defending and attacking the president, expressed disbelief at the idea that Trump supporters were being framed. “Literally just had a lady email me angrily that I’m blaming the President’s protesters for storming the Capitol when it is actually Antifa pretending to be the President’s supporters,” he wrote on Twitter.
The indifferent attitude and finger- pointing that some of Trump’s staunchest allies expressed about the siege echoed what demonstrators on the Capitol grounds were saying in their own defense.
Newsmax, a pro- Trump television channel that became a favorite of the president for amplifying his false claims of election fraud, aired segments live from the National Mall and allowed some of the people there to justify their actions as Trump supporters who were not getting the answers they wanted about the outcome of the election.
“This is our house,” a Trump supporter identified as Tina Forte told Newsmax.