Maddow Blog | Republican Party’s Ron Johnson: Harmless grandparents arrested after January 6

Common sense suggests that Senator Ron Johnson should stop saying strange things about the January 6 attack, but as Raw Story noted, the Wisconsin Republican apparently can’t do anything about it.

“We’ve had this huge dragnet, this huge manhunt for grandmas and grandpas who show up on January 6, never get into the Capitol, but happen to be in Washington, D.C. — they’re bringing cops, SWAT raids to arrest people who don’t have any threat to them,” the Republican senator claimed with a straight face.

Johnson further emphasized that the FBI — by most measures the most politically conservative institution in the federal government, led by Donald Trump’s hand-picked director — has become “completely partisan” against Republicans.

At this point we could spend a few sentences explaining that law enforcement did not send SWAT teams to innocent people who “just happened” to be in the nation’s capital on January 6, 2021. We could similarly note how bizarre it is to watch prominent GOP officials whine incessantly about the FBI.

But at this point it’s also worth taking a step back and recognizing that Johnson should actually choose a different topic to keep talking about.

The Wisconsin Republican falsely told the public that the January 6 rioters were unarmed. He has floated the ludicrous idea that the pro-Trump forces who launched the attack on the Capitol were secretly made up of “fake Trump protesters.” He praised the patriotism of the rioters.

As Charles Sykes wrote for MSNBC last week, Johnson is also up to his eyeballs in the bogus voter conspiracy, and as NOTUS reported today, the far-right senator has also rushed to defend attorney Jim Troupis, one of the alleged leaders of the legal politics. dubious bogus voter scheme in his home state – even after Troupis was indicted.

Given the circumstances, wouldn’t Johnson be better off if he stuck to the strange rhetoric about Covid and left out the January 6 comments?

This article was originally published on MSNBC.com