On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump was desperate to go to Capitol Hill as part of the then-president’s efforts to overturn his election defeat and claim illegitimate power. Of course, we now know that this did not happen, and that the Republican was unable to lead a crowd into the halls of Congress for a confrontation.
Trump had to settle for a different approach: He fed a group of violent rioters anti-election lies and deployed them to attack his own country’s Capitol.
Today, the presumptive GOP nominee will return to the scene of the crime. If all goes according to plan, Trump will make his first visit to Congress since before the Jan. 6 insurrectionist violence, where he will meet behind closed doors with Republican lawmakers to discuss campaign messaging and legislative strategy.
The intraparty meeting will be about three blocks from the courthouse where Trump was indicted last summer on alleged crimes related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The former president will also be partially protected today by police officers who faced violent pro-Trump rioters during the 2021 attack he instigated.
Ahead of Republicans’ private conversation with their presumptive nominee, House Speaker Mike Johnson oversaw a partisan stunt that likely made Trump happy — the majority of Republicans voting to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt for defying a misguided subpoena — which followed a Capitol Hill news conference in which the party’s top lawmaker read from a distinctly Trumpian script.
REPORTER: You talked about the importance of Garland complying with a subpoena. I’m curious, given that Chairman Jordan and four other colleagues have declined to be covered by the J6 Committee, if you are concerned that this undermines the argument.
MIKE JOHNSON: You’re talking about apples to oranges… pic.twitter.com/M4vg9QWWtE
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 12, 2024
A reporter noted that several Republicans in the House of Representatives, including Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, ignored committee subpoenas dated Jan. 6, raising questions about why GOP members would try to punish Garland for doing the same thing. The Speaker of the House replied:
As part of the same Q&A, the Louisiana Republican was also asked whether he believes Trump respects the peaceful transfer of presidential power. “Of course he respects that, we all do,” Johnson responded.
So a few things.
First, the idea that the January 6 bipartisan commission “hid” and “destroyed” evidence is popular at Mar-a-Lago, but there is no evidence to support such a claim.
Second, the idea that the House of Representatives panel is not “properly constituted,” rendering the subpoenas meaningless, has been belied by multiple federal court decisions.
Third, if Johnson truly believes that Trump “respects” the peaceful transfer of presidential power, I would encourage the speaker to read both the January 6 commission report and the indictment against Trump filed by the office of special prosecutor Jack Smith.
And finally, the idea that “all” Republicans respect the process by which outgoing presidents transfer power to their successors is also contradicted by Johnson’s own record. After all, he participated in an ill-fated effort to convince the Supreme Court to keep Trump in power despite the voters’ verdict, before voting with his party to reject the certification of the results of a free and fair election.
Johnson also repeated some of the wilder conspiracy theories about the race, and more than three years later, the Louisiana Republican is still reluctant to acknowledge the legitimacy of the 2020 election.
But while the speaker of the House of Representatives’ rhetoric yesterday was literally unbelievable, it probably also impressed Trump, which seems more important to the Republican Party in 2024 than honoring reality.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
