A contingent of protestors invaded, vandalized and occupied portions of the U.S. Capitol on January 6th—as the constitutional process of electoral college certification of the 2020 presidential election results was getting underway. The mob violence was an outright assault on the greatest constitutional republic in the world. But instead of making an effort to unite the country against such anarchy, the Left’s leaders and their friends in the establishment media are applying their usual double standard of “for thee, but not for me.” Not surprisingly, they are blaming President Trump for the Capitol unrest, falsely claiming he incited violence during his speech to supporters at Wednesday’s otherwise peaceful “Save America” rally.
President Trump and his supporters at the rally were simply exercising their First Amendment rights of free speech and peaceable assembly. The president’s refusal to concede an election marred by reports of widespread fraud which troubled many voters was not an incitement to violence, nor was his presentation of evidence of a stolen election.
President Trump told his supporters, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women.” In so doing, he was clearly urging them merely to march peacefully and petition their government.
President Trump did NOT tell supporters to “storm the Capitol” or anything remotely similar. He was in no way responsible for the actions of a fringe breakaway group. Moreover, it remains a question as to who the rioters actually were. Indeed, there are credible reports of Antifa infiltration of the crowd.
President Trump made a video telling people to avoid violence and he urged calm on Twitter. Yet Twitter locked him out as if he were doing the opposite.
After recessing their electoral college certification proceedings for nearly six hours until the Capitol building was secured by a strengthened law enforcement contingent, the members of Congress reconvened to resume in a bipartisan show of support for constitutional order. The electoral college results were officially certified early Thursday morning.
In a tweet released in President Trump’s name (since Twitter had suspended his account), the president promised “an orderly transition on January 20” while at the same time continuing to “disagree with the outcome of the election.”
Nevertheless, the Trump-haters wasted no time blaming him for the Capitol violence. Joe Biden piled on against the president. So did the presumptive Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“What happened at the U.S. Capitol yesterday was an insurrection against the United States, incited by the president,” Schumer said in a statement on Thursday. “This president should not hold office one day longer.” He recklessly called on Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment [re the replacement of an incapacitated president] to remove President Trump from office, even after the president promised an orderly transition to Biden’s presidency.
“I join the Senate Democratic leader in calling on the vice president to remove this president by immediately invoking the 25th amendment,” Pelosi said. “If the Vice President and Cabinet do not act, the Congress may be prepared to move forward with impeachment. That is the overwhelming sentiment of my caucus,” she added.
Precipitously removing the duly-elected president of the United States less than two weeks before the inauguration of his successor is anything but an orderly transition of power. It is yet another leftwing power play, exacting revenge on a president they hate by twisting the facts about the election and the Capitol occupation, censoring the president, and trying to kick him out of office before the end of his term to humiliate him.
Democratic Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went after Republican Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley as well, insisting they “must resign” simply because they raised objections to state electors during the congressional electoral college proceedings.
The leftwing media also chimed in. For example, the front page of The New York Times on January 7th displayed the banner headline in all caps, “TRUMP INCITES MOB.” The Times’ editorial board claimed that “Mr. Trump’s seditious rhetoric prompted a mob of thousands of people to storm the U.S. Capitol building.” False.
CNN’s Don Lemon accused President Trump of being the leader of “a mob insurrection to destroy the Capitol and our democracy.” False.
In contrast, much of the establishment media downplayed, and in many cases excused, the months of violence last year perpetrated by leftwing radicals across the country. Such violence included repeated assaults on a federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon. Members of the media called the leftwing riots “mostly peaceful protests” in the cause of “racial and social justice.”
As FrontPage Magazine’s own Daniel Greenfield pointed out in his January 7th article,
Violent protests, including those targeting public officials and legislative bodies, had been championed and normalized by Democrats and their media over the last four years. That included the harassment of officials, property destruction, and assaulting law enforcement. Now, as the Democrats expect to take power, they suddenly decided that rioting is bad.
Nobody who cares about preserving the rule of law in our constitutional republic applauds what happened at the Capitol on Wednesday. But progressive leaders and their allies in the mainstream media apply an entirely different standard when violence serves their purposes. And driven as they are by malice and hatred, they will surely find any way to justify violence against President Trump personally, his Republican supporters in Congress, and the more than 70 million voters who supported him in the 2020 election.
Reprinted from Front Page Magazine – https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/01/left-slanderously-accuses-trump-inciting-capitol-joseph-klein/
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