Topic: Newsmax
How did Newsmax mark the anniversary of the Capitol riot? By trying to downplay it, of course. It kicked things off with a behind-the-paywall piece complaining that "not one of the more than 700 people facing charges has been accused of anything close to insurrection or terrorism. (this was a few weeks before several right-wing Oath Keepers were arrested on charges of seditious conspiracy.)
That was followed by an article hauling out disgraced Fox News host Bill O'Reilly claiming that, in writer Eric Mack's words, that "President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are going to try to pin the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol on former President Donald Trump, ignoring evidence to the contrary" because, according to O'Reilly, "It's almost inconceivable that a rational person would go: Yeah, I'm going to break into the Capitol, and that's going to help Donald Trump in any way. It hurt him, and it hurt the conservative cause." Mack stayed silent about the rampant sexual harassment that got O'Reilly fired from Fox News; instead, he insisted without evidence that O'Reilly "remains a prominent conservative voice."
Like its ConWeb pals at the Media Research Center and CNSNews.com, Newsmax didn't like President Biden's speech about the Jan. 6 riot, with Sandy Fitzgerald sticking Donald Trump's petty and negative reaction in her story on the speech; Trump was also given an anonymously written article to whine further.
Newsmax served up more right-wing reaction from Republican politicians:
- Fitzgerald returned to tout Republican Rep. James Comer's whining that "there should be investigations into the security lapse that allowed people to be able to storm the Capitol, but Democrats have "just tried to play this from an angle of embarrassing Donald Trump and embarrassing the Republicans."
- Theodore Bunker devoted an article to letting Mitch McConnell complain how "Washington Democrats" are supposedly "try[ing] to exploit this anniversary to advance partisan policy goals that long predated this event. It is especially jaw-dropping to hear some Senate Democrats invoke the mob’s attempt to disrupt our country’s norms, rules, and institutions as a justification to discard our norms, rules, and institutions themselves."
- GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham was given his own article by Jeffrey Rodack to complain about Biden's speech and its alleged "brazen politicization" of the riot.
- Fitzgerald touted how GOP Rep. Pat Fallon purported to be "flabbergasted, dumfounded, and speechless" to hear Vice President Kamala Harris comparing what ended up being a "small riot" to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 attacks, while Democrats have "amnesia" about the Black Lives Matter and antifa riots in the summer of 2020, that "swept over 140 cities, caused $2 billion worth of damage and cost 25 lives."
Newsmax pundit and disgraced ex-New York City police chief Bernard Kerik led an article by Rodack featuring various right-wingers reacting badly to Harris' comparison; Kerik sneered that she is an "incompetent fool."And the apparently unironically named Charlie McCarthy gave Trump another article in which to vent, this time through a "scathing lengthy statement."
An article by Jack Gournell promoted an appearance on Newsmax TV by the widower of Ashli Babbitt, the rioter who was shot and killed by police inside the Capitol as she was trying to break through a door. Gournell editorialized: "Over the past several months, many on the political right have pointed to Babbitt's case as evidence that the characterization of Jan. 6, 2021, as an 'insurrection' in which the right did all the harm is grossly inaccurate."
Fitzgerald, though, did slip in an article about how a police officer wounded in the riot is suing Trump over the injuries she suffered from rioters incited by him.
Michael Reagan spent his Jan. 7 column whining about the coverage and trying to distract from it by bashing Biden:
So does insisting on calling 1/6 an “insurrection” instead of what it was – a peaceful political protest that exploded into a dangerous and disgraceful riot whose only fatality was an unarmed Trump supporter, Ashli Babbitt, who was shot to death by a Capitol police officer.
[...]
But for the Democrat Party [sic] and its flock of parrots in the media, the “deadly” insurrection of 1/6 Trump supposedly fomented has become a myth they are never going to let the country forget.
1/6 is their new national holiday. A day they can memorialize – weaponize – each year for decades for purely partisan political reasons.
For now, Democrats know 1/6 is the only propaganda weapon they have left to distract the public’s attention from the Biden administration’s never-ending list of failures.
But ordinary Americans don’t care about marking the anniversary of “Insurrection Day.” They know a fake insurrection when they see one.
They’re more worried about things that are real and things that really matter to them – today. Things like the rising price of gas and hamburger and Biden's bungled war on COVID.
Judd Dunning similarly tried to distract in his Jan. 7 column:
January 6, 2022 was about forcefully forgetting failures. Americans are ordered to forcefully forget the Afghanistan failures, our supply chain problems, our politicized COVID lockdowns tearing our prosperity and security, our decimated global foreign policy, and rampant Biden-induced inflation.
Democrats lacking any decency or tangible legislative platform excitedly brought you their January 6th “Insurrection Anger Games.” The lions, bears and crocodiles were thrown in the pit. The leftist half of the crowd hunger for red conservative Republican blood.
Dunning then portrayed the rioters as the real victims:
Forty-thousand hours of sealed footage will show the truth of the non-insurrection. Currently, zero insurrection charges have been filed.
January 6 has been blown out of proportion. Several times political objections have historically been expressed more disruptively than 1/6 on a myriad of issues. The 209 BLM riots in 2020 caused over 40 deaths and $2 billion to $3 billion dollars in property damage.
Biden bellowed out false bigotry from the bleachers, stoking the flames, referencing a “bunch of thugs, white supremacists, (conspiracy) theorists, antisemites.” Many are average citizens held over 10 months in inhumane conditions. They are pawns victimized for political reasons.
Some face 23 hours of daily solitary confinement. They have been denied lawyers, medical and legal care, and basic due process rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights. They are political prisoners of war treated worse than Guantanamo Bay prisoners.
The lesson of the January 6th games is not what the left wishes their performance art would yield. Democrats’ devolution reveals they lack a true platform. They offer only weaponized elitist hate.
In fact, the vast majority of rioters are not in prison awaiting trial, and they are anything bug political prisoners.
