White people can do no wrong

Cruz, Hawley and Johnson defend Trump supporters with lies, obfuscation and conspiracy theories

At the joint senate hearing yesterday about security failures on January 6, the ass covering by the former chief of the Capitol Police and the former sergeants at arms for the House and Senate was done using both hands and feet. Turns out there was plenty of warning about what would happen that day.  The only problem was who the warnings were about:  white people.

The fact that tens of thousands of white supporters of Donald Trump were descending on the nation’s capital largely at his behest to protest false claims of election fraud didn’t set off any alarm bells among law enforcement officials because the crowds expected at Trump’s speech on the Ellipse weren’t threatening enough.

Senator Amy Klobuchar came up with the only question that really needed an answer at the hearing.  She asked former Capitol chief of police Steven Sund what would have been the threshold that would have changed his security posture on January 6.  Sund fumbled around but didn’t really give an answer, because the real answer was skin color.  If the intelligence shared in advance of the attack on the Capitol had been that Black Lives Matter was coming, they would have called out every cop and National Guard soldier they could muster.

There were three people in charge of security at the Capitol that day:  former Capitol chief of police Sund, former House sergeant-at-arms Paul D. Irving, and his Senate counterpart, Michael C. Stenger.  All three testified yesterday before a joint hearing by the Homeland Security Committee, chaired by Senator Gary Peters, and the Senate Rules Committee chaired by Senator Klobuchar.  Notably, all three in charge of security at the Capitol were men, and they were white.  The unstated lesson of the hearing seemed to be that none of them saw trouble coming because the demonstrators expected that day were Trump supporters and white people just aren’t threatening to other white people, like the three security chiefs in charge of guarding the Capitol.

Of course no one remarked on the incongruity of Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley asking questions at the hearing.  They were the two senators who made January 6 a target date for supporters of Trump, because they announced well in advance that they planned on objecting to the certification of electoral ballots in battleground states in an attempt to hand the election to Donald Trump.  In a very real sense, demonstrators wouldn’t have been there that day if they weren’t drawn by the threats made by Cruz and Hawley.

You would have had to observe yesterday’s hearing from another planet to think that gave either Republican pause.  Cruz and Hawley are  planning to run for president four years from now, which means both men are engaged in an around-the-clock pursuit of Trump’s base, which means in turn that neither man would dare miss an opportunity like the hearing to throw the base red meat.  Hawley used a good part of his question period to criticize retired general Russel L. Honore, who has been appointed by Nancy Pelosi to head-up a review of Capitol security on January 6.  Honore had made remarks questioning Hawley’s complicity in the attack after his power-fist salute to part of the mob on his way into the Capitol the morning of the attack.  Poor Hawley wasn’t happy about that.

But it was Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin who took the day’s Lunatic Fringe Award for using his question period to read into the record charges from a right-wing website called The Federalist that “agents provocateurs” and “fake Trump protestors” were responsible for the attack on the Capitol, despite copious evidence to the contrary.  The theory that it actually wasn’t Trump supporters attacking the Capitol was also spread by Tucker Carlson on his Fox News show on Monday night, so Johnson, too, was burnishing his credentials with Trump’s red meat base with his display at the hearing yesterday.

Clever, huh?  They can’t blame the insurrection at the Capitol on Black Lives Matter or any other Black groups, because video evidence of the assault shows a crowd that is virtually 100 percent white.  So they quickly come up with some other white people to blame like imaginary “leftist agitators” and “Antifa provocateurs.”

Next up:  Marjorie Taylor Green blames the Capitol attack on the play actors who faked school shootings and the Lizard People. 

You think I’m kidding? Trump’s red meat base will gobble up anything, even green meat I’m guessing.  Just wait.