A couple of weeks ago, Republican Sen. J.D. Vance was talking to reporters about the state of his party when he added a provocative claim. “I think that no real Republican with any credibility in the party is still blaming [Donald Trump] for Jan. 6,” the Ohio senator said.
Yesterday, Republican Rep. Dan Meuser of Pennsylvania appeared on CNN and conceded that Jan. 6 was “a very, very ugly day” that “certainly should be denounced.” But the GOP congressman added moments later, “[T]he idea of trying to pin [Jan. 6] on President Trump’s words, I think falls way, way short.”
The same afternoon, Republican Rep. Michael Waltz of Florida also appeared on CNN and pushed a similar line. “I don’t think he was responsible for Jan. 6,” the congressman said.
To be sure, three-and-a-half years after the insurrectionist riot, Republican rhetoric on the subject is all over the map. Some in the party argue that Jan. 6 was justified because of a ridiculous election conspiracy they’ve concocted. Other GOP voices insist that the assault on the Capitol was some kind of plot hatched by antifa and/or the FBI.
But Republicans such as Meuser and Waltz are members of a very different contingent: They expect Americans to believe that Trump wasn’t responsible for the attack that he instigated. The former president, the argument goes, didn’t do what he obviously did.
Sure, the public might’ve seen Trump summon a mob, fill them with lies, and deploy them to Capitol Hill with instructions to “fight like hell.” Nevertheless, that’s not stopping GOP lawmakers such as Vance, Waltz and Meuser from going along with the gaslighting, effectively telling voters that they shouldn’t believe their lying eyes.
There was a time in which the Republican Party’s line looked and sounded quite different. In February 2021, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell gave a speech excoriating the former president for a “disgraceful dereliction of duty” and said he holds him responsible for “provoking” the Jan. 6 siege of the Capitol.
“There is no question — none — that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day. No question about it,” the Senate Republican leader explained in his prepared remarks. “The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president. And their having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.”
McConnell went on to say, “Sadly, many politicians sometimes make overheated comments or use metaphors that unhinged listeners might take literally. This was different. This was an intensifying crescendo of conspiracy theories, orchestrated by an outgoing president who seemed determined to either overturn the voters’ decision or else torch our institutions on the way out.”
A year later, the bipartisan Jan. 6 committee made clear to everyone — the public, history, federal prosecutors who appear to be working possible criminal indictments — exactly who bore responsibility for one of the most serious instances of political violence in American history.
“In the Committee’s hearings, we presented evidence of what ultimately became a multi-part plan to overturn the 2020 Presidential election,” the House select panel concluded. “That evidence has led to an overriding and straight forward conclusion: the central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, whom many others followed. None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him.”
The apparent fact that “no real Republican with any credibility in the party is still blaming him for Jan. 6” says a great deal about the state of the party.