If you talk to the average Republican today about January 6, 2021, the day angry Trump supporters captured the Washington Capitol, the outrage is usually very limited. Two thirds of the party supporters, 66 percent according to a recent poll, do not believe that the storming of parliament was an attack on the American government. And almost four-fifths of Republicans, 77 percent, believe that their former President Donald Trump bears little or no responsibility for the violence that broke out that day.
This relaxed view of an event, which other observers see as a rebellion or even an attempted coup, has a lot to do with the media consumption of the average Republican. In short, the TV shows he watches on the Facebook and Twitter accounts he follows keep telling him that January 6th was a legitimate protest by patriots concerned about alleged electoral irregularities was. A couple of overzealous people would have made a riot, so the explanation. There was “a lot of love in the air” that day, purred Donald Trump personally at a performance a few days ago.
However, it can also be proven that this friendly interpretation is a legend that was subsequently knitted together by those who spread it. On January 6th, when the Patriots broke the windows of the Capitol, beat up the police and hunted down MPs and senators, a great many people in the inner circle around Trump were aware of what was really happening.
At least that can be inferred from the text messages that Trump’s then Chief of Staff Mark Meadows received on January 6, and which have now been partially published by the parliamentary committee of inquiry that is supposed to clear up the storm on the Capitol. There is, for example, a message from Laura Ingraham, a distinguished, arch-conservative Fox News presenter and Trump admirer. “Mark, the president has to tell the people in the Capitol to go home,” she wrote to Meadows on January 6th. “That damages us all.” Fox host Sean Hannity, also a Trump confidante, texted Meadows: “Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol?”
“He must condemn this shit immediately,” wrote Trump Jr.
Even Trump’s son Donald Jr., who today pretends that January 6th was some kind of peace march and the work of the committee of inquiry was a witch hunt on his father, wrote to the chief of staff at the time: “He must condemn this shit immediately.” “I’m really pushing for it. I agree,” Meadows replied. “We need a speech from the Oval Office,” added Trump junior. “It has gone too far and got out of hand.” According to Republican MP Liz Cheney, who has incurred the ire of her party for harshly criticizing Trump for the Capitol storm and serving on the committee of inquiry, this news allows only one conclusion: “The White House knew perfectly well what happens at the Capitol. MPs, journalists and others wrote to Mark Meadows that an attack was under way. “
However, it is not to be expected that such revelations will have any noteworthy political consequences. Republicans in Washington and the rest of the country have little interest in actually investigating Trump’s role as an agitator on Jan. 6 or even holding him accountable for it. Meadows, for example, handed over a batch of text messages to the investigative committee, but then declared that he no longer wanted to cooperate with the investigators. The House of Representatives will therefore bring an action against him for contempt.
And very many Republican supporters will never know anything about it, as Trump confidants actually saw January 6th back then. The educational work is mainly reported in the left-liberal press. Conservative media outlets like Fox News either criticize or ignore the committee of inquiry. Sean Hannity, for example, had Mark Meadows as a guest on his Fox News Show Monday night. He never addressed his worried text message from January 6th.