Hollywood actor Woody Harrelson is facing intense criticism after his recent Saturday Night Live appearance…
Watch Amanda break down the scandal below…
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
A left-wing Swiss billionaire has been bankrolling the voting systems used in American elections, with an alleged bias toward liberals, a U.S. senator reveals.
United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Rules Committee, pressed Benjamin Hovland, Vice Chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), on foreign influence in U.S. elections through what he called “a new form of Zuckerbucks: partisan, foreign-backed funding for local election administrators through the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence.”
Hagerty calls it a “highly problematic scheme in which left-wing organizations provide substantial, foreign-funded resources for conducting American elections at the local level.”
Much of the funding comes from Hansjörg Wyss, a Swiss billionaire and multi-million dollar donor to left-wing causes through his “Hub Project.”
“This is an $80 million initiative, funded by a web of left-wing entities, to ‘help’ local election administrators conduct elections,” Hagerty explained. “It’s a new form of ‘Zuckerbucks,’ is what it is. This network of entities has received tens—if not hundreds—of millions of dollars from a foreign left-wing billionaire named Hansjörg Wyss. He’s not a U.S. Citizen, so he can’t contribute directly to our elections, but he’s found a way to be involved in our elections.”
“After being repeatedly pressed by Hagerty to acknowledge whether foreign donations used to conduct American elections are acceptable, Vice Chair Hovland conceded that this interference is inappropriate,” a statement from Hagerty’s office reveals.
“Absolutely not. Of course not,” Vice Chair Hovland answered.
“I want to be clear with that because what this is is Zuckerbucks 2.0 coming from a foreign billionaire involving themselves in our elections. What I want to make certain is that this Commission—that no Election Assistance Commission dollars are commingled in any way with these foreign funds,” said Hagerty.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – In case you missed it, Joe Biden tripped again recently going down the stairs of Air Force One. And these weren’t the normal tall stairs used by proud Commanders in Chief, that rise all the way to the top of the majestic presidential aircraft, but the very short baby stairs that are used by ‘the help’ that go into the lower bowels of the plane.
That is the new normal for our aging and decrepit occupant of the White House. That and tennis shoes worn with business suits and seeing a physical therapist. All to avoid tripping, slipping, or falling, and not being able to get back up.
This latest slip occurred just hours after Axios reported Biden’s campaign is “working on a critical project for his re-election bid: Make sure he doesn’t trip.”
‘Operation Don’t Let Biden Fall’ would be laughable if it weren’t so sad. But as Axios notes: “Biden’s team is betting that any mockery he receives over using the shorter Air Force One steps and wearing tennis shoes will be worth it to avoid another public stumble.”
Many Democrats worry about Biden having a bad fall like Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole, 73 at the time, had in September 1996, when he fell off a stage at a rally weeks before the election.
Democrats already had been knocking Dole about his age compared to the 50-year-old Bill Clinton running for re-election.
Biden has repeatedly stumbled and tripped in public, including, most dramatically on stage at the Air Force’s graduation in June.
Biden’s physician has diagnosed Biden’s stumbles as likely caused by “a combination of significant spinal arthritis” and “mild post-fracture foot arthritis.”
Folksy old Biden might just say he is getting long in the tooth.
Biden, the oldest-ever serving U.S. president, turns 81 in less than two months. Three-fourths of Americans see Biden as too old for office, according to an AP-NORC poll last month.
Another poll from the Washington Post and ABC News in late September found that 3 out of 5 Democrats would prefer someone else be the party’s 2024 nominee.
The president’s doctor has recommended special exercises for balance, which he called “proprioceptive maintenance maneuvers.”
Unfortunately, Axios noted, no one has ever heard of these “maneuvers.”
“I have never heard the term ‘proprioceptive maintenance maneuvers.’ It is not a clinical term in standard use,” said Professor James Gordon, associate dean and chair of the Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy at the University of Southern California.
Biden’s doctor is just as good as Biden at using made up words or as good as the White House Press secretary is at blowing smoke.
As bad as his obvious physical frailty is, Americans should be just as concerned, or more so, about Biden’s severe mental decline.
And it must be bad, when even the establishment media has noticed. NBC News reported in July:
Apparent to anyone paying attention is that the Biden they may remember from the Robert Bork Supreme Court confirmation hearings of 1987, or the vice presidential debate with Sarah Palin in 2008, is a different man today. His gait is less steady, his speech not as fluid. He has confused Iraq with Ukraine and Rolling Fork, Mississippi, with “Rolling Stone.” At a conference last year, he looked out at the audience and called for a congresswoman who had recently died in a car crash.
The outlet added that Biden is “relying on “extra-large font on his teleprompter and note cards to remind him of the points he wants to make in meetings.”
I must note that I’ve seen the extra-large font on his teleprompter, and it is embarrassingly HUGE.
Meanwhile, the New York Times reported in June that Biden’s “staff schedules most of his public appearances between noon and 4 p.m. and leave him alone on weekends as much as possible.”
But there is only so much you can do to hide the fact that this man should be in a rocking chair with his grandkids, not leading the free world.
It is doubtful that Team Biden can keep their man from falling during the camapign, it is even more doubtful that – barring keeping him isolated in a soundproof bubble – they can keep him from babbling incoherently.
Either way, we definitely don’t want Biden answering what Hillary Clinton in 2008 called “the 3am phone call” to the White House in a major crisis. And I can see a lot of those calls coming in over the next four years.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
A former IRS consultant who stole the tax returns of President Donald Trump and thousands of wealthy individuals, then leaked them to liberal media outlets to campaign for tax hikes, has pleaded guilty to a single count of “unauthorized disclosure of tax return and return information,” despite confessing in court to committing the crime thousands of times.
The decision to charge Charles Littlejohn with a single minor crime, while seeking decades in prison for Trump and many of his supporters, has many claiming it is yet another example of a politicized Justice Department.
Littlejohn faces a maximum of five years in prison, but will almost certainly serve far less than that, if any, time.
Littlejohn used his access to confidential information to steal the tax returns of Trump and wealthy individuals, often saving the electronic files to personal devices like an iPad, then leaking the documents to the New York Times and the liberal activist outlet ProPublica.
The illegal leaks set off a feeding frenzy in the media, who used the illicit disclosures to attack Trump and falsely campaign for tax hikes.
The DOJ’s decision to give Littlejohn a sweetheart plea deal, while targeting Trump supporters with harsh charges, has some in Congress calling out what they see as a biased and two-tier justice system.
“The defendant admitted to making two separate disclosures to two separate news outlets impacting over a thousand taxpayers, and further admitted to impeding or obstructing the investigation — yet the Department of Justice inexplicably only pursued one count of unauthorized disclosure,” the House Committee on Ways and Means Committee fumed in a statement.
“Ways and Means Committee Republicans have pushed federal investigators for years to get to the bottom of who stole and leaked the taxpayer information of thousands of Americans – including those of former President Donald Trump. Finally, the thief has been identified, charged, and now has pled guilty to this unprecedented crime,” said Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.).
“Unfortunately, the Department of Justice elected to charge only one count despite the more than a thousand disclosures he admitted to in open court. To restore trust in the justice system and the IRS – and to deter future thefts – there need to be significant consequences for this type of illegal, politically motivated activity,” Smith added.
ANALYSIS – The Biden border crisis just gets worse every day, with no help at all from the White House.
And now that a federal court has invalidated Trump’s Title 42 C*VID regulation forcing would-be asylum seekers to remain in Mexico, expect a massive new illegal migrant surge.
Much of that surge and chaos is seen along the border with Texas which takes the brunt of the migrant onslaught.
In response, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced that he is invoking the U.S. Constitution’s invasion clause and taking “unprecedented measures” to repel a “border invasion.”
Abbott also sent out a press release and a letter to county officials along the border.
Abbott’s declaration comes one week after he won a third four-year term as governor. Former Trump administration officials had been urging the governors of Arizona and Texas to declare an “invasion” to justify more aggressive measures to stem the illegal migrant tide.
Infuriating his partisan critics and open border advocates, the Governor can expect severe legal pushback.
The question is – can he win?
As the American Bar Association Journal notes:
The invasion clause is in Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution.
It provides: “No state shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any duty of tonnage, keep troops or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or compact with another state or with a foreign power or engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay.”
Abbott said he will deploy the National Guard to “repel and turn back” immigrants trying to enter the country illegally. He will also deploy the Texas Department of Public Safety to arrest and return to the border immigrants who came into the country illegally.
Abbott also plans to build a border wall in multiple counties, deploy gun boats, enter into a compact with other states to secure the border, and “enter into agreements with foreign powers to enhance border security.”
Abbott first authorized the National Guard and Texas police to act in July, directing them to return immigrants to ports of entry. He also referenced the invasion clause at the time.
However, Abbott has yet to issue a formal invasion declaration or official order.
His office has not published such a declaration through an official news release or on the governor’s website, which means he has not yet gone much beyond his actions and declarations in July.
National security expert and Navy JAG Jonathan Hullihan told The Center Square that if Abbott had invoked his constitutional authority on Tuesday, “he would have done so in an official document, not from a personal Twitter account.”
Hence “No document, no order.”
And critics question its legality. The ABA notes:
Nunn said Abbott’s actions were actually “a thinly veiled effort to take the reins on U.S. immigration policy.” But that would also be unconstitutional under U.S. Supreme Court precedent holding that immigration policy is “unquestionably” and “exclusively” a federal power, Nunn said.
“For all these reasons, the Biden administration would likely succeed in court if it sued to stop Abbott from carrying out his plans,” Nunn concluded.
But others see this as a well-played political move putting Team Biden in a position it can’t win.
“We’re literally talking about state officials doing the same exact thing that federal officials do with Title 42,” said Ken Cuccinelli, a senior fellow at the conservative nonprofit organization Center for Renewing America.
And as the Washington Examiner reports:
“He’s [Abbott] run Operation Lone Star and kept your National Guard up and running for a show. He knows it doesn’t do anything,” said Cuccinelli, adding that the state could win a battle in federal court.
“If you’re the federal government and you sue Texas over it … they have to prove there is not an invasion, and they have the burden of proof because they’re the plaintiff in the case. Good luck proving that today with the state of the border. I don’t think it could be done.”
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee investigating the federal government’s response to the January 6, 2021 incidents at the U.S. Capitol now reveal that a pair of pipe bombs planted at the Capitol Hill offices of the Republican and Democrat parties may have been a diversion to distract law enforcement from other events.
They also reveal that while the bombs contained live explosives, it does not appear the timers were operable, and the FBI may not even have interviewed the witnesses who discovered them.
In response, Chairmen Thomas Massie (R-KY), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray “revealing new information surrounding the FBI’s investigation into pipe bombs placed near the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Republican National Committee (RNC) on January 5, 2021,” the Judiciary Committee reports.
“On June 7, 2023, the Committee on the Judiciary conducted a transcribed interview of Steven D’Antuono, the former Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI Washington Field Office (WFO),” the Committee announced.
“In that role, Mr. D’Antuono oversaw the WFO’s investigations into the events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, including the placement of pipe bombs near the headquarters of the DNC and RNC on January 5, 2021. Mr. D’Antuono’s testimony provided new information about the FBI’s investigation into the pipe bombs and reinforces our concerns about the FBI’s handling of this matter,” the Committee revealed.
In his transcribed interview, Steven D’Antuono “suggested that the FBI could not even determine whether the placement of the pipe bombs was a ‘diversionary’ tactic for the events of January 6,” the Committee also revealed.
D’Antuono testified:
MASSIE: Are you familiar with the diversion thesis, that these were set up to be a diversion?
D’ANTUONO: Yeah, I’ve heard people say that, but if you watch – I’ve done a lot of media reports. I was trying to get the information out there, tips and stuff like that, right. I will not speculate. I’m not going to speculate on that. I think that’s speculation, at best, when people say that it’s a diversionary tactic. We’ll never know until we find the person that actually did – or persons that actually did it. So I can’t speculate on that. Could it have been? Yes, that’s one theory. Obviously, it’s one theory. But is it the only theory? I don’t – I really don’t know.
MASSIE: It looks like the head Capitol Police [sic] believes it was a diversion.
D’ANTUONO: So Steve Sund, chief of police, yes. I believe he wrote that in his book. Again, it’s pure speculation. There’s no intelligence – look, I ran the investigation for 2 years until I stepped out. We don’t know. We don’t even know the gender at this point as to – we could speculate, and there’s a lot of people that are speculating as to the gender.
MASSIE: How confident are you that the individual depicted in the surveillance footage on January 5th set both of those pipe bombs in place?
D’ANTUONO: So the video that we saw, I feel confident that by the video that we have, that that person planted those.
D’Antuono also testified on the “viability of the pipe bombs, which, according to reporting, were deemed to be ‘inoperable,’” the Committee reports.
“D’Antuono referenced a report from the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, that the pipe bombs were viable, and ‘they could explode, and they could cause harm or death,’” the Committee notes, adding. “D’Antuono also acknowledged that the timer used on the pipe bomb could not have detonated the pipe bomb given the time already elapsed between placement and discovery.”
He testified:
MASSIE: Well, let me ask you this: Do you think it was technically possible for a kitchen timer . . . that has [a] 1-hour duration . . . to detonate a bomb 17 hours later?
D’ANTUONO: No, I don’t. And I saw the same kitchen timer as you. I agree. I don’t know when they were supposed to go off. Maybe they weren’t supposed to go off. We can’t—we don’t know. We honestly don’t know, and that’s some of the pain . . . .
D’Antuono’s testimony “provided additional details about the FBI’s use of geofencing technology to identify the pipe bomb suspect,” the Committee revealed.
He testified:
D’ANTUONO: So the – there’s a lot of phone data that came in. Yes, I’ve seen the same video. I’ve watched the same video. We put out the same video. It looks like a phone. Was it a real phone, a not a real phone, was it a ruse? Was it a – you know, I picked up my phone several times at meetings going, oh, yeah, I got to take this call, and walk out, right. The phone’s not on, right. So was the person just sitting there trying to pretend like they’re on a bench taking a phone call? We don’t know until we find the person, right, and ask them those questions.
We did a complete geofence. We have complete data. Not complete, because there’s some data that was corrupted by one of the providers, not purposely by them, right. It just – unusual circumstance that we have corrupt data from one of the providers. I’m not sure – I can’t remember right now which one. But for that day, which is awful because we don’t have that information to search. So could it have been that provider? Yeah, with our luck, you know, with this investigation it probably was, right. So maybe if we did have that – that data wasn’t corrupted – and it wasn’t purposely corrupted. I don’t want any conspiracy theories, right. To my knowledge, it wasn’t corrupted, you know, but that could have been good information that we don’t have, right. So that is painful for us to not to have that. So we looked at everything.
D’Antuono also testified that he did not definitively know if the FBI had interviewed the individual who discovered the pipe bomb at the DNC.
He testified:
MASSIE: So just to . . . put a fine point on it, you do not know whether they interviewed the person that discovered . . . the [bomb] at the DNC?
D’ANTUONO: I don’t know.
The Committee notes “D’Antuono conceded that it would be ‘investigation 101’ to interview the individuals who discovered the bombs, yet he was unable to confirm whether the FBI had taken this basic investigative step.”
He explained:
MASSIE: So – but the person who found – you either haven’t identified the person who found the second pipe bomb, or did you?
D’ANTUONO: I – honestly, sir, I don’t know the granularity of everything my agents and analysts did in that matter. It’s just – it’s a whole host of stuff that’s going on. As the [Assistant Director in Charge], as like any senior leader, I’m getting briefed on things, and that part never came up, so –
“D’Antuono’s testimony raises concerns about the FBI’s handling of the pipe bomb investigation, more than 890 days following the placement of the pipe bombs. To date, the FBI has failed to respond to the Committee’s requests for a briefing regarding the investigation,” the Committee concludes.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
A top legal watchdog is going to federal court to uncover documents on a major breach of President Donald Trump’s security.
The non-profit public interest law firm Judicial Watch announced in a statement that “it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for records related to an August 31, 2025, incident in which a club member allegedly carried a loaded semi-automatic handgun past Secret Service screening checkpoints at Trump National Golf Club in Virginia while President Donald Trump was on site.”
“It’s very disturbing that a security lapse of this magnitude could occur, particularly given recent threats against the president,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The public has a right to know how this happened and what is being done to prevent it from happening again.”
“According to reports, a club member was able to bring a loaded semi-automatic handgun onto the premises while Trump was present, after passing through Secret Service screening checkpoints. A Secret Service spokesperson said that handheld magnetometers were used instead of walkthrough devices when screening guests at the president’s golf resort, located about 25 miles northwest of the White House,” Judicial Watch reports.
“The agent in charge of searching the guest’s bag at the Sterling golf facility was placed on administrative leave amid an ongoing review by the Secret Service,” Judicial Watch notes.
Judicial Watch reports it “filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) failed to respond to a November 18, 2025, FOIA request for:”
All records related to the internal investigation of the August 31, 2025, incident at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, in which a club member was able to get a semi-automatic hand gun into the club premises while the President was present without initial detection, including but not limited to investigative reports, agents’ notes, witness interview, audio-video recordings and other records.
All emails and text messages sent between members of the Presidential protective detail regarding the August 31, 2025, incident at the golf club.
“Trump has survived multiple assassination attempts, including Butler, Pennsylvania Rally – July 13, 2024; West Palm Beach, Florida – September 15, 2024; and most recently at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Washington, D.C. – April 25, 2026,” Judicial Watch points out.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Great America News Desk.
Law schools across the country are abandoning their decades-long principles going woke and the move could prove disastrous for attorneys, current law students, and prospective law students across the nation.
Let Amanda break down the situation in the video below.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – Déjà vu all over again. Just like the establishment back in the 1960s and 1970s facing a massive Soviet nuke buildup, Team Biden and his top general Mark Milley, are simply throwing their hands up in despair.
“We are probably not going to be able to do anything to stop, slow down, disrupt, interdict, or destroy the Chinese nuclear development program that they have projected out over the next 10 to 20 years,” said the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff recently at a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee.
“They’re going to do that in accordance with their own plan.”
Sound familiar?
Yes, this is the same top general who has overseen a cascade of woke policies at the Pentagon and thought the Capitol riot was about “white rage.”
Well, under (sometimes) conservative president Richard Nixon and his Machiavellian national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, the U.S. stopped our nuke arms race so the Soviets could catch.
Jimmy Carter then bent over backward to appease the USSR. According to our establishment ‘nuclear luminaries’ then, nuclear parity was more stable than U.S. superiority.
Is Joe Biden hoping to do the same with China now? If not, Milley needs to wake up.
At least one expert believes America can do something to slow down the rapid rise of China’s war machine, and it doesn’t involve us unilaterally surrendering.
Gordon Chang, a respected academic, China hawk, and the author of The Coming Collapse of China, argues that economic warfare is America’s trump card (no pun intended).
His advice, similar to Ronald Reagan’s approach against the Soviet empire, is simply – “bankrupt China”.
Chang writes in The Daily Caller:
Milley is wrong about China’s nuclear weapons ambitions. He is, unfortunately, expressing the same pessimism that pervaded the Nixon, Ford and Carter years, when the American foreign policy establishment took the Soviet Union as a given and therefore promoted détente.
America can stop China’s nuclear weapons development and other monumental programs. The Chinese Communist Party needs America for, among other things, money, and the U.S. does not have to provide it.
Like Reagan and the Soviets before him, Chang focuses on the severe economic conditions plaguing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that are hiding in plain sight.
While in hindsight we all now accept that the USSR was a third world country with a huge military, few see analogies with the modern, vibrant and growing Chinese economy. One that is allegedly either equal to, or rapidly closing in on, the United States.
But many argue China’s economy is a house of cards. Specifically, Chang identifies China’s lack of cash, or liquidity.
He quotes Gregory Copley, the president of the International Strategic Studies Association and editor-in-chief of Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy as saying:
“The one resource which Xi Jinping’s ambition has overreached is cash. Beijing cannot, in the short term, provide the cash needed to dominate the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and other places.”
Chang adds: “The fundamental problem for the audacious Chinese ruler is that China’s economic growth is stumbling. China’s official National Bureau of Statistics reported that gross domestic product last year grew 3.0%, well below the regime’s announced target of ‘around 5.5%.’”
This is especially salient as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been steadily taking much larger slices of the Chinese economic pie. Last year, China’s military budget, according to official sources, increased 7.1% while the economy, ‘officially,’ grew only 3.0%.
The reality is likely far less.
The PLA needs more cash to keep growing. But the Chinese economy isn’t growing nearly fast enough, if at all.
That’s China’s dilemma, and its Achilles heel.
Chang goes on to describe myriad factors in China’s economic stagnation, before issuing his verdict: “In sum, the Chinese economy is anemic.”
“China, therefore, needs factory orders from abroad and foreign investment.”
He then makes his case for economic warfare against Beijing: “The American president can crimp both of these lifelines by, among other things, using his authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 and by joining or liberalizing free-trade agreements with other countries.”
He adds a few other policy proposals to hit Beijing where it hurts – its pocketbook.
They may not have an immediate impact, but with a little time, they will hold China back.
Chang writes:
In the short term, therefore, China can afford its nukes, but the budget of the Chinese central government is strained because of Xi Jinping’s other grand ambitions, such as his building and maintaining an enormous surveillance state — this costs more than the Chinese military — and his Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) worldwide infrastructure-building program.
The China hawk notes: “Xi has diverted the state’s resources for nuclear weapons. He can do that for a time, but soon the cash will run out.”
Chang concludes: “So here is a message for General Milley: There is a lot America can do to stop China’s fast buildup of its most dangerous arsenal, and in any case Americans must not under any circumstances fund, with trade and investment, the weapons pointed at them.”
“President Ronald Reagan bankrupted the Soviet Union by reducing the flow of cash to Moscow. It is now time to bankrupt China.”
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – Tucker Carlson’s misguided attempt to use cherry-picked moments of the newly released video of Jan. 6 to argue that nothing bad happened at the Capitol that day, is horribly timed and very dumb.
As I wrote the day after I personally observed events at the Capitol that day, January 6 was neither a deadly coup, insurrection nor peaceful guided tours of the Capitol.
It was a mixture of some of those things, none of those things, and everything in between.
And Tucker would have been far more effective, and credible had he used the video to show that the Left’s Jan. 6 narrative was incomplete, distorted, and totally one-sided, rather than trying to say it was totally false.
Because the truth is that Jan 6 was like the story of the blind men and the elephant, each one grasping one part of the animal, like the leg, tail, or trunk, and describing the giant beast as something totally different.
On Jan. 6 what began as a massive peaceful rally of tens of thousands of pro-Trump protesters, soon degraded when smaller elements (a few hundred) of the much larger peaceful crowd broke off and did conduct a violent attack on parts of the Capitol.
Hundreds more just stupidly followed the initial ‘attack mob’ inside.
In the first group, some had military training, used stack formations, and were very organized and intent on forcefully breaching the building.
While none were found with, or used firearms, during the riot, there was violence with sticks, flagpoles, and pepper spray.
I called these violent rioters, thugs, and criminals.
They were similar to the violent BLM rioters who had violently attacked police at the White House in the summer of 2020 or besieged the Portland Federal Courthouse for months.
On Jan. 6 police officers were similarly attacked and beaten, and the Capitol was ultimately breached unlawfully.
Inside, one non-violent protester, Ashley Babbitt, an Air Force security forces veteran, was shot by a Capitol Police Officer. Likely, unjustly.
She was the only person killed during the riot.
All this occurred in the span of just a few hours.
But the Capitol complex is massive, and what was happening violently on one end was not being replicated at other parts of the Capitol.
As much of the Tucker video showed truthfully, in many places and entrances, Capitol Police had allowed protesters inside, in some cases escorted them around.
In other cases, the police simply stood by as the ‘tourist’ protesters milled around and took selfies or acted stupidly.
Still, ever since then, there has been a profound narrative battle pitting those fanatics on the right who said nothing at all happened and the fanatics on the left who claim Jan. 6 was worse than Pearl Harbor or 9/11, and an insurrection that risked the essence of American democracy.
Sadly, neither side is correct, but only the most extreme one-sided ‘insurrection’ narrative was put forward by the left and last Congress’ Democratic-run Jan. 6 committee, and repeated daily by the partisan, anti-Trump media.
The insurrection narrative was pushed by cherry-picked videos and photos of the same short-lived Capitol violence from different views and angles, repeated in a nearly constant loop for the most distorted and dramatic effect possible.
But now Tucker has done the same.
Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger wrote in an internal message to officers that Carlson’s Monday night primetime program “conveniently cherry-picked from the calmer moments of our 41,000 hours of video” to incorrectly portray the violent assault as more akin to a peaceful protest. He added that Carlson’s “commentary fails to provide context about the chaos and violence that happened before or during these less tense moments.”
And many Republican leaders agreed.
The timing is also horrible.
As Politico reported:
“It’s definitely stupid to keep talking about this … So what is the purpose of continuing to bring it up unless you’re trying to feed Democrat narratives even further?” Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) said in an interview, noting the videos didn’t show “anything we don’t already know.”
“I don’t really have a problem with making it all public. But if your message is then to try and convince people that nothing bad happened, then it’s just gonna make us look silly.”
So how should we view the events of the January 6 riot accurately and fairly?
Probably the best description was provided by Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) when he said he has “a hard time with all of it.”
He added that Jan. 6 “was not a peaceful protest. It was not an insurrection. It was a riot that should have never happened. And a lot of people share the blame for that. The truth is always messier than any narrative.”
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
