Australia’s Largest Christian News Site

A man who incited a violent insurrection is unfit for office, we are told. That might be true — but Donald Trump did nothing of the sort.

President elect Donald Trump has no shortage of flaws. We know this because they have featured as lead stories in the corporate media for eight long years.

But if there’s one argument wielded as a silver bullet by Trump’s critics, it’s the January 6 insurrection narrative. It goes something like this:

On January 6, 2021 — one of the darkest days in American history — Donald Trump incited an insurrection against the United States government. By spreading lies about a stolen election, he provoked a violent mob to storm the Capitol and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. Trump’s attempted coup d’état caused the death of five people, showed a dangerous disregard for the rule of law and the Constitution, and sought to overturn the will of the American people.

The only problem with this story is that almost every detail is false.

Here are ten reasons to reject the claim that Donald Trump incited an insurrection on January 6.

1. Security Failures

It is now a well-established fact that Trump feared possible unrest in the days leading up to January 6, and specifically requested the National Guard be deployed to maintain safety and order — a rather strange move for someone planning a coup.

More shocking is that Trump’s requests for beefed-up security were ignored or blocked by key officials such as Nancy Pelosi, who was responsible for Capitol security, and General Mark Milley, who was the nation’s highest-ranking military officer and the principal military advisor to the president.

At worst, the January 6 security failures may have been part of plot by Trump’s ideological enemies to let chaos reign and later frame Trump. At best, Trump hardly deserves blame for the failures of others after he took proactive steps to ensure peace.

2. Trump’s Calls for Calm

During President Trump’s second impeachment trial in February 2021, House Democrats played a video of the speech Trump gave before his supporters descended on Capitol Hill. In that video, they carefully omitted a key phrase from Trump’s speech in which he urged his supporters to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard”.

It was one of many occasions when Trump’s critics suppressed a crucial piece of evidence — namely, his direct calls for calm and peace — in an effort to frame him as the architect of the Capitol Attack.

Shortly after the Capitol Building was breached, Donald Trump made the  following post on Twitter:

I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order – respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2021

Less than two hours later, he published a video on Twitter explaining that, even though the election was stolen, “You have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great men and women in blue. We have to respect the law. And we don’t want anybody hurt.”

Here is the deleted Rose Garden J6 video where Trump tells everyone to go home peacefully. Twitter made sure it was quickly removed. pic.twitter.com/zfpabEsy45

— Qᴀɢɢ.ɴᴇᴡꜱ (@qaggnews) June 28, 2024

Twitter (under the influence of the FBI, as we have since learned via the Twitter Files), swiftly deleted both Trump’s tweet and his video that called for calm. The following day, Twitter permanently suspended his account, making his posts permanently inaccessible.

On all three occasions — Trump’s initial speech, his follow-up tweet, and his published video, the 45th President was explicit in urging peace and calm that day.

These calls for calm simply do not square with the claim that Trump incited a violent insurrection on January 6 — which is apparently why all three statements were suppressed by his detractors.

3. Lack of Guns

There are approximately 400 million privately owned firearms in the United States, according to recent estimates. Meanwhile, survey data from Pew Research indicates that Republicans are more than twice as likely as Democrats to own a gun. Put together, these statistics suggest that Republicans are the most heavily armed political bloc in the history of planet earth.

The January 6 insurrection narrative requires us to believe a most implausible claim: that the most heavily armed political bloc in the history of planet earth attempted an insurrection against the world’s most powerful government without the use of firearms and without firing a shot.

Why did the January 6 protesters come unarmed if they were planning an insurrection?

4. Capitol Welcome

Approximately 900 protesters breached the Capitol on January 6. While a small number engaged in vandalism, the vast majority were peaceful, orderly, and more like sightseers than rioters. They queued in lines, gave each other tours, took selfies, and smiled as they explored the Capitol. While they broke the law by trespassing, the video footage offers no proof they intended to overthrow the government.

Unfortunately, the corporate media was highly selective in the footage it chose to air in its reporting on January 6. Shockingly, the FBI and the U.S. Capitol Police withheld 40,000 hours of security footage from the public while the two-year investigation into January 6 was underway.

In March 2023, then Fox News host Tucker Carlson gained exclusive access to that footage. One of the biggest revelations from the secret footage was how readily Capitol Police allowed protesters inside, and how compliant protesters were with law enforcement.

BREAKING: Tucker Carlson has released the first segment of the January 6 footage. He says he will release more throughout tonight’s show.

Here it is: pic.twitter.com/kKfhiQVuqc

— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) March 7, 2023

As the late comedian Norm Macdonald jested on the day, “I loved when the violent terrorists made sure to respect the velvet ropes in Statuary Hall.”

Norm McDonald on this date last year:

“I loved when the violent terrorists made sure to respect the velvet ropes in Statuary Hall” pic.twitter.com/tvL5rbM4II

— Teddy Brosevelt (@_TeddyBrosevelt) January 6, 2022

None of these facts square with the claim that the January 6 protesters intended to violently overthrow the government. And by suppressing exculpatory footage, Trump’s detractors exposed the fragility of their version of events.

5. January 6 Deaths

Central to the narrative that January 6 was a violent insurrection is the oft-repeated claim that five people died in connection with the event.

On closer inspection, this claim falls apart. Five people died and each of their deaths were tragic, but none were caused by intentional violence from protesters — and in fact, all but one of them were protesters.

Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick did not die after being struck by a protester wielding a fire extinguisher, as legacy media outlets initially claimed. He collapsed eight hours after the Capitol breach, suffered two strokes, and died of natural causes early the next day. Notably, Sicknick was a Trump supporter.

TUCKER talks about the DEADLY INSURRECTION and BRUTAL DEATH Officer Brian Sicknick. pic.twitter.com/eLVVAIrJ0l

— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) March 7, 2023

Two others, Kevin Greeson and Robert Keith Latham, both protesters, died of heart attacks many hours after the event. Both men had pre-existing conditions.

Rosanne Boyland was another protester who died that day. Media outlets initially claimed she was crushed to death during a stampede, but her official autopsy found she actually died from an accidental overdose of amphetamines.

The only person actually killed at the event was Ashli Babbitt, a 35-year-old Air Force veteran. Though she was unarmed, Babbitt was shot and killed by Capitol Police officer Lt. Michael Byrd while trying to breach a window inside the Capitol building. Byrd was less than eight feet away when he fired his fatal shot, and though many argue his response was disproportionate, he was ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing.

Tragically, a string of suicides followed the events of that day, including four Capitol Police officers, whose deaths were widely reported in the media. Much less attention has been given to the suicides of at least five January 6 defendants who, thanks to the false insurrection narrative, faced years in prison for actions that would normally have been treated as misdemeanours.

While injustices took place on January 6 and in its aftermath, protesters that day killed precisely no one, and even the best red herrings from the media won’t change that fact.

6. Prejudiced Investigation

The findings of the January 6th Committee supposedly represent the definitive version of events from that day. Yet the committee’s formation and conduct raises serious questions about impartiality.

It’s hard to deny the committee began with the predetermined conclusion Donald Trump incited a violent insurrection, and then designed their inquiry to confirm this narrative. Consider that:

• The committee was comprised entirely of Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans, lacking true bipartisan representation
• Witnesses were not cross-examined, which prevented any real-time challenge to their testimonies
• Witness statements were apparently rehearsed, betraying the inquiry’s supposed intent as a fact-finding mission
• The committee ignored the broader context of security failures, presented doctored evidence, withheld exculpatory footage, and relied on partisan interpretations of Trump’s statements
• Their case against Trump was legally flimsy, focussing mostly on his inaction rather than any clear criminal acts.

At best, the committee’s report would hardly establish Donald Trump’s guilt in a court of law. That record numbers of Americans voted to re-elect Trump in 2024 also suggests the public remains unconvinced by their efforts.

7. Insurrection Fallacies

The claim that January 6 represented an insurrection against the United States government rests on a set of rather incredulous beliefs, including that:

• The protesters actually intended to seize the government that day
• The United States can be successfully overthrown by obstructing an official proceeding
• The most powerful government in the world backed by the greatest military in history can be conquered by trespassing and stealing a lectern.

It seems unlikely the protesters actually believed any of the above claims. And while it remains unclear if the Democrat-stacked committee or national news rooms harboured these beliefs, they successfully persuaded the public to adopt them, thus enabling the insurrection narrative to take hold. But in the absence of these fallacies, the entire story falls apart.

8. BLM Riots

Further evidence we have been subjected to propaganda is the staggering difference between public perceptions of January 6 and the Black Lives Matter riots that happened just six months earlier.

The following infographic reveals the glaring disparity:

In short, left-wing riots that ran for months, resulted in billions of dollars of damage and involved over 20 murders were cheered on by media figures, celebrities and politicians alike — while a right-wing riot that killed no one and lasted an afternoon was mourned by the same voices as the downfall of democracy.

January 6 was indeed a shameful day for America, but it paled in comparison to the months-long riots that preceded it, and public figures were dishonest for pretending otherwise.

9. Election Fraud

If January 6 protesters were not seeking to overthrow the government, what were they hoping to accomplish at Capitol Hill that day?

The answer is in Trump’s speech: he encouraged his supporters to call on Vice President Mike Pence to delay the certification of the 2020 election results and send them back to the states for further review.

Labelling Trump’s claims about election fraud as “lies” serves the insurrection narrative, but it fails to address the legitimate concerns of tens of millions of Americans.

According to Pew Research, 32% of Americans believe that “widespread illegal voting and fraud” was a major reason for Joe Biden’s election victory in 2020. Another poll from Marist/NPR/PBS found that almost 40 percent of Americans do not trust the results of that election. A Rasmussen poll was even worse, finding that 55% of likely voters believed cheating likely influenced the outcome of the election, with 39% saying it was “very likely”.

It’s not enough to blame Trump for convincing Americans that election fraud occurred. One in five mail-in-voters personally admitted to committing election fraud in 2020, according to a survey sponsored by the Heartland Institute.

Moreover, the states Joe Biden won by the narrowest of margins — just tens of thousands of votes — are also where election irregularities were widely reported. And curiously, Biden managed to lose the bellwether states of Florida and Ohio, along with 18 out of 19 bellwether counties, and still win the election — a statistically implausible outcome.

Finally, the claim that Trump lost almost all his election-related lawsuits obscures the fact that the majority of his cases were dismissed on procedural grounds and were never assessed on their merits.

In summary, while the results of the 2020 election are yet to be thoroughly adjudicated in court, there are enough reasons to suspect significant fraud took place.

10. Agent Provocateurs

In 2020, the left-wing news site The Intercept published a story entitled A Short History of U.S. Law Enforcement Infiltrating Protests. They concluded it is a “historical fact” the FBI and similar agencies regularly infiltrate political movements “using agent provocateurs who urge others to engage in violence”.

Just months after this piece was published, the FBI arrested 13 people who were involved in a plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in a story that shocked America. But when the suspects went on trial, the truth came out: at least 12 FBI agents and informants were also involved in the plot. Buzz Feed News published an in-depth report on these events, explaining:

Some of those informants, acting under the direction of the FBI, played a far larger role than has previously been reported. Working in secret, they did more than just passively observe and report on the actions of the suspects. Instead, they had a hand in nearly every aspect of the alleged plot, starting with its inception. The extent of their involvement raises questions as to whether there would have even been a conspiracy without them.

For all of the above reasons, many have asked what level of involvement the FBI and other agencies had in the events of January 6. To maintain their insurrection narrative, Democrats and the corporate media have dismissed even the question as a “conspiracy theory”.

But here’s what we do know about the use of undercover agents during the Capitol breach:

• The FBI had so many paid informants at the Capitol on January 6 that it lost track of the number and had to perform an audit to determine exactly how many “confidential human sources” were present that day, according to a former FBI assistant director.
• A man by the name of Ray Epps was caught on camera urging crowds, “We need to go into the Capitol,” and whispering in the ear of a protester who proceeded to knock down barricades. At the time, some Trump supporters suspected he was an agent, even chanting, “Fed, Fed, Fed”. When media outlets began questioning his involvement in the Capitol breach, the FBI immediately scrubbed his photo from the list of January 6 suspects on their website. Only after years of public scrutiny did the FBI pursue Epps. Despite Epps’ prominent role in the riots, he was given just one year probation, while more peaceful protesters were sentenced to years in prison.
• Undercover officers from the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department were filmed chanting “our house!” and repeatedly urging protestors to advance up the northwest steps of the Capitol.
• At least 20 different incidents that unfolded on January 6 involved federal, state and local government operatives who infiltrated the crowds, according to in-depth reporting by The Gateway Pundit.
• U.S. Representative for Louisiana Clay Higgins, who served in the military, has extensive experience in law enforcement and criminal investigation, and has access to classified documents through his role on Congressional committees, estimates that there were “well over 200” FBI assets present on January 6, both inside and outside the Capitol Building.

There is still much we don’t know about what happened on January 6. However, the problem with the insurrection narrative is what we do know — whether Trump’s efforts to maintain peace, the prejudiced investigations, the hidden footage, false media framing, or the use of undercover agents.

If you squint really hard, you can vaguely see an insurrection with Donald Trump as its evil mastermind.

But if you open your eyes, the whole narrative fades away.

___

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.