Donald Trump expresses support for January 6 conspiracy theories: The former president, who may soon be indicted for his role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election, posted some memes to Truth Social over the weekend implying a false, conspiratorial version of what happened on January 6.
Donald Trump Looks a Little Crazy
Leading up to January 6, 2021, Donald Trump summoned his supporters to Washington to protest.
He told his supporters, falsely, that the election was being stolen from him, and stoked their anger about that false narrative.
As a result of the riot that took place that day, six people died, and more than 1,000 people have been charged with crimes, and hundreds have been convicted, including several people for seditious conspiracy.
The circumstances of what happened on January 6 are not seriously in dispute; after all, it all happened live on national television.
It led to Trump’s second impeachment and the January 6 committee’s criminal referrals.
And former President Trump earlier this month received a target letter from Special Counsel Jack Smith, indicating that he and others are likely to be indicted for their actions leading up to that day.
But even now, more than two years later, the former president and some of his supporters are eager to lie, brazenly, about what happened that day, and that it was something other than a violent attack on the seat of government that was inspired by Trump directly.
In a series of Truth Social posts over the weekend — noted on Twitter by journalist Ben Jacobs — Trump pushed January 6 conspiracy theories. One of them, over a photo of Trump supporters attacking the Capitol as they wore MAGA hats and waved Trump flags, appear the words: “January 6 will go down as the day the government staged a riot.” Another post, “retruthed” by Trump of, all people, 1970s rock star Ted Nugent, states ”January 6th will be remembered as the day the government set up a staged riot to cover up the fact they certified a fraudulent election.”
The posts are, of course, nonsense. The January 6 attack on the Capitol was not, in any way, “staged” by the government. “The government,” after all, was still controlled by the Trump Administration at the time.
Tucker Carlson, with the use of security tapes released to him by Speaker Kevin McCarthy, attempted to claim, in the waning days of his Fox News tenure, that the official narrative of January 6 was false, but nothing revealed on Carlson’s show did anything to dislodge the official understanding of what happened that day, first established when most Americans saw it happen in real time with their own eyes.
Thomas Manger, the chief of the Capitol Police, wrote a letter after the Carlson broadcast stating that it was “filled with offensive and misleading conclusions about the January 6 attack,” and that Carlson’s show “conveniently cherry-picked from the calmer moments of our 41,000 hours of video.”
“The commentary fails to provide context about the chaos and violence that happened before and during these less tense moments,” Manger added.
Carlson and others have also frequently cited Ray Epps, a participant in the riot, as a federal plant who encouraged the rioters to enter the Capitol. However, both the FBI and Epps have denied this, and Epps earlier this month announced that he was suing Fox News, in a move that recalls Dominion Voting System’s lawsuit related to Fox’s election lies, which Fox agreed to settle for a staggering $787.5 million.
And of course, the conspiratorial version of January 6 is contradicted by a massive body of evidence, including the hundreds of legal proceedings that have led to convictions, including plentiful guilty pleas. Even Trump himself, when not denying January 6, has described it as a great moment.
“People went to Washington, D.C., in massive numbers, far greater than the Fake News Media is willing to report, or that the Unselects are willing to even mention, because January 6th was not simply a protest, it represented the greatest movement in the history of our Country to Make America Great Again,” Trump said in June of 2022.
Expertise and Experience
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
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