One Year Later: Examining Trump’s Role in the Capitol Riot

To say the president’s condemnable behavior triggered the riot is not the same as saying he intended or incited a riot.

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Then-president Donald Trump greets the crowd at the “Stop The Steal” rally in Washington, D.C., January 6, 2021.

Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

On this January 6 anniversary, I most vividly remember the shock and fury of watching the Capitol riot unfold, the instant recognition of a blight on our history. It is America’s proud boast to have made the transition of power through peaceful, lawful means a norm for modern republics. One needn’t buy the Democrats’ politicized “insurrection” distortion to grasp that something precious is forever tarnished.

It’s not gone. The norm endures. The media-Democrat complex’s “insurrection” pap is designed to exaggerate a rare episode of politically motivated violence by the incoherent populist Right, the better to obscure the thrum of violence commited by the radical Left, where “by any means necessary” is a venerated strategy for destroying norms. But unlike the months-long siege of looting, deadly brutality, and antinomian madness that followed George Floyd’s killing (at the hands of a racially mixed group of cops, from a Minneapolis Police Department then headed by an African-American progressive), the Capitol riot was a flash in the pan.

Andrew C. McCarthy

About the Author

Andrew C. McCarthy

Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at National Review Institute, an NR contributing editor, and author of Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency.

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