The anniversary of the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol building is quickly approaching and Democrats are about as giddy as a child on Christmas Eve. Democratic leaders, and their close friends and allies in the activist media, have been weaponizing the riot against conservatives for almost 12 months. They have been constantly caterwauling about the supposed attack on the American republic and using it to reinforce how bad the Orange Man is.
However, recent developments suggest the Democrats are not quite as concerned over the riot as they would have us believe. Indeed, when it comes to the events of Jan. 6, Democrats are long on whining and pearl-clutching and woefully short on taking action to ensure it does not happen again.
House Republicans have been pointing out the fact that despite the Democrats hand wringing about the riot, they have done little to enact measures that would protect the Capitol building from future assaults. In a letter to his colleagues, House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) indicated Democrats are “no closer to answering the central question of how the Capitol was left so unprepared” on Jan. 6. He accused Democrats of “using it as a partisan political weapon to further divide our country.”
McCarthy is not the only GOP lawmaker calling out the Democrats for refusing to take action to protect the Capitol building. Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL), wrote a memo to his Republican colleagues titled: “One Year Later, Little Has Changed” in which he castigated the Democrats for focusing more on politics than solutions. In the document, he predicted that “[i]n the coming days you are going to be hearing a lot of noise and narratives about what transpired at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and what the cause of those things may or may not be” and that “The most important question to answer from that day remains, why was the Capitol so unprepared?”
The lawmaker also noted that the House Select committee is “no closer to finding out what led to the catastrophic security failure” and is only using the matter to “attack President Trump and punish anyone associated with him.”
The letter also alleged that the committee “wasted taxpayer dollars by spending months going after their political rivals and holding them in criminal contempt when they refuse to meet every spurious demand of the committee,” and pointed out that it subpoenaed over 50 individuals for depositions and went after phone and bank records.
“It is all about politics for the Select Committee,” Davis added.
The lawmaker pointed out that in the aftermath of the assault, House Republicans “issued preservation and production orders” to the Capitol police, the House Sergeant at Arms, the Architect of the Capitol and the House Chief Administrative Officer for documentation related to the building’s security preparedness on the day of the riot. He said these entities have “refused to comply.”
However, the Democrats seem more concerned with targeting Trump allies like former chief of staff Mark Meadows and adviser Steve Bannon, holding them in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with subpoenas.
This letter comes after Capitol Police Inspector General Michael Bolton told the Senate Rules Committee that very few of the recommendations he made regarding security have been implemented. He said:
“The Department still lacks an overall training infrastructure to meet the needs of the department, the level of intelligence gathering and expertise needed, and an overall cultural change needed to move the department into a protective agency as opposed to a traditional police department.”
If there were ever an example proving the Democrats don’t truly believe Jan. 6 was a pernicious attack on American democracy, this would be it. If they were actually sincere in their beliefs, they would have done something about it a long time ago. There is no viable reason why so little has been done almost 12 months after the assault.
It would not have been difficult for the Democrats, who are in control of the House, to quickly enact measures to protect the Capitol building as well as other government structures. The fact that they have not bothered to lift a finger to safeguard these institutions is proof positive they are not serious about protecting these institutions.
There are two potential possibilities at play here. The first is that Democrats know the Jan. 6 riot was a one-off, not part of an overall effort on the part of right-wingers to engage in political violence. They realize the Capitol is unlikely to face future threats from conservatives, so they haven’t bothered to take steps to protect it.
The second is that they do believe the threat is real and they don’t want to do anything about it. The more cynical possibility is that the Democrats want another Jan. 6 to happen. Indeed, it is possible they want to see the same events play out more than once because it would provide them with a political cudgel to wield against conservatives and former President Donald Trump. Perhaps they wish to leave these fixtures unprotected because it might be more politically expedient to do so.
Either way, we know they don’t actually care about what happened last year. In the end, as with most other occurrences, they view Jan. 6 as an opportunity to attack their political opposition, not a problem that should be solved.
