More Republicans Than Ever Think Jan. 6 Was Instigated by the Government

GOP loyalty to Donald Trump is morphing into total blinders to the former president’s violent politics.

A new Washington Post-University of Maryland poll illustrates that Republicans are now, more than ever, more likely to believe baseless conspiracy theories that the 2020 election was stolen from their front-runner, that January 6 rioters were not violent, and that the insurrection was instigated by law enforcement. The results are the latest follow-up to another round of GOP interviews conducted by The Washington Post in December 2021.

“From a historical perspective, these results would be chilling to many analysts,” Michael J. Hanmer, director of the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement at the University of Maryland, told the Post.

Americans of every political demographic seemingly have more doubts about President Joe Biden’s legitimate ascent to the White House. According to the poll, just 62 percent of Americans, including Democrats and independents, believe the 2020 election was legitimate—down from 69 percent in 2021. Republican belief dropped the most, though, falling by eight points in the last three years to just 31 percent in the most recent survey.

“There were so many people that felt the election was rigged. It was not right for them to break in like that, but they were fed up and frustrated and they were whipped into a frenzy by the FBI and others,” said Colleen Michaels, 59, of Woodsfield, Ohio, who told the Post that she would have attended Trump’s protest at the U.S. Capitol herself if not for a medical emergency.

In defending their turned perspectives, interviewed Republicans cited debunked claims of voter fraud in Georgia, pointing toward a video of election workers allegedly placing fake ballots into the tally. That same claim, advertised by Rudy Giuliani, recently earned the Trump fixer a $148 million judgment for defamation.

And while the majority of Americans believe that the events of January 6 threatened U.S. democracy, Republicans seem to feel otherwise, differing wildly from their recorded opinions in the immediate aftermath of the attack.

More than seven in 10 Republicans say the attack has been overinflated and feel it is “time to move on,” reported the Post. Republicans seem to believe less and less that the attack was violent, with 18 percent believing the rioters were “mostly violent,” a statistic that has dropped from 26 percent in 2021. That’s compared to 77 percent of Democrats and 54 percent of independents who also reported that the attempted insurrectionists were violent.

Donald Trump has kicked off the new year with a brand new conspiracy about how people are out to get him.

Trump’s Monday evening rant takes aim primarily at former Representative Liz Cheney, who has recently increased her condemnation of the Republican primary front-runner. Trump’s comments also show growing frustration with the many lawsuits against him.

“Why did American Disaster Liz Cheney, who suffers from TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome), and was defeated for Congress by the largest margin for a sitting Congressman or Congresswoman in the history of our Country, ILLEGALLY DELETE & DESTROY most of the evidence, and related items, from the January 6th Committee of Political Thugs and Misfits,” Trump demanded on Truth Social.

“THIS ACT OF EXTREME SABOTAGE MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR MY LAWYERS TO PROPERLY PREPARE FOR, AND PRESENT, A PROPER DEFENSE OF THEIR CLIENT, ME.”

Trump then insisted that the “ridiculous Deranged Jack Smith case on Immunity, which the most respected legal minds in the Country say I am fully entitled to, is now completely compromised and should be thrown out and terminated.”

Cheney was one of just a few Republicans to reject Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election had been rigged against him. The party turned on her as a result, and she ended up losing her 2022 reelection campaign during the primaries. (She did lose by a massive margin, but it was only the biggest incumbent primary loss of this century, not of all time, as Trump claimed.)

The former Wyoming representative released a book in early December, in which she brutally criticizes Trump. During her press tour for the book, Cheney repeatedly issued chilling warnings that reelecting Trump would be disastrous for the country.

Trump’s anti-Cheney screed came about a week after he slammed special counsel Jack Smith, Joe Biden, and the Democratic Party in general as “thugs” who are “looking to destroy our once great USA.”

“MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!” Trump wrote on Truth Social, really getting into the spirit of the season.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that he is immune to criminal proceedings because he was president at the time of his alleged crimes. Smith, who is investigating Trump for both trying to overturn the election and mishandling classified documents, urged an appeals court over the weekend to reject Trump’s claim of immunity.

Presidential hopeful Nikki Haley says she would pardon Donald Trump for the sake of letting the country move on. It’s the latest weird moment in a week of self-sabotage. It’s also the latest example of one of Trump’s ostensible political opponents opting to treat the many criminal accusations against him with solicitousness instead of actually taking advantage of his one massive vulnerability.

During a Thursday campaign event in New Hampshire, a 9-year-old asked Haley if she would pardon Trump. Haley replied that she would. “If he is found guilty, a leader needs to think about what’s in the best interest of the country,” Haley said. “What’s in the best interest of the country is not to have an 80-year-old man sitting in jail, that continues to divide our country.”

“What’s in the best interest of the country would be to pardon him, so that we can move on as a country and no longer talk about him.”

Haley is naïve to think that a pardoned Trump would just go away. There’s a far greater chance that Trump, once fully pardoned, would go right back to what he’s doing now: working to obtain the power necessary to get revenge on his political enemies, and working behind the scenes to undermine democracy. With the support of his fervent fan base and his well-documented tendency to bear grudges, he’d likely undermine even a Republican successor.

This isn’t the first time Haley has suggested pardoning Trump if he is convicted in one of his many lawsuits. After Trump was indicted in June for hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, Haley said she “would be inclined in favor of a pardon” for him if he is found guilty.

Haley’s opinion on a potential Trump pardon came just hours after she refused to say that slavery was one of the main factors in the Civil War. Instead, she insisted at a Wednesday night campaign stop that the war was fought over the role of government and (white) people’s freedoms.

When asked about Haley’s lack of comments on slavery, her fellow presidential hopeful Chris Christie accused her of running scared. (Christie doesn’t appear to have a chance of winning, but he isn’t shy about calling out his fellow candidates.)

“She didn’t say it because she’s a racist, because she’s not,” Christie said Thursday. “She did it because she’s unwilling to offend anyone by telling the truth.”

“If she is unwilling to stand up and say that slavery is what caused the Civil War because she’s afraid of offending constituents in some other part of the country, if she’s afraid to say that Donald Trump is unfit because she’s afraid of offending people who support Donald Trump, and because maybe she harbors in the back of her mind being vice president or being secretary of state … what’s going to happen when she has to stand up against forces in our own party who want to drag this country deeper and deeper into anger and division and exhaustion?”

Ohio’s Republican Governor Mike DeWine shocked everyone Friday when he vetoed a bill that would have banned gender-affirming care for minors, a major win for LGBTQ residents of the Buckeye State.

House Bill 68 would have banned gender-affirming care for transgender and nonbinary teenagers. The measure would have applied to treatments including puberty blockers, hormones, and medical procedures; it also included prohibitions on trans high school and college students participating on sports teams that match their gender identity.

“Were I to sign House Bill 68, or were House Bill 68 to become law, Ohio would be saying that the state—that the government—knows better what is medically best for a child than the two people who love that child the most: the parents,” DeWine said at a press conference.

“I cannot sign this bill as it is currently written. Just a few minutes ago, I vetoed this bill.”

More than 500 people testified against the bill in early December, including representatives for most major medical institutions in the state and the country. DeWine cited the medical support for gender-affirming care as a factor in his decision, as well as conversations he had with trans teens and their parents.

“Parents have looked me in the eye and told me that but for this treatment, their child would be dead,” he said. “And youth who are transgender have told me they are thriving today because of their transition.”

DeWine’s decision is a rare bright spot in the current onslaught of measures restricting access to gender-affirming care. GOP-led states have passed hundreds of bills banning health care for trans teens and adults. The few victories are often the result of a Republican breaking ranks, such as in Louisiana, where Republican state Senator Fred Mills cast the deciding vote in May to kill a gender-affirming care ban in committee. Unfortunately, the Louisiana Republicans resurrected the bill and successfully passed it through a different committee. That ban will go into effect on January 1.

Maine has disqualified Donald Trump from its 2024 primary ballot, the second time this month that a state has made the historic move regarding the former president.

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows ruled Thursday that Trump had engaged in insurrection during the January 6 attack, rendering himself ineligible for elected office under the text of Article Three of the Fourteenth Amendment. Trump’s team had desperately tried to stop her from handing down this decision, arguing that Bellows should have recused herself from the case because of past comments she had made about the riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Bellows determined that the January 6 attack was “violent enough, potent enough, and long enough to constitute an insurrection.” Trump, she stated in her decision, “used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters and direct them to the Capitol to prevent certification of the 2020 election and the peaceful transfer of power.”

“The events of January 6, 2021 were unprecedented and tragic,” Bellows wrote. “The evidence here demonstrates that they occurred at the behest of, and with the knowledge and support of, the outgoing President. The U.S. Constitution does not tolerate an assault on the foundations of our government, and [Maine law] requires me to act in response.”

Bellows’s decision comes a little more than a week after the Colorado Supreme Court also determined that Trump had engaged in insurrection and barred him from the state’s primary ballot. Neither decision will go into effect immediately so Trump has time to appeal.

Multiple other states are currently weighing cases regarding Trump’s ballot eligibility. The secretaries of state in Michigan, Minnesota, and California have all determined that Trump will remain on their presidential ballots. The next decision will likely come out of Oregon.

While it’s possible that other states might come to the same conclusion reached by election officials in Maine and Colorado, the question of whether Trump will ultimately appear on these states’ ballots will likely be determined by the Supreme Court. Trump’s campaign has already said it will appeal the Maine and Colorado decisions. The Colorado Republican Party on Wednesday asked the nation’s high court to review the state Supreme Court decision.

While the Supreme Court is not required to take the case, there is a sense of momentum that this dispute is headed its way, as  legal scholars have called on the justices to resolve the issue. Their decision will provide a single rule for all states—instead of having a messy mix of some state ballots with Trump’s name and some without—and will likely shape how the Fourteenth Amendment’s language will be interpreted going forward.