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Former President Donald Trumps lies about a stolen 2020 election united right-wing supporters, conspiracy theorists and militants on Jan. 6, but the aftermath of the insurrection is roiling two of the most prominent far-right extremist groups at the U.S. Capitol that day.

More than three dozen members and associates across both the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers have been charged with crimes. Some local chapters cut ties with national leadership in the weeks after the deadly siege. The Proud Boys chairman called for a pause in the rallies that often have led to clashes with anti-fascist activists. And one Oath Keeper has agreed to cooperate against others charged in the riot.

Some extremism experts see parallels between the fallout from the Capitol riot and the schisms that divided far-right figures and groups after their violent clashes with counter-protesters at the Unite the Right white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017. The white supremacist alt-right movement fractured and ultimately faded from public view after the violence erupted that weekend.

I think something kind of like that is happening right now in the broader far-right movement, where the cohesive tissue that brought them all together being the 2020 election its kind of dissolved," said Jared Holt, a resident fellow at the Atlantic Councils Digital Forensic Research Lab.

But others believe President Joe Biden s victory and the Jan. 6 investigation, the largest federal prosecution in history, might animate the militia movement fueled by an anti-government anger.

Were already seeing a lot of this rhetoric being spewed in an effort to pull in people, said Freddy Cruz, a Southern Poverty Law Center research analyst who studies anti-government groups. Its very possible that people will become energized and try to coordinate more activity given that we have a Democratic president in office."

The mob marched to the Capitol and broke through police barricades and overwhelmed officers, violently shoving its way into the building to chants of Hang Mike Pence and Stop the Steal. Some rioters came prepared with pepper spray, baseball bats and other weapons.

Members of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers make up just a fraction of the more than 400 people charged so far. Prosecutors have narrowed in on the two extremist groups as they try to determine how much planning went into the attack, but authorities have said they're intent on arresting anyone involved.

The Proud Boys, a self-described Western chauvinist" group, emerged from far-right fringes during the Trump administration to mainstream GOP circles, with allies like longtime Trump backer Roger Stone. The group claims it has more than 30,000 members nationwide.

Chairman Henry Enrique Tarrio hasn't been charged in the riot. He wasn't there on Jan. 6. He'd been arrested in an unrelated vandalism case as he arrived in Washington two days before the insurrection and was ordered out of the area by a judge. Law enforcement later said Tarrio was picked up in part to help quell potential violence.

Tarrio insists the criminal charges havent weakened or divided the group. He says he has met with leaders of chapters that declared their independence and patched up their differences.

Weve been through the wringer, Tarrio said in an interview. Any other group after January 6th would fall apart.

But leaders of several local Proud Boys chapters, including in Seattle, Las Vegas, Indiana and Alabama, said after Jan. 6 that their members were cutting ties with the organizations national leadership. Four group leaders, including national Elders Council member Ethan Nordean, have been charged by federal officials with planning and leading an attack on the Capitol building. One of Nordeans attorneys said he wasnt responsible for any crimes committed by other people.

The Las Vegas chapters statement on the Telegram instant messaging platform in February didnt mention Jan. 6 directly, but it claimed the overall direction of the organization was endangering its members.

Meanwhile, 16 members and associates of the Oath Keepers a militia group founded in 2009 that recruits current and former military, police and first responders have been charged with conspiring to block the certification of the vote. The group's founder and leader, Stewart Rhodes, has said the Oath Keepers had as many as 40,000 members at its peak, but one extremism expert estimates the group's membership stands around 3,000 nationally.

Rhodes, has not been charged, and its unclear if he will be. But he has repeatedly come up in court documents as Person One, suggesting hes a central focus of investigators.

On Jan. 6, several Oath Keepers, wearing helmets and reinforced vests, were seen on camera shouldering their way up the Capitol steps in a military-style stack formation. Rhodes was communicating on Jan. 6 with some who entered the Capitol and was seen standing with several of the defendants outside the building after the riot, prosecutors say.

Rhodes has sought to distance himself from those who've been arrested, insisting the members went rogue and there was never a plan to enter the Capitol. But he has continued in interviews with right-wing hosts since Jan. 6 to push the lie that the election was stolen, while the Oath Keepers website remains active with posts painting the group as the victim of political persecution.

Messages left at numbers listed for Rhodes weren't immediately returned.

After the riot, the North Carolina Oath Keepers branch said it was splitting from Rhodes' group. Its president, who didn't return messages from the AP, told The News Reporter newspaper it wouldn't be "a part of anything that terrorizes anybody or goes against law enforcement.

A member of the Oath Keepers was the first defendant to plead guilty in the riot. Jon Ryan Schaffer has also agreed to cooperate with the government's investigation. The Justice Department has promised to consider putting Schaffer in the witness security program, suggesting it sees him as a valuable cooperator in the Jan. 6 probe.

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Charges after US Capitol insurrection roil far-right groups - The Independent

Supporters of former President Donald Trump gather to hear Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., speak last week at a rally in Dalton, Ga. Megan Varner/Getty Images hide caption

Supporters of former President Donald Trump gather to hear Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., speak last week at a rally in Dalton, Ga.

Michael Flynn, a onetime national security adviser to former President Donald Trump, was videotaped in Texas over the weekend pushing talking points of the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory and also seeming to endorse a coup in the United States, though he later said he doesn't back one.

Flynn is one of many Trump acolytes who, along with the former president himself, continue to push the lie that Trump won the 2020 election.

Flynn's claims on the issue are just one way in which Trump allies are trying to maintain the Make America Great Again movement. A review of what Trump alums are up to shows that there are two distinct groups: those who are going all in on Trump and MAGA, often creating new entities to institutionalize the movement outside established GOP circles; and those who are going more traditional conservative routes.

In that way, the split echoes how Trump has created a rift in the Republican Party, with more establishment figures sidelined.

Like Trump, many of the people around him during his presidency were unorthodox. A number of his aides and nominees were outside mainstream politics, came from various walks of life like his family and fell in and out of favor with the former president at various points.

Some former aides and campaign officials are still close to Trump. Dan Scavino, for example, who ran his social media accounts, is a senior adviser, as is Jason Miller, a former campaign adviser.

Others have an eye on the next crop of candidates. Among their efforts, Kellyanne Conway, the 2016 campaign manager and White House adviser, is on board a Senate candidate's campaign in Ohio, and Bill Stepien, who was campaign manager for Trump's 2020 run, is working the campaign of a Senate candidate in Missouri.

Some, such as Brad Parscale, are keeping a foot in both worlds. Parscale was Trump's digital director in 2016 and campaign manager for a short time in 2020 before a domestic incident sidelined him. Parscale is reportedly helping Trump set up a new social media platform, which has not yet materialized, and he is advising a gubernatorial candidate in Ohio and boosting another in New Jersey.

And in all, at least four new Republican-aligned groups have cropped up, involving at least two dozen Trump alums and surrogates, with the goal of raising money, pushing Trump's policies and message to the public and in the courts, as well as backing candidates in the mold of the former president.

But there are also about half a dozen former Trump world officials waiting in the wings and taking steps in case Trump doesn't run for president again in 2024, hoping to capitalize on the movement for themselves. Others are engaged in conservative media or have gone more traditional routes.

Here's a glimpse at some of those key players and where they are now:

Stephen Miller, pictured here in 2020 in his role as Trump White House adviser, has formed a group that is vowing to fight to protect Trump-like laws in court. Anna Moneymaker/Pool/Getty Images hide caption

Stephen Miller, pictured here in 2020 in his role as Trump White House adviser, has formed a group that is vowing to fight to protect Trump-like laws in court.

America First Legal: Stephen Miller, former White House adviser and hard-liner on immigration; Mark Meadows, former chief of staff; Russ Vought, ex-budget director (now also president of the Center for Renewing America); and Matthew Whitaker, former acting attorney general, are all working together at the new group. It vows to take court action against the "radical left." Consider it the legal arm of defending the Trump legacy, and it has Trump's stamp of approval.

America First Policy Institute: Many former officials have signed up with this group, which says its goal is to "conduct research and develop policies that put the American people first."

Its founder is Brooke Rollins, the former head of Trump's Office of American Innovation. The chair of the board is Linda McMahon, Trump's Small Business Administration administrator and wife of the head of World Wrestling Entertainment, Vince McMahon. Larry Kudlow, who now has his own Fox Business show and was Trump's director of the National Economic Council, is vice chair. It includes former Cabinet secretaries and heads of agencies, is being advised by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, and even includes Paula White-Cain, a former White House spiritual adviser who went viral for her sermon after Election Day calling on angels in Africa and South America, and deriding "demonic confederacies" who were trying to steal the election from Trump.

American Greatness PAC/American Greatness Fund: Parscale founded the American Greatness PAC and a nonprofit offshoot, the American Greatness Fund. Right up Trump's alley, the group has formed an Election Integrity Alliance and claims to want to strengthen "election safeguards." The board of the group includes former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and disgraced former New York Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik.

Fight Back Now America: Corey Lewandowski, another former Trump campaign manager from the 2016 campaign, created the group, which tests the limits of the fighting metaphor. The top image on its website is an empty boxing ring. It's seeking to raise money, it says, to defeat Democrats and fund primary opponents of candidates who are presumably not Trumpy enough, such as Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo.

If the fighting imagery wasn't enough, the combativeness even runs deep into its philosophy. "The time for niceties, spin and nuance is over," the site reads. Like an Elizabeth Warren campaign speech, the word "fight" appears 23 times on the site's front page. Of course, what it's fighting for is very different.

Former Vice President Mike Pence addresses a crowd in Columbia, S.C., at an April event sponsored by the Palmetto Family Council. Sean Rayford/Getty Images hide caption

Former Vice President Mike Pence addresses a crowd in Columbia, S.C., at an April event sponsored by the Palmetto Family Council.

Mike Pence, the former vice president, who was targeted during the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection because his boss continued to say he wouldn't block certification of President Biden's victory, is forming a policy fundraising committee. The former radio host joined the conservative Young America's Foundation, where he will launch a podcast. And he has a multimillion-dollar book deal; he's set to write two books, including an autobiography due out in 2023, which just so happens to be right when a GOP presidential primary would be kicking off.

Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state, took a position with the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, and was named a Fox News contributor. He's staying engaged in politics though. Among his efforts, he's reportedly planning a trip to Israel on the heels of one by his successor.

Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, created a group called Stand for America, and while its stated goal is to promote conservative issues and ideas, the website looks more like it's promoting her. There are lots of photos of Haley including with Trump, someone she's had a hot-and-cold relationship with on what could be a presidential campaign site-in-waiting.

Ben Carson, the former housing and urban development secretary, created a think tank (the American Cornerstone Institute) and political action committee (Think BIG America PAC). The group, Carson says, will also look to fund candidates. "We'll be very interested in who are the people who are advocating visions that are logical and that make sense," Carson has said. Before you think that the low-key former brain surgeon isn't likely to run, remember he was one of only a few candidates who took over the lead (even if briefly) from Trump during the Republican presidential primary in 2015.

Donald Trump Jr., Trump's eldest child, continues the fight on Twitter, where his father is banned, trying to trigger and own the libs. But Trump Jr. can't be dismissed as simply an amplifier for his father. During his father's presidency, Trump Jr. distinguished himself politically, arguably more than either of his siblings.

While Ivanka was a White House adviser, Don Jr. appears poised to be the political heir apparent of the MAGA movement. His natural affinity for the Trump base has won him the adoration of the rank and file, and it's made him a draw on the campaign trail, not just for his father, but down-ballot candidates. He's still running the Trump Organization with his brother, but once someone catches the political bug, it's hard to shut it off. His problem, though, is that he has no natural place to run yet. He has recently moved to Florida, but there's no race open there at the moment. And there's that criminal probe to deal with in New York.

Ivanka Trump, daughter of the former president, and her husband, Jared Kushner, attend her father's departure from Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20 at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. Alex Edelman/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Ivanka Trump, daughter of the former president, and her husband, Jared Kushner, attend her father's departure from Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20 at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.

Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and former White House adviser, is reportedly founding the Abraham Accords Institute to facilitate trade between Israel and other accords signatory countries. Also on board are former White House envoy Avi Berkowitz; Haim Saban, a major Democratic donor; former United Arab Emirates and Bahrain ambassadors to the U.S. as well as an Israeli foreign minister.

Ivanka Trump still lists herself on Twitter as "advisor to POTUS" despite her father being out of office for more than five months now. What she does next is still an open question. Eric Trump continues to run the Trump Organization, though that has become more complicated given the New York criminal investigation. He also moved to Florida recently. Tiffany Trump mostly avoided the spotlight during her father's time in office, but she graduated from Georgetown Law School during it, and on the final day of Trump's presidency, she announced that she's engaged.

Lara Trump, Eric's wife, always seemed to be the bigger hit with the Trump crowds than her husband and she seemed to enjoy the political limelight more. There had been speculation she could run for the Senate in her home state of North Carolina, but with her recent move to Florida, there was talk she might challenge Sen. Marco Rubio in a primary. That was put to rest, however, when the former president endorsed Rubio.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, former White House press secretary, is seen during a 2019 appearance on the "Fox & Friends" TV show. Richard Drew/AP hide caption

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, former White House press secretary, is seen during a 2019 appearance on the "Fox & Friends" TV show.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, former White House press secretary, is running for governor of Arkansas, a job her father once held. She asked for and got Donald Trump's endorsement.

Ryan Zinke, the former Department of the Interior secretary, rode in on a horse but left under a cloud of investigations. He joined an investment firm and the board of a gold mining company and is now running again for Congress in Montana.

Ronny Jackson, the former White House physician, is now a congressman from Texas despite a Pentagon inspector general's report finding that he bullied subordinates, harassed women and smelled of alcohol while serving in the White House.

Steve Bannon, the former Trump campaign chairman, got new life with a presidential pardon after being charged last year with allegedly defrauding Trump supporters in a scheme he claimed was to help finish the southern border wall. Now, the former Breitbart founder is back in the media with an influential online show and podcast called War Room and ... selling supplements.

Kayleigh McEnany, former White House press secretary, signed on as a Fox News contributor.

Sean Spicer, the former and first White House press secretary of the "largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period" fame, got spicy with the dance moves and fashion choices on ABC's Dancing With the Stars. He now hosts a show on the right-wing cable channel Newsmax.

Steven Mnuchin, former Treasury secretary, started an investment fund. He's landed in controversy already for it because he is reportedly seeking funding from Persian Gulf countries, many of which he traveled to as Treasury secretary. He also is reportedly looking to hire Israel's current director of Mossad, its spy agency. He's also charging upward of $250,000 a speech. If that's too steep for you, he's happy to give you a discount for virtual speeches, which will only cost $75,000.

Mick Mulvaney, former chief of staff, budget director and envoy to Northern Ireland, started a hedge fund.

Wilbur Ross, Trump's former commerce secretary, is back on Wall Street with a $345 million "blank check" fund, groups that help raise cash for initial public offerings.

Anthony Scaramucci, the 11-day White House communications director, went back to his investment firm SkyBridge.

Betsy DeVos, the former education secretary, was a villain to the left during Trump's presidency, and she's continued in that role. DeVos started a group called the American Federation for Children, a school choice and private school advocacy group. As secretary, DeVos was at odds with teachers unions, and even the name of her new group seems a direct response to those unions, the largest of which is the American Federation of Teachers. She has continued to criticize teachers, saying school closures during the pandemic fall "at the feet of the teachers' unions and all of their allies." She got some bad news recently, though, as a judge in California ruled she has to sit for a three-hour deposition about her role in not issuing student loan forgiveness to students who said their for-profit colleges defrauded them. It's part of a class-action lawsuit.

William Barr, the former attorney general, is writing a book.

Gen. John Kelly, former chief of staff, joined the board of Caliburn, a defense contractor that also operates four shelters for migrant children.

Gen. James Mattis, former defense secretary, joined the board of General Dynamics, a defense contractor, and is a senior counselor at the Cohen Group, a business consultant group.

Don McGahn, former White House counsel, has rejoined the law firm Jones Day. He is slated to testify Friday on Capitol Hill in relation to former special prosecutor Robert Mueller's investigation. It comes two years after the House Judiciary Committee first requested his testimony, but was blocked by the Trump administration.

Kirstjen Nielsen is a former homeland security secretary whom Trump loyalists reportedly referred to as "Nurse Ratched" behind her back because of her rigid style. Ironically, she left the administration after Trump didn't see her as sufficiently tough enough. Post-Trump, she advises on security threats and risk management.

Reince Priebus, former chief of staff, is president and chief strategist at Michael Best & Friedrich LLP law firm.

Andrew Wheeler, former Environmental Protection Agency administrator and former coal lobbyist, joined the Heritage Foundation.

See original here:
Trump Alums' Landing Spots Show The GOP Divide Trump Created - NPR

Kelly Hans holds a box of Narcan nasal spray at the county's One-Stop Shop in Austin. Mitch Legan/WTIU/WFIU News hide caption

Kelly Hans holds a box of Narcan nasal spray at the county's One-Stop Shop in Austin.

In 2015, rural Scott County, Indiana, found itself in the national spotlight when intravenous drug use and sharing needles led to an outbreak of HIV.

Mike Pence, who was Indiana's governor at the time, approved the state's first syringe exchange program in the small manufacturing community 30 minutes north of Louisville, as part of an emergency measure.

"I will tell you that I do not support needle exchange as anti-drug policy," he said during a 2015 visit to the county. "But this is a public health emergency."

In all, 235 people became infected with HIV over the course of the outbreak, most of them within the first year. In all of last year, there was one new case. Health officials credit the needle exchange for the dramatic drop-off in cases.

But with cases the lowest in years, Scott County's commissioners are considering shutting the program down. Two of three commissioners have said they plan to vote to end the program during their meeting June 2, arguing it enables drug use. (Neither would grant interviews to NPR.)

Needle exchanges provide intravenous drug users with clean syringes and a place to dispose of used ones. Research shows they help reduce the spread of infectious diseases like HIV and can help people overcome substance abuse by acting as an access point to health services for those who are unlikely to seek them out.

Michelle Matern, Scott County's health administrator, doesn't want to see the syringe program end.

"I think a lot of people forgot kind of what 2015 was like, and what we went through as a community," says Matern.

Hans goes through the contents of one of the kits the exchange provides intravenous drug users. Mitch Legan/WTIU/WFIU News hide caption

Hans goes through the contents of one of the kits the exchange provides intravenous drug users.

Residents have testified to the effectiveness of the exchange during recent meetings. Former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams attended a commissioners' meeting in early May and praised Scott County's exchange as the gold standard.

"I've seen syringe service programs all over the nation; I've been to Canada and seen how they do it over there," Adams said. "And the way you're doing it here is the way it's supposed to be done."

The county's One-Stop Shop in Austin, Ind., provides testing for HIV, hepatitis C or sexually transmitted infections. There's food and the people who work there can connect users with health insurance, housing and recovery opportunities. It serves around 170 people a month.

"We don't call it a needle exchange anymore," Matern says. "We call it a 'syringe service program,' because we realize that it's a lot more than just exchanging used syringes for new ones."

The two commissioners who are against the program say it enables drug users by providing supplies needed to inject drugs and is leading to overdoses.

"It's aggravating for a first responder to Narcan somebody, and this is one of the things I really struggle with is that there's no accountability," commissioner Mike Jones said during a recent meeting. "They walk out of the ER, there's no nothing happens. I mean, nothing happens."

In a since-deleted Facebook post, commissioner Randy Julian referred to the program as "a welfare program for addicts."

Carrie Lawrence, associate director of the Rural Center for AIDS/STD Prevention at Indiana University says eliminating the supply of clean syringes is not going to help people who are struggling with addiction stop injecting drugs. They're likely to continue even with dirty needles. "That's how Indiana got known for our HIV outbreak," she says.

Closing the syringe exchange she says, "is putting more people at risk."

Kelly Hans was struggling with addiction before the outbreak and now works at the needle exchange as its HIV prevention outreach coordinator. She says getting rid of the program would be a huge blow to the county's recovery system.

"I wish there would have been some place like this prior to the outbreak in 2015, when I was using and when I was a mess," she says. "There was nowhere for me to go to ask for help. Recovery wasn't very loud here in Scott County. So, I didn't even know who to go to."

At THRIVE Recovery Community Organization in Scottsburg, 1,885 people from around the area reached out for help last year. Over a quarter of them were referred there by the county's needle exchange.

The exchange provides Narcan and information to help people use drugs safely, both to prevent disease and avoid overdoses.

Lawrence began researching the situation in Scott County from the start. She says the trust that has been built between the exchange and IV drug using community is what has made it effective.

"You can't just throw up a tent in the middle of the parking lot to do this," she says.

But the commissioners say there are treatments for HIV and are frustrated they don't see more people in recovery from drug use.

"I don't know how you get to someone to say, 'Enough's enough,'" Mike Jones said at a recent meeting.

Health officials have warned of what's happening in West Virginia, where cases of HIV and hepatitis C are spiking as elected officials crack down on needle exchanges.

In Scott County, Matern says they could transition to a harm reduction program without needles sharing addiction resources and STD and HIV testing services. But she doubts it will be as effective, because what gets people in the door is the needles. If the needle exchange is halted, she expects a rise in HIV cases to follow.

Carrie Lawrence agrees. "Given the history of the Scott County outbreak, another one could happen," she says.

Read more from the original source:
Indiana Needle Exchange That Helped Contain An HIV Outbreak May Be Forced To Close - NPR

I watched as the president of the United States urged a mob to march on the U.S. Capitol and overthrow the American government.

On Jan. 6, 2021, I saw Donald Trump tell thousands of his most enthusiastic followers that the result of the November 2020 presidential election could not be accepted.

We will never give up, he told them. We will never concede. It doesnt happen. You dont concede when theres theft involved. Our country has had enough.

Watching on television, I turned to my wife and said, My God, hes urging them to overthrow the government.

I didnt need a congressional investigation. I had spent decades covering news events, political leaders at rallies and protest marches. I had sometimes seen peaceful gatherings transformed into a violent rabble. But nothing came close to this.

To use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with, we will stop the steal, the president said.

Just down the road, at the U.S. Capitol Building, congressmen and senators were gathering to ratify the electoral college vote that would eventually install Joe Biden into office, replacing Trump.

You will have an illegitimate president, Trump said. That is what you will have, and we cant let that happen. These are the facts that you wont hear from the fake news media. Its all part of the suppression effort. They dont want you to talk about it.

Trump was clearly urging supporters to overthrow the result of a legal election.

We will fight like hell, and if you dont fight like hell, youre not going to have a country anymore, Trump said.

Then Trump implied he was going to step down from the platform where he was giving his speech and march along with the crowd to the Capitol Building.

Were going to walk down, and Ill be there with you. We are going to the Capitol and we are going to try and give (the Republican lawmakers) the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.

And the mob began to march and chant and wave its Trump banners and Dont Tread on Me flags crashing through the barricades surrounding the Capitol Building,

Assaulting the Capitol police with pipes, breaking through locked doors, and smashing glass windows.

The insurrectionists were swarming through the corridors hunting for congressmen as if they were animals.

They were chanting Hang Mike Pence, Hang Mike Pence, because the Republican Vice President of the United States had refused to use his power as Senate President to try and negate the electoral college vote and keep Trump in power. There was a scaffold awaiting him outside.

Members of the mob mockingly chanted the name of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, daring her to show her face.

Inside the House floor, makeshift barricades were created to hold back the mob and cell phone calls were made to family members who elected officials thought they might never see again.

In other locations, offices were broken into and ransacked.

Fascism was in full bloom as thugs in military gear threatened to brutalize and replace the civilian authority.

Today there are people who say I did not see what I saw. There are Republican congressmen who claim it was just a typical visit by Washington tourists.

Senate Republicans have refused to approve a commission to investigate exactly what happened. They dont want an official record. They prefer to rewrite history.

I know what I saw. But the fact is that the truth is already being altered; twisted into some sort of patriotic display of free speech. A legitimate protest inspired by election fraud by the Democrats.

We must bear witness to the truth and repeat it as often as the falsehoods are shouted and tweeted on the Internet.

Only a handful of months have passed. But already, you can feel history shifting beneath your feet.

Send letters to letters@suntimes.com

See more here:
I saw what happened on Jan. 6 and will testify to the truth - Chicago Sun-Times

A Stop The Steal is posted inside of the U.S. Capitol Building after a pro-Trump mob broke into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Photo by Jon Cherry | Getty Images

There is way too much hate and way too much misinformation spreading across our political landscape.

Ive watched and written about politics for more than 55 years and have never seen anything that approaches this mess.At the top of the dreadful heap: a former president who seems to think he is still president and spends most of every day trashing everyone who disagrees.

It is like watching a comedy of errors. Each day dawns with a new series of attacks from Trump land. Seven months after voters elected Joe Biden president, Trump is still trying to count and recount votes in various places, despite rulings from many courts that have confirmed that Biden won the election.

In the beginning, I thought Trump was merely a buffoon who liked to grab unsuspecting women in sensitive places, a practice he boasted about that was captured on tape and broadcast for all to hear.

I thought Trump was just plain wrong when he said he could shoot someone in the middle of Manhattan and get away with it. Now Im not quite so sure.

In daily statements from his Save America operation and We Love Trump newsletter published several times a day, Trump spreads rumors denigrating COVID-19 vaccines, promoting visions from ministers saying he will regain the presidency any day now, and calling all efforts to investigate his conduct and connections to the Jan. 6 raid on the U.S. Capitol just part of another witch hunt.

Banned from Facebook and Twitter for spreading misinformation, Trump now uses various other ways to spread even more misinformation.

In one publication of the Daily Truth Report called We Love Trump, he even accused former Vice President Mike Pence of having a gay lover. There is just no limit to what he and his followers have been willing to do: Witness the noose at the Capitol to hang U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Witness those who were chasing Pence to keep him from certifying the results of the 2020 election.

It would be laughable if it werent so damaging to our country. Its clear that some people believe him and continue to support him. Its also clear that other many of the Republicans in Congress are so afraid of him they are voting against their own interests to avoid his wrath.

From the Senate floor, then-Senate President Mitch McConnell denounced Trumps role in the Jan. 6 invasion of the Capitol after his fellow senators failed to remove the president from office for sparking the raid. But McConnell, now the U.S. Senate minority leader, wouldnt cast a vote against Trump. Instead, he has fought efforts to authorize a formal investigation of the raid.

McConnell and many other members of Congress line up and kiss the ring, flying down to Mar-a-Lago to get their pictures taken with him playing a round of golf or greeting a crowd.

One of the prizes for idiocy in Congress should go to U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Georgia. He compared the raid which killed five people and injured many others to a normal tourist visit to the Capitol. A day later someone produced pictures of Clyde helping barricade the doors of the House as the invasion was under way.

Many Republicans in Congress have completely ostracized U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, for speaking out against Trump. She has pledged to do everything she can to ensure that the former president never gets anywhere near the Oval Office again, a quote Trump and his minions have widely circulated in an effort to damage her future political possibilities.

Supporters responding to one of the Daily Truth Reports, recently suggested Pelosi should face a firing squad. And Trumps daily newsletter refers to Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris as Joe and the Ho and asked supporters to recommend punishment if they are found guilty of rigging and stealing the election.

His supporters took the bait, with hundreds responding: hang them, firing squad, life in prison, guillotine, death by fire ants, Castration, Electrocution, a life sentence at Guantanamo Bay and 60 days of a continuous loop of Trump rallies.

The suggestions went on for more than 50 pages of venom, which Trump emailed in his daily report.

The newsletters are sprinkled with ads from financial companies being touted by former U.S. Rep Ron Paul: CBD painkillers, portable air conditioners, Ben Carsons over the counter smart pills that allegedly will triple your memory and retention in 21 days; a potent CBD line being promoted by Tucker Carlson of Fox News as well as cures for all sorts of problems.

Serious people in the world of politics would ordinarily ignore all this blathering, but the path back to sanity is not so clear.

We have many miles to go before our world can be repaired.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Lucy Morgan was chief of the St. Petersburg (Tampa Bay) Times capital bureau in Tallahassee for 20 years, retiring in 2006 and serving as senior correspondent until 2013. She is a contributor to the Florida Phoenix, which first published this essay.

Excerpt from:
The path back to sanity is not so clear: Hate, venom and a former president who seems to think he's still president - ncpolicywatch.com