Mediaboss Marketing

Among the factors leading to "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives" becoming the talked-about dramas of their debut season, as in 2004-2005, was their novel usage of bodies and questions in their respective premieres. "Lost" opens with wide shots of bodies scattered on a beach amidst a plane crash's wreckage. "Desperate Housewives" shocks with just one, that of the omniscient narrator who dies by suicide without warning.

Each show could have rolled along as straightforward relationship-driven dramas from there, save for the questions ending each pilot: "Oh Mary Alice, what did you do?" "Guys . . . where are we?" These simple queries establish there's something bigger going on than any individual character's story arc or their conflicts a potential threat that supersedes individual problems.

I can almost guarantee that nobody on the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection thought about either of these shows or the many subsequent series influenced by them when they laid the groundwork for their televised hearings.

Scratch that I'm positive of that, given the straightforward presentation witnessed by more than 20 million prime-time viewers on Thursday, June 9. None of the committee members made extra efforts to play to the cameras, and at times its chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson, D-Ms., stumbled when reading his lines from the teleprompter.

The unspoken understanding, at least among viewers watching in good faith, should be that none of these people were elected based on their acting ability. But the committee does understand how potent a tease, cliffhanger, and "coming up this season" montage can be to persuade a skeptical viewer to stick with the story. Rather, the man producing these televised hearings, former ABC News president James Goldston, understands this.

RELATED: Jan. 6 committee: Pointless spectacle

This approach is necessary given the grave danger the Jan. 6 insurrection represents and its relationship to a slow-moving, ongoing coup. Our entertainment landscape is awash with alternatives more exciting than a stodgy congressional committee hearing run by a bipartisan committee a team of Democrats and two Republicans who, can you believe it, appear to respect each other.

But that also means not enough people are paying attention or simply won't, abetted by Fox News' refusal to carry the first prime-time hearing live in favor of featuring Tucker Carlson deriding it as propaganda.

Thus, last Thursday's episode served as a plainspoken table-setting chapter and an educational reset for any tuned in to ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, PBS, C-SPAN or MSNBC, with Thompson explaining why the committee embarked on its investigation against the wishes of nearly every Republican member of congress.

Our entertainment landscape is awash with alternatives more exciting than a stodgy congressional committee hearing.

"I come before you this evening not as a Democrat but as an American who swore an oath to defend the Constitution," Thompson said, explaining that every member of Congress swears the same oath upon taking office: "to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic."

The prime-time opener of the Jan. 6 committee's hearings demonstrates comprehension of dramatic structure, not only regarding episodic presentation but in terms of spelling out a full season arc. Mind you, it was devoid of puzzle-box flourishes or the type of juiced-up "Desperate Housewives"-style heat that amplifies unscripted reality and episodic true crime.

Cheney introduced the committee's aim in these hearings to clearly spell out "plots to commit seditious conspiracy on Jan. 6" by explaining exactly what each episode is going to show us. Monday's second hearing presented recorded testimony from campaign chief Bill Stepien and aide Jason Miller, who told the committee that they informed Trump the election was lost and advised him against making any statement on the night of the election.

The next hearing is a dive into Trump's efforts to corrupt the Justice Department, a development about which former Attorney General Bill Barr has already dropped hints.

Some of its "loglines" were teased before the hearings began, mainly the revelations that in the days leading up to January 6, 2021, former President Donald Trump pressured his Vice President Mike Pence to assist him in overturning the election results. Because of this the first Pence-centered hearing, originally estimated to be the fourth, will probably be a popular one.

Other were announced by Cheney during the first telecast, along with scheduled appearances such as Monday's main "get": live testimony by former Fox News political editor Chris Stirewalt, the man behind that network's controversial and ultimately correct decision to call Arizona for Joe Biden on election night.

The coda of its curtain-raiser featured committee Vice-Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wy., spelling out the themes of each hearing to come and, where relevant, announcing corroborating testimony from a variety of witnesses many of them former members of Trump's inner circle.

Before that came the drama's introduction of its first hero, Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards, and a few of this story's monsters, including the Proud Boys meeting and the Oath Keepers.

US Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards testifies during a House Select Committee hearing to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol, in the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on June 9, 2022. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

It injected unintentional comic relief in the guise of Barr's taped deposition in which he described Trump's claims about the 2020 election having been stolen as, among other epic terms, "crazy," "garbage," "idiotic" and "bulls**t."

In the telecast's closing moments, their members' words speak to the question driving the season, the hearing's "Guys . . . where are we?" equivalent. At the root of all of this, the premieres spell out, the committee endeavors to prove, is Donald Trump's desire to hold on to power at any cost.

To some, describing this historic televised chronicle in the terms of scripted drama may seem to cheapen the proceedings. The opposite is true it's a highly rational strategy to meet the audience where it is.

Goldston's hand in the hearings' production is light enough for the viewer to appreciate how easy-to-follow each installment is. For the most part, the committee has delivered as promised, save for a last-minute cancellation by Stepien, whose wife went into labor. Even then, his video deposition was edited in a way to fit within the flow of the committee's script.

It's also present in the "casting," as it were, of the committee's witnesses. Footage of Ivanka Trump's agreement with Barr made headlines, understandably. However, the conscious decision to call upon Edwards to testify is particularly savvy.

Describing this historic televised chronicle in the terms of scripted drama may seem to cheapen the proceedings. The opposite is true.

Edwards is a compelling witness in any forum; the footage shows her single-handedly doing her best to hold back a surge of insurrectionists and sustaining a head injury when they overwhelmed her. She's also a blonde, white woman and a veteran's daughter, which is to say she embodies the type of woman the far-right professes to champion.

Establishing a public record of the committee's findings is the main mission here, but so is persuading any skeptics or deniers. Edwards pushes back on those assumptions with her statements and her image.

But the hearings also employ the all-important element of unpredictability, keeping its most quotable segments under wraps until broadcast. Miller's and Stepien's testimony that Trump's false claims of a stolen election may have begun with a drunken suggestion by an "apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani," generated the second-best catchphrase of the day after Stepien's bumper sticker-ready "Team Normal," as he describes the group advising Trump against declaring victory.

Every show worth watching generates merchandising opportunities.

A few analyses of Thursday's primetime broadcast try to whet the reader's appetite by calling the committee's televised hearing the must-watch event of the summer. This is probably an exaggeration in a media environment as fractured as this one, to say nothing of how jaded we are after living through a presidency that warped reality for a frighteningly large percentage of the American population.

Our lawmakers have taught the modern TV audience that congressional and senatorial committee hearings deemed important enough to lead or drive the news cycle are merely opportunities for them to grandstand for their constituents. Since their votes are already decided and no amount of qualifying evidence or disqualifying evidence could change their minds, weighing facts doesn't enter the equation.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Viewers presumed to be actively engaged in watching this committee's presentations are accustomed to having such cases built up by cable news hosts and experts only to be denied a payoff of comeuppance. We all lived through televised hearings of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into whether Trump courted Russian interference in the 2016 election, which was hyped for nearly two years and resulted in a flurry of criminal charges brought against Trump's associates but none against Trump himself.

In terms of the hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and associate justice-designate Ketanji Brown Jackson, the notion that senators debated their fitness to hold a position was a farce, giving way to the spectacle of surmising how well one's "team" holds up against the opposition.

The viewer, therefore, expects chaos and cacophony from these events, not debate or elucidation or, heaven forbid, progress or results.

Jan. 6 committee members who have spoken to the press outside of the hearings have been careful to say they're not necessarily counting on results, either. They're focused on ensuring their findings are witnessed and considered, that they become the topic of whatever the equivalent of water cooler discussion is at a time when gathering around a single reference point feels impossible.

Obviously they committee is doing whatever they can to lay a narrative course solid enough to end with an indictment for Trump, regardless of how notoriously difficult finales are to nail to everyone's satisfaction ask the creators of both of those dramas mentioned up top. But if enough of us remain tuned in to that point, that counts as a win by any metric.

More stories like this:

Original post:
From clear scripts to big-name casting, the Jan. 6 hearings meet the standards of must-see TV - Salon

I have a B.A. in History and Creative Writing and an M.A. in History. I enjoy politics, movies, television, poker, video games, and trivia.

A List of Things Republicans Believe In

Do all Republicans believe the same things? Of course not. Rarely do members of a single political group agree on all issues. Even among Republicans, there are differences of opinion. As a group, they do not agree on every issue.

Some folks vote Republican because of fiscal concerns. Often, that trumps concerns they may have about social issues. Others are less interested in the fiscal position of the party. They vote they way they do because of religion. They believe Republicans are the party of morality. Some simply want less government. They believe only Republicans can solve the problem of big government. Republicans spend less (except on military). They lower taxes: some people vote for that alone.

However, the Republican Party does stand for certain things. So I'm answering with regard to the party as a whole. Call it a platform. Call them core beliefs. The vast majority of Republicans adhere to certain ideas.

So what do Republicans believe? Here are their basic tenets:

This is pretty universal among Republicans. Government should not be providing solutions to problems that confront people (like health issues or paying bills). Those problems should be solved by the people themselves. A Republican would say that relying on the government to solve problems is a crutch that makes people lazy and feel entitled to receive things without working for them.

A Republican believes that decision-making should be as local as possible and if there's something important that needs solving on a social level, the state's decision should trump any federal decisions. The federal government should not have control over state decisions, generally speaking.

The free market is the perfect decision-maker. There need be no interference in the market because ultimately, the needs and desires of manufacturers and consumers will resolve themselves correctly in an unregulated market.

Republicans are generally accepting only of the Judeo-Christian belief system. For most Republicans, religion is absolutely vital in their political beliefs and the two cannot be separated. Therefore, separation of church and state is not that important to them. In fact, they believe that much of what is wrong has been caused by too much secularism.

Those are the four basic Republican tenets: small government, local control, the power of free markets, and Christian authority. Below are other things they believe that derive from those four ideas.

No matter what the situation, Republicans believe in lowering taxes across the board, for both individuals and businesses. As far as they are concerned, the more money that stays in the hands of the private sector, the better. They think people and businesses should be able to determine how and when they spend their money.

Republicans favor a strong military . . . and using that military. Republicans are usually hawks where Democrats are doves. The strong military stance demonstrates how Republicans use the power of the federal government, though they believe that a strong military spurs innovation and directs tax dollars as investments into businesses they support.

Republicans are more likely to argue for the privatization of things than Democrats, even going so far as to advocate for privatizing fire departments and the police in some cases. This goes for Social Security, healthcare, medicare, and virtually anything else that's linked to the government in any way. No matter what it is, they think that private industry can always do a better job than government.

This comes from their religious beliefs, which form the basis for a lot of policy. Republicans believe that homosexuality is a choice and, as such, gay people should not be acknowledged in the same way as other groups. Therefore, according to a Republican, homosexuals should not be allowed to marry, nor should they be allowed to adopt children.

Republicans support the position of the NRA and do not believe in gun control. They believe in the right of all citizens to own guns as detailed in the Constitution.

Scroll to Continue

Republicans are fundamentally against abortion and do not support the idea that a woman should be able to choose whether to end a pregnancy no matter the reason, though some Republicans make exceptions for rape and incest. Although Republicans believe abortion is murder and believe Roe v. Wade should be overturned, they do not usually explain what punishment should befall those who get or give abortions should it become illegal.

Generally, Republicans question the conclusions scientists have come to regarding global warming. At best, they believe that the effects of global warming have been overstated and that regulating emissions should not be done; at worst, they believe global warming is a hoax.

Republicans reject the theory of evolution and believe in creationism, the idea that God created man the way he is. They believe creationism should be taught in public schools.

Republicans believe that illegal immigrants, no matter the reason they are in this country, should be forcibly removed from the U.S. Although illegal immigrants are often motivated to come to the U.S. by companies who hire them, Republicans generally believe that the focus of the law should be on the illegal immigrants and not on the corporations that hire them.

Republicans believe that poor people are usually poor for a reason, be it laziness, choice or whatever. Unless we demand that people pull themselves up by the bootstraps and solve their own problems, people will not be motivated to do things. Therefore, the issue of poverty cannot be solved by the government. Charity should be the choice of individuals.

Republicans believe in the death penalty and support its use in cases where violent crimes have been committed.

15 Differences Between Democrats and Republicans

Party Realignment in the Trump Era: Right Populists vs. Progressives

This content reflects the personal opinions of the author. It is accurate and true to the best of the authors knowledge and should not be substituted for impartial fact or advice in legal, political, or personal matters.

Question: Who is the leader of the Republican Party?

Answer: Donald Trump.

Question: Why doesn't Donald Trump believe in most of the typical Republican things besides immigration stances?

Answer: Donald Trump is not a typical Republican.

Question: Who is the the leader of the Green Party?

Answer: Jonathan Bartley and Sian Berry have been elected as new joint leaders of the Green Party.

Question: Why do people want to get rid of guns when it's against the second amendment of the U.S. Constitution?

Answer: People probably want to get rid of guns because they are so often used to kill people and they think that will help.

2011 Allen Donald

Continued here:
What Do Republicans Believe? 15 Things a Republican Stands For

In pivotal primary races from Nevada to South Carolina on Tuesday, Republican voters chose candidates who fervently embraced Donald Trumps lie about a stolen election, prompting warnings from Democrats that US democracy will be at stake in the November elections.

Victories of pro-Trump candidates in Nevada set the stage for match-ups between election-deniers and embattled Democrats in a state both parties see as critical in the midterms.

In South Carolina, a vote to impeach Trump for inciting the January 6 insurrection proved one Republicans undoing while another survived the former presidents wrath to win the nomination.

In south Texas, where Hispanic voters have shifted sharply toward the Republican party, a Republican flipped a House seat long held by a Democrat. The loss was a stark warning that Democrats standing with a crucial voting bloc is slipping.

Nevada, a swing state that has trended Democratic in past election cycles, will play host to a number of consequential races this fall, for House, Senate, governor and secretary of state, as Democrats seek to defend narrow majorities in Congress.

In the 50-50 Senate, every race will matter. But the party is saddled with a deeply unpopular president in a political system primed for revolt against the party in power. Inflation and the war in Ukraine have caused the cost of food and gas to shoot up while angst over gun violence and a shortage of baby formula deepens voter frustration.

Republicans view the Nevada Senate race as one of their best chances of flipping a Democratic seat. They also sense an opportunity to make inroads in a state dominated by Democrats who were guided to power by the late Senate majority leader, Harry Reid. The senator up for re-election, Catherine Cortez Masto, was his chosen successor.

Adam Laxalt, a former state attorney general endorsed by Trump, easily won the Republican primary to take on Cortez Masto in one of the most fiercely contested races of the cycle.

Jim Marchant, a former lawmaker who has dabbled in the Qanon conspiracy theory and openly embraced the idea of overturning elections, will be the Republican nominee to become secretary of state, and therefore the top election official in a swing state that could be key to determining the presidential contest in 2024.

The elevation of election-denying Republicans across the US comes even as a bipartisan House panel investigating the Capitol attack unspools damning testimony from Trumps inner circle, discrediting the former presidents claims.

In South Carolina, Republicans ousted the five-term incumbent, Tom Rice, who crossed Trump and loyalists by voting to impeach the former president.

Rice was defeated by Russell Fry, a Republican state lawmaker backed by Trump. The result was a welcome one for Trump after setbacks last month in races where Trump sought retribution against Republicans who rebuffed his attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

But as in Georgia, there were limits to his influence. Another Republican House incumbent, Nancy Mace, fended off a Trump-backed challenger. Unlike in Rices staunchly conservative district, Mace who did not vote to impeach but did criticise Trump held on by attracting support from suburban voters who abandoned the party during the Trump years.

On social media, Trump spun the evening as a resounding success. Of Maces challenger, Katie Arrington, he said she was a very long-shot who did FAR better than anticipated.

The Impeacher was ousted without even a runoff. a GREAT night!, Trump wrote on his social media site, Truth Social, about Rice.

In Maine, Jared Golden, one of the few Democrats to represent a House district Trump carried, will attempt to defy political gravity in a rematch against the seats former representative, Bruce Poliquin. Golden narrowly beat Poliquin in the anti-Trump wave of 2018. With political winds reversed, Poliquin hopes to regain the seat.

The states combative former governor, Paul LePage, is also attempting a comeback. Facing no opposition, he clinched the Republican nomination to run against the incumbent, Janet Mills.

Perhaps most worrying for Democrats was the loss in south Texas. A Republican state representative, Mayra Flores, cruised to victory, avoiding a runoff against her main Democratic opponent, Dan Sanchez, in a special election to fill a seat vacated by a Democratic congressman, Filemn Vela.

Flores will have to run again in November. Because of redistricting, she is set to square off against the Democratic congressman Vicente Gonzalez in a district considerably more left-leaning than the one she will temporarily represent.

Nevertheless, some prognosticators moved their ratings for the district in Republicans favor, citing gains among Hispanic voters in the Rio Grande Valley.

In a memo from the National Republican Congressional Committee obtained by CNN, the party touted Flores victory as the culmination of efforts to recruit and run more diverse candidates and said it offered a blueprint for success in South Texas.

It concluded: This is the first of many Democrat-held seats that will flip Republican in 2022.

Read more:
Pro-Trump Republicans primary wins raise alarm about US democracy - The Guardian US

In the hearing room on Capitol Hill this week, a parade of Trump advisors testified that they tried to tell the President that he had lost the 2020 election. Its possible that Trump knew he had lost but decided to pursue another, more cynical route to power by persisting in whats come to be known as the Big Lie. Or its possible that Trumps narcissism was so powerful that he simply couldnt believe the experts and pursued the Big Lie out of a delusional fantasy. Sorting this out will keep historians and psychiatrists busy for years to come. In the meantime, however, the Big Lie has become a prominent feature of some Republican primary races around the country and one more way of measuring Donald Trumps strength within the Republican Party.

The importance of the Big Lie was on display in the June 14 Republican primary in South Carolina. It featured two House races in which Republican candidates embraced Trumps delusion against two incumbent Republicans who refused to go along. In South Carolinas 1st district, incumbent Nancy Mace, was running for a second term. In 2020, she flipped a Democratic seat, campaigning as a solid supporter of Trump and ran with Trumps endorsement. But, appalled by the January 6 rioters, in one of her first acts in Congress she refused to object to the certification of electors, and she called on Trump to get off Twitter. Her opposition to the Big Lie earned her Trumps enmity and a primary opponent, Katie Arrington, who had Trumps support. Because the two candidates share many of the same positions on issues, the race largely revolved around Maces betrayal of Trump. In South Carolinas 7th congressional district, incumbent Tom Rice, also broke with Trump over the January 6 riotsgoing even farther than Mace did by voting to impeach Trump. That got him a primary challenger, state representative Russell Fry, who has been running with Trumps endorsement. Unlike Mace, Rice has not tried to soften his opposition to the Big Lie. On primary night, Mace won her race and Rice lost his.

In our study of all the candidates to date, we broke the Big Lie down into three parts in order to get a more nuanced understanding of how Republicans are dealing with this issue. In one we looked to see if the candidate mentioned the January 6 attack on the Capitol and how they felt about it. In another we looked for the candidates views on the 2020 election and in yet another we looked for the candidates views on issues of election integrity in general. In House and Senate primaries, we coded candidates websites, Facebook pages, other social media platforms and media interviews. So far, we have evaluated 759 Republican House and Senate candidates.

Republican candidates generally refrained from discussing the January 6 riots in their campaign materials. As Table 1 indicates, only 38 candidates or 5.01% of all Republican candidates made statements to the effect that January 6 was the work of patriots legitimately protesting a corrupt election. Surprisingly, slightly more Republican candidates made statements indicating January 6 was a violent insurrection/coup attempt and steps must be taken to protect democracy63 candidates or 8.3% of the total. The vast majority of Republican candidates did not seek to opine on January 6. Nearly 87% made no mention of the event at all.

The final columns in Table 1 show the percentage of candidates in each category who actually won their races. Surprisingly, the candidates who spoke out against the insurrection did better than those who supported it, but the numbers are small, there are still candidates in runoffs and there are still races to be decided.

We also looked for statements showing how candidates felt about the legitimacy of the 2020 election. More candidates had opinions on this than they did on January 6 but still not very many. As Table 2 indicates, 65 candidates or 8.56% of all candidates to date campaigned on something to the effect of, Bidens win was a myth, and Trump would have won without voter fraud. Notably more candidates believed something like, the election should have been investigated further, but I dont believe Biden is illegitimate; 113 candidates or 14.89% of all candidates to date said something like that in their campaign materials or appearances. As one would imagine, practically no Republican candidates went so far as to state that Biden won the election fairly. But, perhaps most importantly, 74.7% or 567 candidates made no mention of the legitimacy of the 2020 election at all.

Candidates who took the more moderate position, that the election should have been investigated further, did better than candidates who bought into the Big Lie. Only 14 Republican candidates believed Biden was the clear winner and they did well too.

Finally, we looked for general statements about election integrity with a focus on the future not the past. In Table 3, 42.6% or 323 candidates made statements in favor of election reforms that would make it harder to cheat, and only 17 candidates or 2.24% of the total made statements indicating that theyd like to make it easier for people to vote. Clearly the former was a safe haven for most candidates: expressing concern about election integrity without having to support the violence around January 6 or the Big Lie. But even here the majority of Republican candidates419 candidates or 55.2% of the total candidates to datestayed away from the issue.

On this issue, overall election integrity, Republican candidates who were in favor of tightening voting rules in the name of improving election integrity did fairly well. No wonder so many Republican candidates adopted this position. It was a forward-looking position that allowed them to express some doubt about the past without getting mired in approving or disapproving the violence of January 6 and without getting sucked into conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

What are we to make of these findings?

First, January 6 and the 2020 elections do not loom as large in the minds of Republican candidates in 2022 as they do in the mind of Donald Trump.

Second, to the despair of many Republicans, Trumps strategy for the 2022 midterms has been all about him and the 2020 election. It is a backwards looking strategy that has resulted in mixed verdicts on Trump all across the countryas it did in South Carolina on June 14. And third, most of his victories are in deep red states and districts. Trump is not changing hearts and minds as much as he is activating a cadre of 2020 voters who are among his most passionate and committed.

Read more:
What impact are the events of January 6 having on the Republican primaries? - Brookings Institution

As the House committee on the Jan. 6 insurrection continues its public hearings, Republicans are scrambling to shift the blame away from themselves. Here are the biggest talking points the GOP is using to downplay the Capitol riots.

Come on, it was just the one Capitol.

Not like Congress was being ransacked all over the country.

These were 2,500 lone wolves.

The politicians on the right truly believe the highly coordinated effort was just the classic case of 2,500 lone wolves with an agenda.

They were actually chanting Hang my pants!

Republicans want to remind you that these insurrectionists had no intention of harming Mike Pence and were simply looking for a hanger with which to air-dry their wet clothes.

It was during designated rioting hours.

The mob made sure they stormed the Capitol only when destruction was specifically permitted.

No nuclear weapons were used.

Just think of what the Capitol wouldve looked like if so-called rioters dropped a bomb as powerful as a million tons of TNT.

Not a single kid got shot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, so its hardly the worst thing were complicit in.

They might actually have a point there.

Oh, dont be so dramatic. It was only Biden.

Its not like they tried to stop a presidency people were excited about.

This was nothing more than a couple thousand eighth-graders on their Washington, D.C. field trip.

Blaming the insurrection on a bunch of 13-year-olds visiting the monuments is a risky move the Republicans are willing to take.

The date Jan. 6, 2021, will never occur again.

This is a pretty factually sound argument.

It was all orchestrated by the Democrats.

This is immediately undermined by the Democrats complete inability to orchestrate anything.

Jan. 6 is a distant and irrelevant memory made up of unintelligible shapes for millions of Americans who are still struggling to learn object permanence.

Many arent even able to stand on their own two feet.

I dont have Incite an insurrection written in my calendar for Jan. 6, 2021, so it must not have happened.

If its not on the calendar, its impossible to prove.

If it was really such a bad day, how come so many members of Congress are still alive?

Even all of the really, really old senators survived.

It was faked in the same studio as the moon landing.

CGI technology really is incredible.

The Capitol building is ugly, anyway.

That neoclassical eyesore has been begging for vandalism for centuries.

Insurrection is the only reasonable response when you consider these people were really, really mad.

Makes a lot of sense when you look at it from their point of view.

There are 30 other days in January no one is willing to talk about.

Democrats are willfully ignoring the real issue, which is that January has 30 days besides Jan. 6.

We never would have known how ill-prepared we are for a coup if those protestors hadnt almost pulled one off.

Really, we should be grateful they pointed out some vulnerabilities in our system.

How were people supposed to know that was the Capitol building?

In their defense, every building in this dumb city is made out of white stone.

I am about to make a bad faith argument.

Whoops. Politicians usually just think this one.

Two words: Nancy Pelosi.

Succinct, but 100% to the point.

If you thought Jan. 6 was bad, just wait until Donald Trump becomes president again.

Its true, whatever is still to come will certainly be much worse and more worthy of criminal prosecution.

Pass.

Read the original here:
Biggest Republican Talking Points To Downplay January 6 - The Onion