The slow death of DC Democrats’ Jan. 6 politics

Democrats bet big on January 6. It’s been their election strategy for years now; its memory is invoked like Pearl Harbor, 9/11, and Dealey Plaza rolled into one neat campaign ad. There’s a problem, though, revealed most recently in last week’s primaries: It’s not working with voters. Maybe they don’t buy it or don’t care, but they’re not voting on it. And that spells trouble for the White House.

Democrats had bet on a Trump riot for years. Just before the 2016 election, the cover of The Week showed a howling mob of torch-bearing white people under the headline, “After the election: How will Trump's followers react if they think it's stolen?”

This is bad news for Biden and Co. J6 was the plan. That’s what he’s been talking about, and no one cares. He's down in the polls, and the election is coming quick. Best think fast.

Back in real life, the country was forced to endure another four years of weekly left-wing political violence and Democrat-supported race riots before the Democrats got anything like they’d been hoping for on Jan. 6, 2021.

That day’s disorder was all they needed. They occupied the capital with unarmed troops, using them as props and making them sleep in parking garages (fine for soldiers) with only a single bathroom (inhumane for any force). They surrounded themselves with barbed-wire fences, blocking the street I lived on for months. They cried on TV, released documentaries, and launched a concerted campaign of political espionage against the Republican Party and its supporters under the guise of investigation.

They diverted all FBI resources nationwide to hunting down and raiding the homes of violent rioters and peaceful trespassers alike. They imprisoned everyone they could, holding them for years in a roach-infested prison a few blocks from my home. Many remain jailed to this day.

Republicans were terrified. Senators like Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) were the only ones to speak up about the prison conditions, while even conservative mainstays like Ted Cruz (R-Texas) condemned the riot as a “terrorist attack” — that is, until Tucker Carlson scared him straight. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) gave one of the more forceful speeches of his career, blaming President Donald Trump for the violence.

Democratic speechwriters like former historian Jon Meacham wrote books about “the battle for our better angels” and rolled book plugs into President Joe Biden’s dark and threatening, literally red-lit speeches about the deadly “ultra MAGA" threat to democracy.

A fully invested corporate media invented martyrs for their new holiday, invoking the names of stroke victims, listing cardiac arrests like they were casualties of war.

They made heroes, too. But not of the police officers I saw during my reporting, pelted with projectiles, attacked and rushed by angry rioters (and the feds in their midst). The media heroes were the loudest mouths and the most politically useful, men like Harry Dunn, who until Tuesday was running a campaign to be congressman from Maryland.

Dunn played a central role in congressional investigations, speaking of the horrors he’d endured and the bravery he’d showcased. He talked ceaselessly to the press, including one harrowing interview in the New York Times about how “black officers fought a different battle." He recorded a podcast with the Daily, which the Times highlighted again as one “of our favorite episodes of the year.” He told his erstwhile stenographers that while had no shield, “My fists are pretty protective. By the end, I had blood on my knuckles and swelling.”

“You are a big guy," his fawning chronicler replied.

And then there was the book, "Standing My Ground: A Capitol Police Officer's Fight for Accountability and Good Trouble” — a reference to Democrat political hero Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.). He went on a media tour. He went on “The View.” He was Time’s “person of the week,” which is apparently a thing.

When he decided to enter a busy primary to run for Congress in one of America’s most gerrymandered districts, he announced it on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” He was running, he told the hosts, “because I think on Jan. 6, it exposed one, how weak and fragile [democracy] is, and I don't think that's an exaggeration to say.”

“It may sound scary,” he continued, “but we are one election away from the extinction of democracy as we know it.”

His candidacy was quickly endorsed by the top Democrat poobahs, including Reps. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), Adam Schiff (Calif.), Eric Swalwell (Calif.), Bennie Thompson (Miss.), Jim Clyburn (S.C.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), and even Luke Skywalker (Moonbat-Tatooine).

They didn’t care that thousands of hours of carefully reviewed security footage failed to show Dunn in a single even semi-physical confrontation aside from the two he initiated with seated, already-surrendered trespassers. They didn’t care that he was the one who appeared to be out of control and was apparently chastised or kicked out of the room by superiors on film on two occasions. They didn’t care that he was seen accidentally ejecting the magazine from his rifle down a marble hallway. They didn’t care that Harry Dunn was not the man he said he was.

They didn’t care that he didn’t exude any special intelligence; he said all the right things. The Democrats and their press allies were there to create the narrative. They were there to preserve the narrative.

But normal people don’t care. They simply do not care. Sarah Elfreth, a basic liberal Democrat white woman, beat his vote total by about 50%.

Keep in mind this isn’t Kansas or Wyoming. Maryland’s 3rd Congressional District is heavily Democratic and a short 35-minute drive from the Capitol building itself. It's over 70% white-collar. It’s more than 17% black, nearly 11% Asian. and 9% Hispanic.

This is bad news for Biden and Co. The president hasn’t given any major addresses on inflation, the invasion at the southern border, or criminal disorder in America’s cities. J6 was the plan. That’s what he’s been talking about, and no one cares. He's down in the polls, and the election is coming quick. Best think fast.

Blaze Media: Democratic establishment's Jan. 6 'hero' defeated in House primary — and people are thanking Steve Baker

Blaze Media Original: Capitol Officer Harry Dunn exposed | The truth about January 6

Blaze Media: Harry Dunn’s account of January 6 does not add up. At all.

Blaze Media: Another Jan. 6 defendant dies by suicide while awaiting trial: Report

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IN OTHER NEWS

Trump’s defense lands a potential TKO

Thursday was a no good, very bad day for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.Before the trial broke for a three-day weekend so that Trump could attend his son’s high school graduation, defense attorney Todd Blanche unraveled what was one of the lynchpins of the prosecution’s case: an Oct. 24, 2016, phone conversation Michael Cohen said he had with Donald Trump about establishing the hush-money payment scheme.

Only the call may not have been about hush money at all. Blanche forced Cohen to admit on the witness stand that the phone call lasted less than two minutes, that it was between Cohen and Trump’s bodyguard Keith Schiller, and that it was immediately preceded by texts between Cohen and Schiller that suggested the two needed to get on the phone to discuss prank calls Cohen was receiving from a 14-year-old at the time.

Cohen claims Schiller addressed the issue with the prank caller, handed his cell phone to a conveniently nearby Trump, and then Cohen and Trump discussed “the Stormy Daniels matter and the resolution of it.” All within 96 seconds.

If you find that difficult to believe, you’re not the only one. Legal experts across the ideological spectrum said the collapse of Cohen’s phone call story was a disaster for the Democratic DA — one that could potentially cost prosecutors the conviction they have twisted the law to win.

The Blaze:‘Inveterate liar:’ Cohen’s former lawyer accuses prosecution’s key witness of lying on stand in Trump’s New York case

Washington Examiner:‘That was a lie:’ Trump attorneys blast Cohen over testimony on key phone call

Oversight catfight

Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) derailed House Oversight Committee proceedings on Thursday night with a heated back-and-forth that began over fake eyelashes. Greene started it by accusing Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) of getting confused about the purpose of the hearing — it was a markup for a resolution to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress — because of her cosmetics.

“I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading,” Greene snapped at Crockett.

So began a chaotic verbal brawl that involved AOC sticking up forcefully for Crockett, Greene refusing to apologize, Chairman James Comer (R-Tenn.) struggling to keep control of a room that devolved into shouting, and — finally! — a vote to advance the contempt resolution against Garland.

Joe Biden had tried to shield Garland from the contempt mess by exerting executive privilege over the audio recordings of his interview with special counsel Robert Hur about classified documents. That interview prompted Hur to conclude that Biden was too senile to be taken to trial over breaking classified document laws.

Yes, Biden could also have neutralized the contempt issue by actually releasing the tapes. But clearly, Biden and the Justice Department do not want the public to hear how Biden sounded during the lengthy interview with Hur, and a political calculation seems to have been made that the damage done by withholding the recordings and allowing Garland to be held in contempt by the full House (the likely next step) is nothing compared to the damage that would be done by releasing the tapes.

The Hill:Chaos erupts in House hearing as Greene, Ocasio-Cortez clash over ‘fake eyelashes’ jibe at Crockett