Gay Trump loyalist claims Capitol attack was a “revolution” by “patriots”

Out Trump loyalist Brandon Straka is getting a lot of attention for tweeting his support for what he calls the “Patriots at the Capitol” yesterday, saying that this is the “revolution” that Republicans have been waiting for so that they can overturn the results of the presidential election.

Apparently, Straka didn’t get the same memo that former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), pastor Franklin Graham, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), and other major Republicans got that told them the appropriate conservative response is to say that the armed rioters who stormed the Capitol yesterday were actually Democrats in disguise. Straka was there and he said that the attackers were exactly what they appear to be: conservatives who are mad that they lost the election.

Related: Cyndi Lauper viciously claps back at gay Republican Brandon Straka when he stole her song & made it about Trump

“HOLD. THE. LINE!!!” he tweeted during the violent attack that resulted in four deaths.

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Later, though, Republicans in Congress began to denounce the violent attack on their place of work, and Straka said he was “confused.”

“I’m completely confused,” he tweeted. “For 6-8 weeks everybody on the right has been saying ‘1776!’ & that if congress moves forward it will mean a revolution!”

“So congress moves forward, Patriots storm the Capitol- now everybody is virtual [sic] signaling their embarrassment that this happened.”

His point of view is similar to that of the left in that both recognize that Republican rhetoric since Donald Trump lost reelection was one of the causes of the violence seen yesterday. Republican officials and commentators have repeatedly supported ridiculous conspiracy theories about the election, like that an air conditioning repair worker physically stole almost a million ballots and stuffed them in his truck.

Strake accused other Republicans of being “embarrassed” and trying to “hide.”

“But I was there,” he wrote.

“It was not Antifa at the Capitol. It was freedom loving Patriots who were DESPERATE to fight for the final hope of our Republic because literally nobody cares about them. Everyone else can denounce them. I will not.”

“Perhaps I missed the part where it was agreed this would be a revolution of ice cream cones & hair-braiding parties to take our government back from lying, cheating globally interested swamp parasites. My bad.”

But he somehow was able to – in the midst of these tweets supporting violent “revolution” and an attack that involved two bombs being carried into Congress and multiple people dying – say that he believes that “it is the left who are violent extremists.”

He also made fun of a progressive on Twitter because she said that Black people’s lives matter in her profile while condemning the attack. He also used an emoji of the “OK” signal, which the Anti-Defamation League says is a symbol commonly used by white supremacists.

Straka tweeted multiple times yesterday about how he was losing followers on Twitter, which he blamed on Twitter itself instead of his extremist rhetoric.

Straka is a hairdresser who founded the “Walk Away” movement meant to convince LGBTQ people to abandon the Democratic Party. In 2019, he sued New York’s LGBT Community Center because they wouldn’t let him hold a conservative event there. He accused the Center of discriminating against him because he’s gay, presumably because he believed that the Center would have allowed straight conservatives to hold an event there, or something.

A judge dismissed his nonsensical lawsuit.