Three years after the January 6 insurrection, the GOP has totally embraced it

When thousands of the MAGA faithful stormed the Capitol three years ago at the behest of then-President Donald Trump, Republican members of Congress were alternately panic-stricken and furious.

“They’re your people,” former Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) yelled on the phone at Trump. “Call them off!” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was livid at the idea that Trump was deliberately preventing the National Guard from coming to help the overwhelmed Capitol Police.

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“Straight Pride” activist Mark Sahady could get over 20 years for January 6 insurrection

The anti-LGBTQ+ activist’s organization tweeted a picture of him helping organize buses of people to the MAGA riot.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) told rioters that he confronted. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) said that the attack was “un-American” and that those involved “must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

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Now Republicans in Congress have completely rewritten history. McCarthy famously traveled to Mar-a-Lago to suck up to Trump just weeks after the insurrection. Graham is now downplaying Trump’s call on the protesters to march on the Capitol and demand the election be overturned. It was nothing more than “a fiery speech, but he’s not the first guy to ever do that.”

Nehls and Stefanik have gone even further. Nehls has called Ashli Babbit, the rioter who was shot and killed by police as she tried to break into the House, a “martyr.” And just yesterday, Stefanik, who was once a self-styled moderate, referred to the hundreds of people convicted in the insurrection as “hostages.”

In doing so, Stefanik is genuflecting at the altar of the head insurrectionist himself, Trump. Indeed, last Saturday Trump called on President Joe Biden to “release the J6 hostages.” (Hostages don’t plead “guilty” before a judge, the way 718 of the insurrectionists have to date.) And like Trump, Stefanik is already sowing doubt about the 2024 election, refusing to commit to accepting the results.

As with all things Trump, the capitulation by the party to him was quick. Within a year, the party declared the insurrection “legitimate political discourse.” A fringe conspiracy theory – that leftists led the charge that day – became a central belief. Now that belief has gotten even more bizarre. A recent poll has found that more than 40% of Americans who voted for Trump believe that the FBI was behind the riot.

While it’s easy to spend time marveling at and debunking the fantasies that motivate the MAGA faithful, that’s not the real issue. The real issue is how much the goalposts keep moving and how quickly. We went from outrage at an attack on the seat of democracy where political leaders, including a Republican vice president, were in physical danger of assassination to acceptance that that’s just how things are in the GOP these days.

Yes, that is how things are in the GOP these days. Which should be a big light flashing red for danger.

Given everything that we’ve seen happen – the lies that have been accepted at face value by the party, the violence that has been normalized, and the radical fringes that have been welcomed into the heart of the GOP – why would we doubt Trump or his cronies when they threaten a second-term dictatorship? After all, that’s Trump’s own description.

The head-spinning speed with which career politicians like Stefanik have gone from condemning MAGA violence to defending it is a sign of how quickly the party will bow to anything Trump proposes. Mass roundups and deportations of undocumented immigrants, mass firing of civil servants, economy-destroying tariffs, a federal ban on health care for trans youth – no one in the party will stand in Trump’s way.

In his speech last week about democracy, President Biden said, “We all know who Donald Trump is. The question is: Who are we?” Unfortunately, when it comes to the GOP, they are all Trump.