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January 6, 2022 onAir

January 6, 2022 onAir

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PBS NewsHour live episode, Jan. 6, 2022
January 6, 2022 – 6:00 pm (ET)
What January 6 revealed about the attack on multiracial democracy
CNN, Brandon TensleyJanuary 6, 2022
The noose and gallows.
The Confederate Army revivalists.
The White power hand gestures.
Incited by then-President Donald Trump, the January 6 insurrectionists took aim not merely at democracy but also at multiracial democracy. The siege of the US Capitol fits into a history of White backlash, as yet another effort to maintain a strict racial order.
One year on, as the House select committee probes the attack and as many Republican-led state legislatures enact laws that limit Black Americans’ access to the ballot box, it’s worthwhile to examine how January 6 lives on in national politics, and explore what that day might reveal about race in the US.

The new Lost Cause

One way to understand January 6 is through the lens of US mythology.
Enter your email to sign up for CNN’s The Point with Chris Cillizza.
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In the late 1800s, the myth of the Lost Cause grew in popularity. It was an attempt to revise history at least in part by recasting as honorable and valiant the men who went to war in support of the Confederacy — an antidemocratic nation-state whose very existence depended on the bondage of people of African descent.
An analogous discourse has been underway in the months since January 6, as people on the political right — from lawmakers to shock jocks — seek to portray as the “true” Americans those who, at Trump’s exhortation, stormed the seat of US government in an effort to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.
AP FACT CHECK: Trump sticks to election falsehoods on Jan. 6
Associated Press, Hope Yen and David KlepperJanuary 6, 2022

Former President Donald Trump and his allies on Thursday clung to false claims about the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot as the nation marked the one-year anniversary of the violent insurrection.

Reacting to President Joe Biden, who blamed him for the deadly event, Trump issued statements repeating his assertions that the voting was rigged. Those claims have been thoroughly debunked.

In a speech marking the anniversary, Biden said Trump’s falsehoods about the 2020 election fueled the riot. Biden said the election was the most scrutinized in U.S. history, and that the riot was an un-American attempt to derail democracy incited by a politician who couldn’t accept the people’s will.

A look at the claims:

TRUMP, on the Biden administration: ““That’s what you get when you have a rigged Election.”

TRUMP: “In actuality, the Big Lie was the Election itself.”

THE FACTS: To be clear, no widespread corruption was found and no election was stolen from Trump.

Biden earned 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232, the same margin that Trump had when he beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, which he repeatedly described as a “landslide.” (Trump ended up with 304 electoral votes because two electors defected.) Biden achieved victory by prevailing in key battleground states.

Members of Congress participate in prayer vigil remembering Jan. 6 insurrection
The Hill, January 6, 2022 – 5:30 pm (ET)
Biden decries Trump backers’ ‘dagger at throat’ of democracy
Associated Press, Mary Clare Jalonick et al.January 6, 2022

President Joe Biden on Thursday forcefully condemned Donald Trump’s relentless election-overturning efforts that sparked the deadly breach of the Capitol by his supporters and continues to motivate deep national division. He marked the anniversary by saying the rioters had held a “dagger at the throat of democracy” but failed to succeed.

Biden’s criticism was blistering of the defeated president whom he blamed for the attack that has fundamentally changed Congress and the nation, and raised global concerns about the future of American democracy.

“For the first time in our history, a president not just lost an election, he tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power as a violent mob breached the Capitol,” Biden said. “You can’t love your country only when you win.”

His voice booming at times, filling the ornate Statuary Hall where rioters had laid siege, the president called on Americans to remember what they saw Jan. 6 with their own eyes: the mob attacking police, breaking windows, a Confederate flag inside the Capitol, gallows erected outside threatening to hang the vice president — all while Trump sat at the White House watching it on TV.

“The former president’s supporters are trying to rewrite history. They want you to see Election Day as the day of insurrection and the riot that took place here on January 6 as a true expression of the will of the people. Can you think of a more twisted way to look at this country, to look at America? I cannot.”

Lindsey Graham: Biden speech ‘brazen politicization’ of Jan. 6
The Hill, Dominick MastrangeloJanuary 6, 2022

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) blasted President Biden for the tone of a speech he gave on Thursday marking the anniversary of the Capitol riot, calling it a “brazen” politicizing of the events a year ago.

Graham and other lawmakers were evacuated on Jan. 6, 2021, after a mob of supporters of former President Trump overwhelmed Capitol Police and entered the building, halting temporarily Congress’s certification of the Electoral College vote.

“What brazen politicization of January 6 by President Biden,” Graham said in a tweet sent during Biden’s speech. “I wonder if the Taliban who now rule Afghanistan with al-Qaeda elements present, contrary to President Biden’s beliefs, are allowing this speech to be carried?”

Graham was referring to the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, which Biden oversaw last year, an episode the president has been widely criticized by Republicans over.

Graham’s critics used his tweet to recall his condemnation of the violence carried out by Trump’s supporters as well as his attempts to distance himself from the former president’s repeated false claims of a “rigged” election in 2020.

“Trump and I, we had a hell of a journey,” Graham said on the Senate floor after the mob stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. “I hate it being this way. Oh my god I hate it … but today all I can say is count me out. Enough is enough. I tried to be helpful.”

In a statement issued separately on Thursday morning, Graham, who has since maintained a close personal relationship with Trump, said he “still cannot believe that a mob was able to take over the United States Capitol during such a pivotal moment.”

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