Friday’s New York Times report by Luke Broadwater covered the continuing drama of the Republican Party’s treatment of Sen. Liz Cheney in “Cheney Joins the Jan. 6 Investigation Committee, to G.O.P.’s ‘Shock.’”
Broadwater has twice condemned “far-right” Republicans in Congress for disingenuously claiming that the mob action on Capitol Hill on January 6 was “mostly peaceful.” Such a defense is indeed dubious -- so why did the Times push the same defense, or use even more ludicrous verbiage, to defend the summer’s riots over the death of George Floyd?
The panel’s creation comes as some far-right House Republicans have stepped up their efforts to deny or distort the riot, including by spreading misinformation about it. They have sought to portray it as a mostly peaceful event and voted against honoring police officers who responded.
Broadwater made the same argument last week while publicizing Capitol Hill police officer Michael Fanone’s attempts to visit with top House Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy.
Officer Fanone’s effort comes as some far-right House Republicans have spread misinformation about the riot, sought to portray it as a mostly peaceful event and voted against honoring police officers who responded.
Jeremy Peters made the same argument a day afterward in a story about a Trump rally in Ohio:
Tony Buscemi, 61, a small-business owner from West Bloomfield, Mich., who stood with his daughter, Natalie, in the sun-baked field where Mr. Trump spoke, said he had been at the Capitol on Jan. 6, and he claimed falsely that it had been a “mostly peaceful” gathering.
Times reporters have long “claimed falsely” that the protests after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis were “mostly peaceful,” even though riots and looting in several large cities resulted in as much as $2 billion in paid insurance claims.
Sometimes the paper’s indignance about conservative complaints of the summer riots rose further, with reporters pathetically insisting the rallies weren’t just “mostly peaceful,” but “overwhelmingly peaceful,” as if it’s admirable and newsworthy that some left-wing rallies manage to take place without property destruction or looting.
The paper hyped the dreadful riot as "the deadliest attack on Congress in centuries." This makes it sound like someone working in Congress was shot, like the five members of Congress shot and wounded in the 1954 attack by Puerto Rican radicals. It certainly forgets the softball-field shooting of Republicans in 2017. It exploits the deaths of three pro-Trump protesters who died of heart attacks or other ailments that day.
As for "spreading misinformation" about the riot, it was The New York Times that wrongly reported on January 8 that Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick was killed after being struck in the head with a fire extinguisher by violent Trump supporters. He died of a stroke. But the incorrect Times report was "conventional wisdom" for months.
