“Legitimate political discourse.”
As of yesterday, the official position of the Republican Party is that what happened on January 6, 2021, was just “legitimate political discourse.”
Let’s recap:
- Donald Trump flat-out lied that the election was “stolen” from him.
- Fox “News” and its ilk — assisted by corrupt social media algorithms — force fed that lie to tens of millions of Americans.
- Trump then incited a violent mob to storm the U.S. Capitol in a deadly insurrection.
- The objective was nothing less than a coup d’etat to keep Trump in power.
And now the Republican Party is saying that it was all “legitimate political discourse.”
A simple message for every Republican in Congress:
You can revere democracy. Or you can resort to fascism. But you can’t do both. Silence in the face of your own party’s effort to whitewash January 6 — an outright assault on democracy — will make you not just complicit but an active enabler. You must publicly disavow your party’s latest depraved submission to the cult of Trump or you will go down in history as a willing participant in the nation’s slide to authoritarianism.
Add your name now.
Thank you for taking action.
For democracy,
- Robert Weissman, President of Public Citizen
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