Midnight Mutterings | The right to rewrite

||| MIDNIGHT MUTTERINGS by JACKIE.BATES |||

We all learned in school that history is written by the winners. We have our own recent experience of that sad fact.

After the January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol, it was called a riot, an insurrection and many other unflattering terms. A number of Trump’s supporters spoke against it, including Vice President, Mike Pence**, who refused to follow Trump’s request/order to not certify the election of Joe Biden as President. As the violence continued, President Trump refused the pleas from many of his staff and supporters, and even his own daughter, to ask the rioters to stand down. Hours after the violence continued, he finally said: “Go home. We love you. You’re very special.”

(Note: It’s a bit hard to get the exact timing and order of Trump’s statements to the people breaching the Capitol on January 6, 2021 because the videos have been removed with a note ‘ This video has been removed for violating YouTube’s terms of service”)

A few hours after that, Trump tweeted:”Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!” he added.

Here is the BBC report on January 13, 2021 of what Trump said at the rally before the attack on the Capitol https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55640437.

“I know your pain. I know you’re hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us,” Trump said in the video, his words offering little to placate a crowd he has lied to about the results of November’s presidential contest.

“You have to go home now. We have to have peace,” Trump said, several hours after the doors of the Capitol building were breached, his own vice president was evacuated and multiple police offers were injured in the mob violence. “We have to have law and order.”

According to ABC News, January 6, 2025, the day of the recent peaceful transfer of power, presided over by Kamala Harris, current Vice President, here’s part of what President Elect Trump said about the events exactly four years earlier:

“That was a day of love,” Trump said. “From the standpoint of the millions, it’s like hundreds of thousands. It could have been the largest group I’ve ever spoken to before. They asked me to speak. I went and I spoke, and I used the term ‘peacefully and patriotically.’”

And here’s what Representative Elise Stefanik of New York wrote on her website four years ago:

“This is a tragic day for America. I fully condemn the dangerous violence and destruction that occurred today at the United States Capitol.”

“Americans have a Constitutional right to protest and freedom of speech, but violence in any form is absolutely unacceptable and antI-American.”

“The perpetrators of this un-American violence and destruction must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” she added.

“Thank you to the United States Capitol Police, all law enforcement, the National Guard and the bipartisan professional staff of the United States Capitol for protecting the People’s House and the American people.”

Stefanik later removed those statements from her website, and endorsed Donald Trump for President in 2024. Now Trump shows his appreciation for her loyalty and support by choosing her to be Ambassador to the United Nations in spite of her relative inexperience with world affairs. (Her nomination is subject to approval by the Senate, as are all Cabinet nominations.)

I could go on and on here and bore you with other political changes of heart by previous critics of President Trump, beginning with Senator Lindsey Graham, who after January 6, 2021, said, in exasperation:

“Trump and I, we had a hell of a journey,” Graham said on the House floor. “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.”

Well, you can count him back in. He endorsed Trump wholeheartedly in the winning bid for the Presidency in 2024.

According to the United States Attorney’s Office: District of Columbia:

“Monday, January 6, 2025, marks 48 months since the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, that disrupted a joint session of the U.S. Congress in the process of affirming the 2020 presidential election results. During the siege of the Capitol that day, over 140 police officers were assaulted—including over 80 from the U.S. Capitol Police and over 60 from the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department—the Capitol was damaged, government property was destroyed, and other government property was stolen. Current estimates are that losses arising from the Capitol siege exceed $2.8 million. In total, approximately 1,583 individuals have been charged criminally in federal court.”

(This particular report makes no mention of the deaths that occurred as a result of the attack. Or that some of the intruders, in their maturity, chose not to enter the unlocked restrooms to take advantage of modern plumbing.)

Now President Elect Trump says he will pardon those convicted and sentenced for their participation in the January 6, 2021 attempt to overthrow the government.

Barack Obama wasn’t the first to point out, ‘You can have your own opinions, but you can’t have your own facts.’

I think I could respect these and the many other rewriters a lot more if they only admitted they had changed their minds, their views. But these are powerful, influential people, who have huge impacts on our lives. They really can’t believe we are as forgetful as they think, can they?

Oh dear. Perhaps we are…

**Mike Pence, Trump’s loyal supporter and Vice President, is notably one who did not rewrite the history of January 6, 2021. Instead, he (unsuccessfully) ran against Trump for the Republican nomination.