The true leaders of Republican Party are fighting for the terrorists

Greene, Gaetz, Gohmert and Gosar hold the power within the House GOP, speaking for Trump.

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"We suspect there is a two-tier justice system in the United States, for Trump supporters that are charged for January 6, and catch-and-release for Antifa and BLM rioters that have rioted and destroyed cities," the QAnon cultist in Congress, Georgia’s Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, said at a press conference held by her and three other far-right members of Congress on Thursday outside a Washington DC correctional facility where January 6th insurrectionists, people who were part of a domestic terrorist attack, are being held.

Greene couldn’t have said it any more clearly: Trump supporters attacked the Capitol, beating and killing police, ransacking offices and threatening lawmakers’ lives, and she and several other Republican House members were there to defend them. Note in fact that she used the word “supporters” to describe the insurrectionists, while she used the word “rioters” to describe BLM and Antifa.

Along with Florida’s Matt Gaetz, under investigation for sex trafficking; Arizona’s Paul Gosar, who supports and raises money for white supremacist groups; and completely deranged religious zealot Louie Gohmert of Texas, Greene, who’s raised eye-popping millions from far-right supporters for her re-election campaign, has taken up the terrorists’ plight.

“McCarthy, Scalise and Stefanik are stooges and dupes, figureheads who don’t hold the power or represent the voice of the GOP.”

Earlier in the week, on the same day that four police officers who were attacked and bludgeoned by the terrorists spoke before a House select committee investigating January 6th, these four Republican House members also held a press conference outside the Justice Department to call attention to what they’re claiming is unfair treatment of January 6th detainees.

Over 550 people have been arrested on charges related to the insurrection and the vast majority of them have been out on bail. A small number, roughly 10%, have been held by judges who decided they are flight risks or pose a threat of further violence. Whether or not these remaining few are being treated counter to U.S. law — and Politifact and other fact-checkers say they’re not — why are far-right members of Congress fighting for these individuals when there are millions of people across the country who’ve been held on trumped up charges, treated unfairly in the criminal justice systems and wrongly-incarcerated?

There is only one answer, of course, and it is that these particular people charged with crimes are “Trump supporters,” as Greene had said, who came to the Capitol to do whatever it took — including breaking the law in violent actions — to stop the certification of an election.

Ron Filipkowski @RonFilipkowski

Gaetz, Greene, Gohmert and Gosar showed up today at the prison where insurrectionists are incarcerated, demanding to be let in to inspect the facility. They were ordered to leave or be arrested for trespassing, which they did.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, along with Minority Whip Steve Scalise and Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, would like you to believe they are actually the leadership of the Republican Party.

But it’s increasingly clear that they are stooges and dupes, figureheads who don’t hold the power or represent the voice of the GOP. If they did, they’d be able to control the extremists like Greene — who continually defies McCarthy with grotesque comparisons between the reality of Holocaust victims and having to to wear a mask — and Gaetz, Gohmert and Gosar. It’s actually the other way around: The four Gs are controlling the so-called leadership.

While the select committee was underway on Tuesday to investigate January 6th, McCarthy and Stefanik held a lame presser in which they pushed the incoherent message that the committee (which they declined to have Republicans participate in, after previously voting down a bipartisan commission) is flawed because it’s not looking at the true problem: That Nancy Pelosi, an “authoritarian,” as Stefanik put it, is actually responsible for the January 6th attack.

It’s a hazy, and ultimately ungraspable, argument that presupposes Pelosi somehow turned down a request to have the National Guard protect the Capitol — and it has been shown not only to be false, but preposterous, over and over again — and doesn’t address who exactly she was supposed to protect the Capitol from, nor who summoned the attackers.

This is not leadership. It’s actually subservience — dodging and weaving, spinning a muddled message because they are so weak. Say what you will about Greene, Gohmert, Gaetz, and Gosar, but their message is clear and strong — if demented and frightening: The terrorists are good people, Trump supporters, and we are here for them.

Media and Democratic leaders should stop treating the four Gs as a sideshow — their Tuesday presser was drowned out by protesters, and much of the coverage treated them as an afterthought — and rather show them as the Republican main event, as leaders who reflect the thinking of the majority of GOP voters.

I suspect most Republican voters — the great majority of whom still support Trump in poll after poll — know McCarthy’s claims about Pelosi are spin. Sure, they will go along with it and grab on to the talking points. But I speak with a lot of these people regularly, who call my radio program. They deep down more so believe the message of Greene and company: That, even if they got carried away and did some things that were wrong, those who attacked the Capitol were there for a good reason.

They’ll tell you until they’re blue in the face that violence is wrong and that they don’t support the violent actions that happened. But they use the Big Lie to excuse the behavior, and then throw in, as Greene did at the presser, overblown or completely false claims about violence at Black Lives Matter protests to justify their beliefs — even if comparing random acts around the country to a coordinated attack on the Capitol led by white supremacist groups and incited by the president is ludicrous.

A lot of people think we shouldn’t give attention to these self-promoting House members — and certainly Greene, like Trump, is a narcissist who’s trying every day to steal the news cycle — and I understand the argument that they can be a distraction.

But at the same time, they cannot be dismissed as a circus act that represents a fringe within the party. McCarthy has absolutely no authority to temper them or stop them. If he did he would surely have kept them from trying to step on his own press conference on Tuesday, which was already challenged to break through the coverage of the select committee.

And the more we focus on Greene, Gohmert, Gaetz and Gosar as the true leaders of the GOP, the more we expose to any few wavering Republicans — and the vast lot of independents, whom the GOP will need in elections — that the GOP is not a party.

It is a fascist, white supremacist movement now, one that supports domestic terrorism and is literally defending the January 6th attackers. That fact can’t be illuminated enough.

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