183 Comments

The GOP needs to release all the videos, not hide them away for 50 years. And if you haven't read through the 'interview' with the 1/6 committee and Ray Epps, I highly recommend it. You'll immediately notice the difference in how they treat him versus other people who were there that day, and how they aren't interested at all in the important details of his story:

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-J6-TRANSCRIPT-CTRL0000038864/pdf/GPO-J6-TRANSCRIPT-CTRL0000038864.pdf

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I personally don't need the videos to know the whole thing was a joke. And for the people that believe it nothing in this world will change their minds.

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Just like the Twitter Files, we don't need them to 'believe' it as long as we can roll the tape.

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What we need is a critical mass. Some people are hopeless. I think of that Faith No More line, "If I speak at one constant volume, at one constant pitch, at one constant rhythm right into your ear, you still won't hear."

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I do not understand how one can charge and convict people of a crime and then order the evidence locked away for half a century. This strikes me as the most arrogant action of an arrogant and incompetent J6 Committee.

It's as though Lavrenty Beria was running the investigation.

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You do that when you have cherry picked evidence and a view of all of it would make you look like a kangaroo court. If it works, then do it. Their side is okay with it and the people that lock away the evidence pay no price. So why wouldn't you do it? The question is will the Republicans do it as well. I bet they won't. They will have fair investigations that won't do anything but make them look useless. It is time the Republicans started using the Democrat playbook that works.

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Fantastic recap and accounting. Saving for my archives.

Is there a day in the future where we will see a class-action law suit with the protestors as plaintiffs against the media that lied?

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Jan 11, 2023·edited Jan 11, 2023

Never gonna happen. Mistakes were made... We did the best we could with what was known at the time....

These phrases cover all sorts of intentional wrongdoing so well!

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The road to hell is paved with good intentions. My problem is that I don't see the good intentions.

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Sort of like "you gotta break a few eggs to make an omlette", but the promised omlette never actually appears.

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Mao you're talking.

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"Fog of War"

conveniently excuses all kinds of bad behaviour

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THIS article is a historical document. Thank you, because the MSM has been feeding us only "hysterical" documents.

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It's disgusting that people are STILL rotting in jail without trial. It's outrageous that a Capitol cop got away with cold blooded murder, and despicably, the mother of the victim was recently arrested, much as would happen in Communist China.

It's going to take a Republican President and Congress to get any justice for these people, and to BRING to justice those politicians and journalists who framed a bunch of nonviolent protesters, all while ignoring if not outright condoning actual violence by leftists.

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Not many Repubs give a damn about the Jan 6 protesters. Louis Gomert (sp), no longer in Congress, and Marjorie Taylor Green, who I had classified as a kook, but continues in her efforts for the untried but locked up protesters.

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Because it would mean they'd have to do something...and at least half of them have no desire to do anything about anything, and that's being charitable.

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she can be both.

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Correct. My point to myself - kooks can be right some of the time.

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I've watched Marjorie interviewed and she comes across as intelligent and sincere, albeit not a professional politician.

Her alleged kooky statements have been debunked. The fake media has done their best to discredit her. Don't let yourself be fooled.

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Thanks for your insight. I also admired her during the House Speaker rucus, where she went to McCarthy privately, apparently achieved the desired result, and then supported McCarthy.

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This is a very good assessment of how J6 has been twisted into something it was not in order to serve the goals of the permanent/deep state.

I think more focus needs to be directed to the stories of the people who participated and who have been persecuted and falsely imprisoned since. That deserves its own monologue/article.

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Not to mention all the people who have been prosecuted despite the fact that THEY WEREN'T EVEN THERE.

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Hadn't heard of that. I figure they have enough people on video, social media, and cell records , etc that they wouldn't need to go looking at those they are unsure of.

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Yep. They're tracking down text messages and cell phone records in order to charge people who weren't even near the capitol.

https://www.businessinsider.com/mike-lindells-phone-records-subpoenaed-by-the-january-6-committee-2022-1?op=1

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I remember when that story broke...it's terrifying.

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Yes there have been several. They even arrested Alex Jones briefly, though he never went near the building and indeed he told people to calm down and stay away from the Capitol.

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All true, Glenn. But Trump shoulda seen this one coming. If you announce in advance "I'm planning to bring a half million supporters to D.C." you gotta expect the other side to take advantage of the opportunity you've given them. Trump's naivete did him in.

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Literally everything Trump did and said was used against him. He could walk on water and they'd accuse him of trespassing.

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they'd indict him for breaking the law of gravity.

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President Trump offered 3 days before January 6, 2021, to Speaker Pelosi to call up 10,000 members of the National Guard to protect the Capitol. She refused. There would have been no riots with the National Guard in place. He was not naive.

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Good point. How could he have known Nancy would let him down?

#PleaseLookUpTheWord"Naive"

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After the democrats encouraged rioting and violence all summer, even the cynics were flabbergasted about what they would do to ensure 1/6 was the left's Reichstag Fire.

Remember how they put up walls for months and had the National Guard hanging around?

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Ha! [It's conceivable Biden and Doctor Jill believed they needed 100 tanks & 20,000 troops surrounding them to keep them from being torn limb from limb].....

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Weird since he's the Most Popular President Ever©

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AKA: "Dear Leader".

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I guess sometimes he forgets that, S.C. [One possible example is the time he smilingly said he couldn't be taken out by folks with handguns cuz he's got "missiles and F-15's" --- I recall thinking, "why, that's not the way the most beloved man in history needs to talk!"]......

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He forgets a lot of things.

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I agree with you about Trump. We need to know how “the other side” and FBI took advantage .

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Within, say, three months we'll almost certainly know all there is to know about how and why this rally transformed into a riot ---- unfortunately those responsible will only have to say "oh, brother!" to be let off the hook....

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Fantastic analysis! I had believed the propaganda that you have exposed, so you have turned me around at least partially on this Jan. 6 event.

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I watched the events of Jan 6th on tv and wondered why no helicopters were overhead? Cops injured---what does that mean? A sprained ankle? What a coincidence that Nancy Pelosi was filmed calling to ask for additional security. A filmmaker just happened to be there? The blood of Ashili Babbitt is on Pelosi's hands.

"...citadel of democacy..." I think most people have a hard time believing how deep, and dirty, the Deep State is.

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I'd like to provide some feedback to you about the direction your content has moved. I feel for your family situation and have kept my sub despite the understandable decrease in content. But this subscription has become you simply emailing a transcribe from videos. I am sorry, but that is not the reason I paid for a subscription (to read your videos); nor did I sign up on SS for you to transfer to another outlet that you unilaterally decide to drag my subscription over for the remaining paid months (whatever Locals is). I will forgo the last paid 2 months of my yearly sub, but your consumers should have been offered the option of a refund.

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author

We're offering exactly the same content when we began. The monologues are the equivalent of articles I write: I write them out with the same attention to detail and supporting evidence as every article I've ever written. The only difference is that I first speak them before posting them in written form so that, as I explained, we can reach a larger audience with the journalism we're doing.

The only actual change is platform, and it's one that hasn't been implemented yet -- that instead of reading these articles on Substack, they'll soon be available to be read only on Locals, where our condition to moving was that they upgrade everything so that it renders as professionally as Substack. And all Substack subscribers have full access to those articles at no additional charge. And that's in addition to the original written journalism itself, which I said will continue; I wrote an original article just two weeks ago that wasn't for the show:

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/reflecting-new-us-control-of-tiktoks

All that said, I also said from the start when I knew my output would decrease due to our family's health situation that we would extend the subscription by however many months I end up missing or, for those who asked, a refund for those who bought a year-long subscription and no longer want it. So feel free to email us and we'll arrange for the pro-rated refund for however much time you have remaining. It is true that I signed a contract to produce a nightly show on a rapidly growing platform that is devoted to free speech, and that will have some marginal effect on my output, though the bigger factor has been our family issue.

But I absolutely understand if some people think these changes are substantial and that's why I said from the start we'd be happy to provide pro-rated refunds for those who asked.

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I welcome any content you provide, regardless of the form. I don't know how you find the time to organize all of your thoughts and research.

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Glenn, I really appreciate the transcripts as I just can not watch your show due to my schedule. I have no problem with you ultimately moving your work to another platform. Just tell us when the final move comes, and I will gladly follow you there.

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Thanks Glenn. I enjoy the combo of articles and videos. The videos are good for listening as I commute or walk the dogs.

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I agree

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I’ve come to the same conclusion . Glenn’s Substack columns were much more readable and concise. I looked forward to them every week or month or however often Glenn posted them. I simply do not have the time to get through these endless video transcripts and have found myself skipping them.

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Glenn tells you what the days transcript is about. You can pick and choose given your interests and concerns. These transcripts are are an unbelievable resource, and represent A magnitude of output unmatched on Substack.

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Jan 11, 2023·edited Jan 11, 2023

Thank you for such a thoughtful reply. I may have been too quick to dismiss Glenn’s recent content. Perhaps I need to be a more disciplined, focused reader!

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Agreed, reading Glen's writing is better than video transcripts, but the content is still worth it!

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Thank you for laying all of the lies bare and the case of the evolving lies upon lies. How anyone could claim that there is an insurrection when you lack armed paramilitary forces in significant number (500+) is beyond me.

That the DNC and legacy press were able to add to the police 'death count' by counting suicides and unrelated murders makes things all the more sickening, as does the near absence of any focus on the pipe bomber and Ray Epps.

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Boylan was clubbed to death t a woman police. All on video with an eyewitness who was there with her.

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You said the mob didn't bring a single gun into the Capitol. There is no evidence that that is true. Everybody (but the shaman) were wearing winter coats and could have been packing heat under them.

Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony under oath was that that she heard rump, during or before his speech at the oval, was upset that the oval wasn't full, and asked why the crowd outside the oval wasn't coming in. He was told that the people lingering outside the oval were armed and didn't want to go through metal detectors to get into the oval and have their weapons confiscated. So Trump knew that many people in the mob were armed, and this did not stop him from telling them to march on the Capitol and "fight like hell, because if you don't, you won't have a country any more".

Now the mob never got within line of sight of the politicians they were mad at, so they never had any reason to draw weapons from under their coats.

Eventually Trump told them to go home, which they did. Very few were arrested at the Capitol and searched for weapons. Most of the arrests were by tracking them down by social media posts, at which time it was impossible to prove whether they had been packing heat in the Capitol.

Politicians get death threats from the public all the time. Have a large angry crowd get into the Capitol and nearly reach the politicians without being searched for weapons is a terrible breach of security, and Trump deliberately caused that breach.

The cop who shot Ashleigh Babbit did the right thing. He knew that if she got past him, she'd reach the politicians, and since she hadn't been searched for weapons, it was his duty to assume she was armed. If he tackled her, the next person after her would pass them and reach the politicians. It was his job to lay down the law that anyone who came through that door would die. If you watch the video of that with the audience on, the mob was howling like a pack of rabid wolves -- they couldn't be reasoned with. Hot lead was the only language they would understand.

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This is a pack of lies and distortions.

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Sorry, Bill, as soon as one cites Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony, which was, at best, hearsay, any succeeding point is mitigated

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No, that's wrong.

Her testimony about Trump grabbing for the wheel of the vehicle he was in was hearsay and was probably not true.

But the conversation about the mob being armed she heard with her own ears, so it wasn't hearsay.

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>> But the conversation about the mob being armed she heard

Sounds like something she heard someone say.

There's a word for that... beer day? Sheer gay?

I'm working on it.

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Sounds like you watched all the Jan 6th hearings and are an expert on what happened.

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I also have a degree in epidemiology. You should basically listen to everything I say about everything.

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If the DOJ prosecutes Trump for "insurrection", they will have much more compelling powers to subpoena witnesses than the Jan 6 committee did.

So they will be able to subpoena the person Hutchinson heard telling Trump that many people in the mob were armed. This fact would have been known to many people present.

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Weapon=mace. Many might have had such a weapon.

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Hutchinson gave a lot of testimony, and the only part of it that was hearsay was that she said some guys in the white house told her that Trump had grabbed for the wheel of the vehicle he was in to try to force the secret service to take him to the Capitol which they refused to do.

Immediately after that testimony was on TV, people who were in the car disagreed with it, so I think it was not true.

Everything else she said was conversations she heard herself. And she was on TV for at least 45 minutes. And I didn't hear about anybody disagreeing with anything else she said.

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And yet after the steering wheel comment, she's a reliable source in your eyes? Talk about the blind leading the stupid.

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It really takes a lot of motivated reasoning to believe that an angry mob containing a lot of right-wingers, including militia groups and hard-core 2nd amendment types, would be completely unarmed.

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If the DOJ prosecutes Trump for "insurrection", they will have much more compelling powers to subpoena witnesses than the Jan 6 committee did, and they will be able to subpoena the person Hutchinson heard telling Trump that many people in the mob were armed.

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You're just looking for excuses to ignore what you don't want to hear.

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"You're just looking for excuses to ignore what you don't want to hear."

Oh, that's rich.

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There's no evidence they weren't packing magic wands to summon Dementors with either.

There's no evidence there wasn't a sample flask up someone's butthole with SUPER-COVID stolen from a Russian biolab.

There's no evidence any of this comment was made in anything like sincerity.

I'm glad you agree that hot lead is the only language a mob understands. The next fiery but mostly peaceful protest your friends throw may end that way.

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...All those big winter coats. Cop simply HAD to shoot first and ask questions later: there was no evidence whatsoever that Ashley Babbit wasn't packing a bazooka, or even a small tactical nuke under her coat...yeah, Lieutenant Michael Byrd simply had no choice, for all he knew she had an entire Seal Team squirrelled away in the folds of that coat...

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Especially if they were squirrels. You can fit a lot of squirrels in a winter coat.

And you cannot disprove this unseen possibility.

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Who really knows if some were armed? Does it really matter? No firearms were USED during the riot, except by police. Police are not allowed to assume anything prior to using their weapon. As far as the noise goes, trained officers should not be afraid because of noise.

Babbit was murdered by a person known to have been careless. There was no opportunity for her to even access a weapon as she was shot in the throat. Her hands were on the window. She MIGHT have been a threat had she gotten through the window. The officer was clearly scared and acted too soon.

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In his defense, it's impossible to prove that Babbit was not a witch. Or, to be more precise, it's impossible to disprove that she wasn't.

Better unload than toad.

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Any decent witch would not be killed by a bullet, I understand. OTOH, I think fire is not permitted on Capitol grounds.

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Aaahhhh, there were cops on the landing and stairway where Babbit fell. Will we ever find the pipe bomb guy? Pretty clear video, plenty of DNA. Kinda wonder about that FBI's ability to track down a terror guy? Pretty good at tracking down a trespass but a little sketchy on pipe bombing? I think Babbit's death was in the script - like Heather Heyer's heart attack on the sidewalk (she was not hit by a car) in Charlottesville (YOU CAN'T SAY THAT!) - there must be death in these scripted events.

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Ironically, it came out later on that Ashli was trying to calm people down and defuse the situation. The opposite of an instigator. I'm not sure how many heroes there were that day... none of the FBI, none of the Capitol police probably. But Ashli, yes.

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If she was "trying to calm people down", what was she doing climbing through the door toward hte politicians?

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What was that cop doing, shooting an unarmed protester? Murder is far more serious a crime than trespassing... particularly when SOME of the police were literally allowing people to enter the building.

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How could he possibly have been sure she was unarmed?

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Or a werewolf? Or a time traveler here to erase the Republic from history?

It's literally impossible to prove she wasn't any of those things. We must therefore assume they are so.

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This exchange is not productive. I will only say this last response:

Police are not trained to shoot people because "not sure she was unarmed". They are trained to shoot when there is no other option.

This Lieutenant Michael Byrd had a history of mistakes; e.g. he had left his loaded service pistol in the bathroom on a previous occasion. Clearly not the most responsible professional.

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The cops on the landing and stairwell had left. The only cop preventing the mob from reaching the politicians was one guy with a pistol. I don't know how many magazines he had, but it was a whole roomful of hysterical retards he had to stop, so he had to make every bullet count. That's why, once Babbit broke through the glass, he walked over to her and shot her at close range to make she the bullet counted.

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"Men hear what they wish to be true."

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"hysterical retards" - a bit of bias showing.

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Wow Bill. Pretty cavalier about filling your fellow citizen full of hot lead. Since you reason that many of the people in winter coats could’ve had guns, would you support shooting all of them? 

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The fact that Bill looks like a monster is irrelevant. Bill is just doing good in trying to rid the world of the Trump monsters. Anything that you do to get rid of a Trump supporter will help bring good to this world. So go ahead Bill. Kill a couple dozen Trump supporters and you will go to heaven with 25 virgins. You are my hero!

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I think it would be justified to shoot any of them to prevent them from reaching a position where they could assassinate politicians.

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Hopefully you’re not in law-enforcement 

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He'd fit right in with the Capitol police.

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So the Capitol police are the bad guys????????????? 140 of them were injured and they only shot one person, but they're still the bad guys?

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Extraordinary claims (that the people were armed) require extraordinary evidence. It is pure conjecture on your part. There is no evidence that they were, as you know as well as I do that the legacy press would have been all over them if anyone involved had any weapons.

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Injured, eh?

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needs more bear extinguishers and fire spray.

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In fact it was obvious that they were going to assassinate politicians as you read their mind and knew this to be the case. Since you are so good at it, why don't you get a gun, go out there in the wild and eliminate more people who you deem to have the wrong thoughts. Thank god you aren't in charge of shit or we would be in a worse position than we are now.

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In this case, it was only necessary to shoot one. After that, the rest knew that if they went through the door, they'd die. So they gave up and left.

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So how many people at BLM/Antifa riots should have been shot/killed? How many at CHAZ? Or rather let me re-phrase, how many unarmed people at any of those 'events' should have been shot dead to disperse the others?

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I am mostly unsympathetic to BLM. I loathe and despise Antifa. I have no idea what CHAZ is.

Your question is wrong. It assumes the cop who shot Babbit knew whether she was armed. He had no way of knowing whether she was packing heat under her winter coat.

Another thing about Jan 6th is that it was an angry, politically-motivated mob trying to reach politicians who had been chanting that they wanted to murder Mike Pence. So in this case, there was a lot of reason to assume that if the mob reached the politicians, assassinations would occur. Most Antifa and BLM rioters were not out to kill people.

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CHAZ: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle. You know where the loons took control of part of the city and refused to leave or acknowledge municipal, county, state and federal authority, where a few murders occurred as a result.

As for my question, someone moving through a confined space like that is not a threat to you, especially if you are armed. Attacking her was like shooting fish in a barrel. Not to mention, if you are to shoot someone, you are supposed to aim for the legs as to not to kill someone. The guy had issues in any event, how he could still be in the police is beyond me.

How much of Jan 6th was the actual protest and how much of it was from plants? You have the case of the 'kidnapping plot' which shows what the supposed national police, the FBI, are capable of. You also have the unindicted people who are on video advocating violence and entering the buildings. Why are they not the ones receiving the harshest treatment? What happened to the pipe bomber? The whole thing stinks.

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Packing heat, hot lead - sounds like an old gangster movie.

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You gotta nice pair of getaway sticks there, doll face.

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Jan 11, 2023·edited Jan 11, 2023

So after two years of intensive investigation -- perhaps the largest in US history -- not a single person has been charged with being armed and you claim there is no evidence?! Maybe they'll at last locate such fabled armed insurrectionists after they at last arrest the elusive pipe bomber and "scaffold commander".

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They had mind weapons

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Hey, they had winter coats and were "right wingers." I don't have a single bra without a hand grenade stuffed in it. And all my winter hats have ninja stars on the brim.

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Your reading comprehension is really poor. Almost none of the rioters were arrested and searched for weapons on the spot. Sworn testimony by a reliable witness showed that Trump knew that many of them had weapons under their coats.

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Reliable witness?....like the kind that caused the whole Kavanaugh fiasco?

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Man you are really good at reading minds. An now you believe someone else reading Trump's mind that he knew they had weapons. You must be a writer or artist or something like this as your ability to make logical statements is zippo. You shouldn't be responding to these posts if you cannot muster even an ounce of logic. Sworn testimony by a reliable witness. Give me a break. You just made that up. You are no better than the NY Times. What a joke

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No, I heard the sworn testimony on TV, and I heard her being sworn in. I didn't "read Trump's' mind", I heard sworn testimony that he was told something, so I know he knew it.

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Your reasoning skills are poor. Because a "reliable witness" said that Trump "knew" they had weapons under their coats, then in fact they had weapons under their coats?

So let's recap:

Your argument is that all these people had weapons and were attempting an insurrection. They were out to kill the politicians! And yet once they had accomplished their goal of breaching the Capitol, not one of them drew these weapons they had carefully concealed, and none were fired. Instead, they took out their cell phones to shoot video.

Maybe this makes sense in some fantasy world.

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If I had a dollar for every time some asshole shoehorned the word "ALL" into my mouth I could retire.

I did not say ALL of them had weapons under their coats. I said MANY of them did.

Of those who had weapons, only SOME wanted to kill politicians.

Of those who wanted to kill politicians, breaching the Capitol was not "accomplishing their goal" because they still were not within line of sight of the politicians they didn't like. They never achieved that. Drawing their guns from under their coats was undesirable until they were within line of sight of their targets, since having guns in their hands would make them targets for the Capitol police. So they never had any reason to draw their guns.

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Quite an accusation. Can you prove it?

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Prove it's not true.

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Granting your (shaky) assertion that only SOME had weapons and wanted to kill politicians, that undermines the claim that this was an insurrection. Only some? How many are some? Most? A few? Flights of fancy with no actual evidence, but necessary to prop up the “insurrection” hysteria.

Using the word “asshole” does not add to the credibility of your argument.

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What was Trump's motive, if not to change the election outcome through violent intimidation?

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So, you have no problem w/ Kyle Rittenhouse, either ?

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You haven't read all the threads.

I was totally against the George Floyd riots and consider Kyle Rittenhouse to be a hero. I said so in one of the other threads.

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And if hot lead is the only language they understand why did the Republicans not use their own hot lead. If it was an insurrection hot lead would have been flying.

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Because they never got withing line of sight of the people they wanted to kill. As I explained in my initial post.

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I only subscribed to this because I've been trying for years to figure out how so many conservatives dismiss the significance of Jan 6th, and particularly Trump's responsibility for it. So I really wanted to read this piece.

I agree that the post-George Floyd rioting was nuts -- my alma mater said they would push BLM until "None would oppose it". I sent them an email saying I would no longer give them any more money until they issued a statement that they would tolerate all viewpoints on campus. Demanding that everybody on campus support a movement with a track record of looting, arson, and cop assassinations is totally inappropriate for a place of learning and research.

Clearly, the Democrats went criminally insane for several months in 2020. I consider Kyle Rittenhouse to be a hero. When idiots are burning down civilization for moronic reasons, a citizen who arms himself and takes to the streets to stop it is doing the right thing.

But two wrongs don't make a right. Democrats rioting doesn't give Republicans the right to do the same thing.

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What significance do you find in it? Taking a step back, initially it appeared to me to be the normalization of rioting and looting caused by the previous 8 months. What would have been considered unthinkable prior to the second Summer of Sam became normalized as you had almost everyone in the press cheerleading arsonists, vandals, trespassers and looters, shielding them with the words 'mostly peaceful'. As a result, it became psychologically alright to riot, to break things, to enter forbidden places. The blame for that falls on those who normalized it.

Now you can claim that this involved refusing to acknowledge federal authority, however why then are the people involved being treated any different than those of CHAZ and the people who tore down federal statues? Either all crimes are equal and treated equally or they are not. January 6th is naught but one of the end pages in a year of chaos when those who were supposed to oppose such behavior instead encouraged it for some people, as apparently all protests are equal but some are more equal than others.

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That was one of the more thoughtful responses to me so far. But I have no idea what CHAZ was.

One big difference was that the whole Jan 6th riot was deliberately instigated by Trump, and he could have stopped it at any time -- in fact, when he finally (after several hours of congress being in danger) told the rioters to disperse and go home, they immediately did so. So Trump was completely in control, and therefore completely responsible for the whole thing.

While he sat in the White House dining room and watched the cops getting the shit beaten out of them on TV, his staff were begging him to call off the rioters and telling him the Mike Pence's life was in danger. He just responded that Mike Pence had it coming. Mike Pence (and his family) were in danger, Trump knew it, Trump could have stopped it, and for a long time he didn't.

Trump wanted Pence to overrule the election, and set a precedent that from then on, the incumbent vice-president would unilaterally choose the next president. It would have been the end of American democracy. There would be no point in presidential elections any more, presidents would just be chosen by the vice president. Once Trump was done, he could arrange it so the next president would be one of his kids (I don't know which -- Ivanka? Don Jr?).. We would become a dynasty.

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Trump told people to let their voices be heard. Was he reckless and impulsive, yes, did he call for violence against people? No. Did he call on people to break and enter? No. Could he have done more, yes. However that misses the point as everyone knows that Trump is highly impulsive and blunt. He acted...in character.

Everyone knows what his motives were, and there was nothing that could be done to secure him enough electoral votes. About the only cases that one could challenge, Nevada and Pennsylvania, were not enough to deny a Biden win (lowering Biden's total from 306 to 280 which is still 10 above the finish line), and such challenges had been thrown out of court. Now, Nevada had it's 40% write-in-vote signature verification (below the equal chance of a signature being genuine and fake at 50%) and Pennsylvania actively helping Biden voters but not Trump ones, as well as having high-ranking officials say before voting stopped that Trump would 'never win Pennsylvania'. Saying something like that in a swing state stinks and they should have been penalized because of that, but not at the cost of the election.

You also presume that both Pence and enough people in congress would go along with something like that, which I doubt they would, especially given that things which made the 2020 election 'Free but not Fair' such as the Hunter Biden Laptop and Zuckerbucks were not discovered until months afterword. None of the supposed methods of fraud checked out and everyone knew Trump was grasping at straws. I'll admit I gave the voting machine claim thought for a week, but after evidence failed to materialize, I knew it was garbage.

Regarding the 'end of democracy', Trump was doing what had been done in a 'polite' way for decades. Political dynasties are a thing and are more damaging than political lifers. Whether from spouse to spouse, spouse to child or creating a true family (like the Kennedy or Bush families), such people are run as major party candidates and keep bringing their families power. The only reason Ted Kennedy wasn't a presidential nominee was because he committed manslaughter, though that didn't keep him out of the senate. There was the Jeb Bush campaign for a third Bush presidency, there was talk of JFK Jr. running for office...that kind thing already exists. Per usual, Trump made it obvious by throwing it out in the open for all to see. Think about it, in 2016, you had Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush going against each other. Had Jeb Bush won the primary, would we even be having an election as both are swamp rats, both are members of political dynasties.

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It was the first time in the long-running history of the country that a loser in a presidential election has tried to violently overturn an election result.

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"Did he call for violence against people? No".

Wrong. Trump told them "Fight like hell, or you won't have a country any more.". Giuliani said it was time for a "trial by combat".

People beat the shit out of the Capitol Police, 140 of whom were injured (while Trump watched on TV, with a power to stop it all at any time with a tweet at his whim, and he didn't stop it. The people who attacked police believed that they were doing what Trump told them to do.

While rioters were running around the Capitol chanting "hang Mike Pence", Trump tweeted that Pence was too much of a "coward" to do the right thing, adding to Pence's danger.

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The whole point of the White House plan ('The Green Bay Sweep") lay not in violence, but in a series of deft political moves devised by constitutional scholar John Eastman that would legally return the election to the various state legislatures for 10 days to facilitate further scrutiny over contested issues. Trump had no political interest in a violent confrontation, since that could lead nowhere. The other side, however, had every interest in forestalling any sustained televised deliberation in Congress and in caricaturing Trump supporters as violent hooligans. As a result, any and all violence would redound solely to their credit, as the subsequent narrative has demonstrated.

The release of the full set of tapes and a deeper investigation of Ray Epps et al should well reveal the place of the FBI and other government agencies in events of that day.

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I agree with your every point, other than the implied equivalence of Jan. 6 and the 2020 riots. Dozens were killed in 2020, buildings were burned, police cars smashed and blown up... there's simply no comparison. The Democrats, in basically ignoring if not downright condoning the violence, have lost all credibility and now are seen by millions of conservatives as the real threat to the Republic.

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Why not? Rioting has been a thing in America for years. Why should Democrats be the only ones who can use it to achieve a political purpose. If rioting is okay for the goose then it is okay for the gander. I don't think it is okay for the goose or the gander, but if rioting achieves a political purpose for the left then it is obvious the right will use it as well.

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Jan 12, 2023·edited Jan 12, 2023

I agree with everything you say here but only point out that the obvious fruitlessness of the whole thing is not a complete argument against charges against particular people for incitement, attempted interference with the transfer of power, and even felony murder.

Trump and even more clearly Giuliani, had convinced people that an election that wasn't even close had been stolen and that an angry mob could disrupt the process and somehow change the outcome. A small segment of the group believed they were doing that, stopping the steal (and not necessarily unreasonably given what they were convinced had happened). In the foreseeable riot that ensued Ashley Babbit was killed.

None of this will be charged amidst all of the truly fucked up stuff that has been charged and the mass of lies and the government overeach, but as with most complicated situations that are spun into large blatant false narratives, there is that nugget of truth.

Keep up your heroic reporting. You're one of the best we have.

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Until the Twitter Files are addressed in Congress in a real way on liberal control of the media, it is all a moot point, IMO.

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I'm sure that Nero didn't set fire to Rome. It was the Christian-Bolsheviks who did that, just as the Commune set fire to Paris in 1871 and the Communists set fire to the Reichstag in 1932. — Adolf Hitler

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I do wonder if any of the capitol police officers who committed suicide may have been thinking about going on record contradicting the party narrative. Was it suicide, or was it "suicide?"

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