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January 11, 2024

[The] FBI finds scant evidence U.S. Capitol attack was coordinated

In a video displayed during President Trump’s second impeachment trial on Feb. 9, 2021, House Democrats did not show footage of Trump telling supporters on Jan. 6 to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

                        Verdict: True

                                            — Politico, Feb. 11, 2021

As election year 2024 begins, the Democrat “News”-media Colluders (DNC) roll out their free campaign commercials for the Democrats. 

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One of these, featuring a clip CNN’s Phil Mattingly, is found in an article titled “‘There’s The Truth and There Are Lies!’ CNN Anchor Destroys Republicans Over Trump-Inspired Riot in Blistering Commentary.”   Unfortunately, the arguments in the article and clip are literally terrible, containing demonstrably false information, and provide no direct evidence whatsoever that Trump intended an insurrection.  None!  

Mattingly begins by saying that Trump lied about the results of the 2020 election and some people who heard that lie perpetrated the assault, thereby leaving it to the viewer to infer, fallaciously, that Trump instigated the riot.   This is the fallacy of “question begging” (assuming what one purports to prove).  Second, Mattingly appears to have forgotten that it is the American people who, in the political realm, decide what is or is not a lie, not some elitist partisan “news” organizations that comically ran the Trump-Russia Collusion hoax for years. 

Mattingly is motivated by the fact that he finds it “jarring” that both Biden and Trump cite January 6th in their defense.  He also finds it astonishing that, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, more than 7 in 10 Republicans think “it is time to move on” because “too much” is being made of the Jan. 6 riot.”  Mattingly states, his views are “not opinion, not one side of the debate but unequivocal demonstrable fact,” thereby informing the peasants that the traditional American right of free thought is suspended in order to “Get Trump”.  Only the DNC view is now permissible.   Don’t the rabble know that the DNC suspended the old proverb “There are two sides to every story” so that the peasants are required to submit to this CNN-DNC storyline? 

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Mattingly lists numerous people from that day who have pled guilty to crimes from criminal trespass to violent assaults on police as if this proves anything about Donald Trump.  None of these statistics implicates Trump in any crime (“question-begging” fallacy again).  Nonetheless, Mattingly’s presentation is designed to leave the viewer with the impression that something someone else did is Trump’s fault.  Does Mattingly remember that we live in America?

Mattingly is outraged that 34% of Republicans still believe that the FBI “probably or definitely instigated the attack on the Capitol.  He plays a clip of FBI Director Wray’s response to a question by Clay Higgins (R-LA) where Wray says: “If you are asking whether the violence at the Capitol on January 6th was part of some operation orchestrated by FBI sources and or agents, the answer is emphatically not!”  Unfortunately, Mattingly fails to point out that Wray just answered a question that had not been asked.  

Higgins, referring to testimony by an FBI whistleblower Steven D’Antuono, asked if the FBI had confidential human sources dressed as Trump supporters in the crowd on Jan. 6.  Higgens did not ask Wray if the FBI agents “instigated” the riot.  In fact, Wray has repeatedly either refused to answer that question about an FBI presence in the crowd on Jan. 6 or states that he does not know if there were Federal undercover agents in the crowd on January 6th.  Apparently, the peasants are not entitled to that answer and CNN’s Mattingly has no interest, peculiar for a “journalist,” in getting it.  Higgins now claims to have plenty of evidence of FBI undercover agents in the crowd that day.  Are we still allowed to discuss this in what remains of our former country? 

Comically, Mattingly laments the fact that Republicans have “made a political calculation about what happened on [January 6th] through the lens of politics” explains “why the country is in this [sad] place,” as if viewing January 6th through a political calculation is not precisely what Mattingly is doing himself!

Mattingly presents what he takes as a decisive refutation of Trump’s view about January 6th, three clips of what certain Republicans said about Jan. 6 on or about that day and the different statements they make now.  The first clip shows Kevin McCarthy, (R-CA) describing how the rioters brought ropes, scaled walls, etc., and that “one officer was killed that day.”  McCarthy, Mattingly trumpets, “endorsed Trump last month but what [McCarthy] described [earlier] was the reality of that day.”  The second shows Josh Hawley saying that the criminals who stormed the Capitol on that day “ought to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law” but, Mattingly says, Hawley endorsed Trump last month.  The third shows Marjorie Taylor Green saying she has just been told that “there is an active shooter on the first floor of the Capitol. … This isn’t the way to solve anything,” but, Mattingly says, she endorsed Trump when he launched his 2020 campaign. 

It is not clear what Mattingly thinks is the problem in these remarks.  Since none of the original remarks ascribes any culpability to Trump there is no inconsistency in the fact that they later endorsed Trump.  Does Mattingly understand the concepts of causality and moral responsibility?