#GiftArticle

#MAGA’s Foundational #Lie

The movement claims to stand with the #police. #Trump’s decision to pardon the cop-beaters of January 6 exposed his movement for what it is.

By Jeffrey Goldberg

#Jan6 #NeverForget #insurrection #PoliticalViolence #Trump #coup #AntiAmerican #democracy #law #Constitution #PeacefulTransitionOfPower
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/02/trump-indecency-jan-6-pardons/685324/?gift=guxsrl_dAdXUP9zqbQPWxWy3eiBMSVyEY5bkV2VjbZk

This #Jan6 plaque was made to honor law enforcement. It's nowhere to be found at the #Capitol

The official plaque honoring the #police who defended #democracy that day is nowhere to be found.

It’s not on display at the Capitol, as is required by #law. Its whereabouts aren’t publicly known, though it’s believed to be in storage.

#NeverForget #insurrection #PoliticalViolence #Trump #coup #AntiAmerican #law #Constitution #PeacefulTransitionOfPower
https://apnews.com/article/capitol-riot-jan-6-anniversary-police-plaque-f6fd39b437c339fa9ff477318a7d36e2

In the entire #history of the #UnitedStates, ALL elections except 2020 have resulted in peaceful transitions of power where the losing party "willingly & peacefully" relinquished power to the opposition.

#Jan6 #NeverForget #insurrection #PoliticalViolence #Trump #coup #AntiAmerican #democracy #law #Constitution #PeacefulTransitionOfPower

Yet, even when weighed against this stunning record of #degeneracy, the pardoning by #Trump of his cop-beating foot soldiers represents the lowest moment of this presidency so far, because it was an act not only of naked #despotism but also of outlandish #hypocrisy. By pardoning these #criminals, he exposed a foundational #lie of #MAGA ideology: that it stands with the #police & as a guarantor of #law & order. The truth is the opposite.

#Jan6 #NeverForget #insurrection #PoliticalViolence #coup

6 months later, in the summer of 2024, #Trump, who would come to describe the #Jan6 #insurrection as a “day of love,” said that, if reelected, he would #pardon rioters, but only “if they’re innocent.” Dempsey was NOT innocent, but on Jan 20, 2025, shortly after being inaugurated, Trump pardoned him & roughly 1,500 others charged with or convicted of offenses related to the Capitol insurrection.

#NeverForget #PoliticalViolence #coup #democracy #law #Constitution #PeacefulTransitionOfPower

I [Goldberg] attended the #Jan6 rally on the Ellipse, at which #Trump told his supporters, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Then I walked with the crowd to the Capitol. One woman, a #QAnon adherent dressed in a cat costume, told me, “We’re going to stop the steal. If Pence isn’t going to stop it, we have to.”

#NeverForget #insurrection #PoliticalViolence #coup #AntiAmerican #democracy #law #Constitution #PeacefulTransitionOfPower

Dempsey, who was heard yelling “Fuck you, bitch-ass cops!,” assaulted other officers with broken pieces of furniture, crutches, & a flagpole. Prosecutors would later argue that “Dempsey’s violence reached such extremes that, at one point, he attacked a fellow rioter who was trying to disarm him.” All told, >140 police officers were injured in the riot, many seriously.

#Jan6 #NeverForget #insurrection #PoliticalViolence #Trump #coup #democracy #law #Constitution #PeacefulTransitionOfPower

Shortly before he assaulted several police officers, he shared his perspectives in an interview given while standing near a #gallows. The gallows had been erected as a reminder to Vice President #MikePence to do, in Trump’s words, “the right thing.”

#Jan6 #NeverForget #insurrection #PoliticalViolence #Trump #coup #AntiAmerican #democracy #law #Constitution #PeacefulTransitionOfPower

5 years ago, the jarring scene watched the world over was declared an “ #insurrection” by the then-GOP leader of the #Senate, while the #House #GOP leader at the time called it his “saddest day” in #Congress. But those condemnations have faded.

#Trump calls it a “day of love.” And #MikeJohnson, who was among those lawmakers challenging the 2020 election results, is now House speaker.

#Jan6 #NeverForget #history #PoliticalViolence #coup #democracy #law #Constitution #PeacefulTransitionOfPower

The 2022 resolution said the #US “owes its deepest gratitude to those officers,” & it set out instructions for an honorific plaque listing the names of officers “who responded to the violence that occurred.” It gave a one-year deadline for installation at the #Capitol.

This summer, two officers who fought the mob that day sued over the delay.

#Jan6 #NeverForget #history #insurrection #PoliticalViolence #Trump #coup #AntiAmerican #democracy #law #Constitution #PeacefulTransitionOfPower

Unlike the twin light beams that commemorated the #Sept11, 2001, attack or the stand-alone chairs at the #OklahomaCityBombing site #memorial, the failure to recognize #Jan6 has left a gap not only in #memory but in helping to stitch the country back together.

“That’s why you put up a plaque,” said Rep Mary Gay Scanlon, D-PA. “You respect the memory & the service of the people involved.”

#NeverForget #history #insurrection #PoliticalViolence #Trump #democracy #law #PeacefulTransitionOfPower

Visitors can pass through the #Capitol without any formal reminder of what happened that day, when a mob of #Trump supporters stormed the building trying to overturn the Republican’s 2020 reelection defeat to Democrat #JoeBiden. With memory left unchecked, it allows new narratives to swirl & revised histories to take hold.

#Jan6 #NeverForget #history #insurrection #PoliticalViolence #coup #AntiAmerican #democracy #law #Constitution #PeacefulTransitionOfPower

In Washington, a capital city lined with monuments to the nation’s #history, the plaque was intended to become a simple but permanent marker, situated near the Capitol’s west front, where some of the most #violent fighting took place as #insurgents breached the building.

But in its absence, the missing plaque makes way for something else entirely — a culture of forgetting.

#Jan6 #NeverForget #insurrection #PoliticalViolence #Trump #coup #democracy #law #Constitution #PeacefulTransitionOfPower

Determined to preserve the nation’s #history, some 100 members of #Congress, mostly #Democrats, have taken it upon themselves to memorialize the moment. For months, they’ve mounted poster board-style replicas of the #Jan6 plaque outside their office doors, resulting in a #Capitol complex awash with makeshift remembrances.

#NeverForget #insurrection #PoliticalViolence #Trump #coup #AntiAmerican #democracy #law #Constitution #PeacefulTransitionOfPower

#JamieRaskin envisions the #Capitol one day holding tours around what happened. “People need to study that as an essential part of #AmericanHistory,” he said.

“Think about the dates in American #history that we know only by the dates: There’s the 4th of July. There’s December 7th. There’s 9/11. And there’s January 6th,” said Rep #ZoeLofgren, D-CA, who also served on the cmte & has a plaque outside her office.

#Jan6 #NeverForget #insurrection #PoliticalViolence #Trump #coup #democracy #law

The #Republicans under #MikeJohnson have tapped Rep #BarryLoudermilk of Georgia [who literally gave a tour of the Capitol building to some insurgents the day before the #insurrection] to stand up their own special committee to uncover what the speaker calls the “full truth” of what happened. They’re planning a hearing this month.

#Jan6 #NeverForget #history #PoliticalViolence #Trump #coup #AntiAmerican #democracy #law #Constitution #PeacefulTransitionOfPower

“We should stop this silliness of trying to #whitewash #history — it’s not going to happen,” said Rep. Joe Morelle, D-NY, who helped lead the effort to display the replica plaques.

“I was here that day so I’ll #NeverForget,” he said. “I think that Americans will not forget what happened.”

The number of makeshift plaques that fill the halls is a testimony to that remembrance, he said.

Instead of one plaque, he said, they’ve “now got 100.”

#Jan6 #insurrection #PoliticalViolence #Trump #law