Andrew Clyde Revises History on the Storming of the Capitol

During a House Oversight and Reform hearing yesterday on the storming of the Capitol on January 6, Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA), painfully revised the history of the event. He said that calling the storming of the Capitol during the constitutionally mandated counting of the Electoral College an “insurrection” was “a bald-faced lie.” He even quoted the definition of insurrection from the Cambridge English Dictionary and Century Dictionary to claim that the storming of the Capitol didn’t meet the technical definition of an insurrection. Uh, okay. One could argue that Clyde is cherry-picking, considering that Merriam-Webster defines an insurrection as “an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government.”

Clyde didn’t stop there, though. He said, “There was an undisciplined mob. There were some rioters and some who committed acts of vandalism. But let me be clear. There was no insurrection and to call it an insurrection, in my opinion, is a bald-faced lie. Watching the TV footage of those who entered the Capitol and walked through Statuary Hall showed people in an orderly fashion staying between the stanchions and ropes, taking videos and pictures. You know, if you didn’t know the TV footage was a video from January the 6th, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.”

Clyde says he was there and that he’s relaying his own experiences. So now, Trump apologists have gone from the claim that it was Black Lives Matter and ANTIFA who were responsible for January 6 to the tortured claim that it was “a normal tourist visit.” Come on.

Friends of mine who work in the House and Senate were evacuated for their own safety because of bomb threats or barricaded in their offices because of the violence that occurred that day. Several hundred people have been charged for their behavior on January 6. All one needs to do is look at the footage from that day to see that it’s not what Clyde and other Trump apologists claim. It was a riot; it was an insurrection. These people disrupted the constitutional duty of Congress to count electoral votes because they didn’t like the outcome of the election and believed the lies about widespread voter fraud. They wanted Congress to overturn an election based on the false belief that Congress could do so. We call it an insurrection because that’s what it was.

I had hopes for Clyde, considering his compelling story about government overreach, but what a disappointment he has been thus far.