The Republican party has spent the last five months by and large downplaying the deadly insurrection of Jan. 6, even though everyone in the building that die was in grave danger. Almost none of them voted for a federal investigation into what happened, even if that meant snubbing the traumatized Capitol officers who begged them to do otherwise, despite their claims to love the police. (Though at least they showed up.) But one GOP lawmaker reportedly went further than most.
I just called Officer Fanone and confirmed this story. This is really incredible. Also relayed an interaction he had with another members Chief of Staff that was really incredibly bad and disrespectful. https://t.co/fERYjK6dWg
— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱 (@AdamKinzinger) June 16, 2021
According to Mediaite, Officer Michael Fanone, a DC Metropolitan officer who has been very outspoken about his experiences that day, was on Capitol Hill on Wednesday when he ran into Andrew Clyde, a representative from Georgia. If Clyde is famous for anything, it’s for his gaslight-y attempts to portray the day’s events as, you know, a pretty normal weekday, saying things like, “if you didn’t know the TV footage was a video from January 6, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.”
Fanone, who has made it pretty clear what he thinks about Republicans who voted down the Jan. 6 commission, told Democratic congressmen Eric Swalwell and Adam Kinzinger that, upon seeing Clyde, he introduced himself. But Clyde, despite his tough talk, “refused to shake his hand.”
If true, it’s a pretty damning account of where the Republican party is some five months later: so unwilling to cut ties with a one-term, septuagenarian president who can’t spell “junkie” and who failed at blogging that they’ve decided “blue lives” don’t matter. “To honor Trump,” Swalwell wrote on Twitter, “@housegop will dishonor the police.”
(Via Mediaite)