Commentary

Over the past six months, I’ve been telling you how the Democrats planned to milk the January 6, 2021 protest on our nation’s Capitol, while warning that we faced the danger of losing our democracy, in an attempt to salvage control of the House and Senate.

At his Summit for Democracy, President Biden referred to “the defining challenge of our time,” noting that “democracy was in retreat in the U.S.”  That was preposterous.

I quoted columnist Paul Waldman, who wrote about “Those of us who sit up nights worrying … that the stage was set for a collapse of democracy.”

And in April I wrote about former President Obama being called upon to stoke fear in the threat democracy is facing.

I taped the Democrat’s hearing Thursday with the intention of watching it later, choosing instead to watch Fox’s primetime programing lineup, where I knew the coverage would be balanced.

Friday’s Arizona Republic, one of the left’s complicit newspapers, carried a banner headline with a 72pt font, ‘Democracy is Still in Danger.” 

From the beginning, Nancy Pelosi refused to seat minority Republicans Jim Jordan and Jim Banks on the select committee, an unprecedented action.  Claiming instead, that two RINO’s – Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger – make it nonpartisan.

Committee Chairman Thompson

It shouldn’t have surprised me, but to hear Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson’sopening comparing the defense of the Capitol rioters to the defenders of the Ku Klux Clan in his home state of Mississippi, I knew what was ahead as the hearings progress.

Thompson called the attack a “culmination of an attempted coup … a sprawling multistep conspiracy.”

One would expect that Thompson would choose his words more carefully, but the leadership on the left – Pelosi and Schumer – and other committee members like Adam Schiff and Jamie Raskin throw these words around with abandon – insurrection, conspiracy and coup.

A coup or coup d’etat is defined in Britannica as “the sudden, violent overthrow of an existing government.  The chief prerequisite for a coup is control of all or part of the armed forces, police and other military elements.”

While one would expect that such an action would require individuals to be armed, Jill Sanborn, assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, told a Senate committee on March 3, 2021 that no guns were recovered at the January 6, Capitol protest.

Reporting for CNN politics online, following a July 27, 2021 committee hearing, Holmes Lybrand reported that January 6, was not an armed insurrection.

Further, a coup, “unlike a revolution, usually achieved by large numbers of people working for political change, a change in power from the top that merely results in the abrupt replacement of leading government personnel.”

There was no coup, nor an attempted coup.

Appearing on the Gutfeld Show, former CIA officer Mike Baker scoffed at the thought of an attempted coup, and that we were close to losing our democracy on January 6, 2021. 

As a 17-year covert field operations officer, specializing in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations around the world, including Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and in the former Soviet Union, Baker would know.

Cheney Responds

In Thursday’s show trial, reeling off a string of charges against former President Trump, wasn’t enough for Cheney.  She paused to attack the members of her own party for “defending the indefensible,” taking discernible pleasure in noting “There will come a day when President Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”

“Those who invaded our Capitol and battled law enforcement for hours were motivated by what President Trump had told them.  President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flames of this attack,” she said amongst a string of other claims, which I do not respect.

Of course, we know that he told his supporters to march “peacefully and patriotically to make your voices heard.”

The Committee Lacked Credibility

“What’s actually missing is this special sauce of prime TV hours of slick videos and positive press,” wrote Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley A. Strassel, “is the one ingredient truly vital for public interest: credibility.”

Judging from early reports of TV viewership, the Democrats have again stepped in it.

May God continue to bless the United States of America.