Many posts have discussed the insurrection of January 6, 2021.
Dan Barry and Alan Feuer at NYT:
Before the Capitol had even been secured, Representative Paul Gosar, Republican of Arizona, was asserting on Twitter that the events had “all the hallmarks of Antifa provocation.” Hours later, the Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham was telling viewers that “there are some reports that antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd.” And by morning, Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, was claiming on the House floor that some rioters “were masquerading as Trump supporters and in fact were members of the violent terrorist group antifa.” (Mr. Gaetz would become President-elect Trump’s first choice for attorney general before being derailed by scandal.)
According to M.I.T. Technology Review, this fabrication was repeated online more than 400,000 times in the 24 hours after the Capitol attack, amplified by a cast of MAGA influencers, Republican officials and members of Mr. Trump’s family.
The former president remained mostly silent in the weeks that followed. But in a late March interview with Washington Post reporters that was not made public until months later, he provided an early hint of how he would frame the Jan. 6 attack.
The day he had previously called calamitous was now largely peaceful. The mob that stormed the Capitol had been “ushered in” by the police. And those who had rallied with him beforehand were a “loving crowd.”
...
Soon after, Mr. Trump broke his monthslong silence about Jan. 6. At an early July rally in Sarasota, Fla., he invoked the name of Ashli Babbitt, a pro-Trump rioter who had been fatally shot by a Capitol police officer while trying to breach the House floor, where lawmakers and staff members had sought safety. She was fast becoming a martyr to the cause.
“Shot, boom,” Mr. Trump said. “There was no reason for it. Who shot Ashli Babbitt?”
The former president also referred to the jailed rioters. Floating the specter of a justice system prejudiced against conservatives, he questioned why “so many people are still in jail over Jan. 6” when antifa and Black Lives Matter hadn’t paid a price for the violent protests that followed the murder of a Black man, George Floyd, by a white Minneapolis police officer in 2020.
