It seems that conservatives at the moment are in the second one degree in their Jan. 6 incorrect information marketing campaign, below new Space Speaker Mike Johnson.
And so they’re stumbling out of the beginning blocks.
As I see it, the primary degree took place below then-Space Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who passed hundreds of hours of Jan. 6 safety pictures to then-Fox Information host Tucker Carlson. That effort did not stir the pro-insurrectionist sympathy that the GOP appears to be after.
Republicans took every other stab at it over the weekend, with Johnson pronouncing Friday that he’s going to publicly free up greater than 40,000 hours of Jan. 6 pictures. Two Republicans — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Sen. Mike Lee of Utah — then took to social media to push false claims that one of the vital rioters used to be an FBI agent in cover.
Lee reshared a publish on X from a convicted Jan. 6 rioter, who used to be spreading a debunked conspiracy principle that every other rioter have been observed flashing an FBI badge on the Capitol. The publish integrated a display screen grasp of surveillance pictures.
“I can’t wait to ask FBI Director Christopher Wray about this at our next oversight hearing,” Lee wrote on X. “I predict that, as always, his answers will be 97% information-free.”
Greene shared the screen grab, too — and took the performative outrage even further, calling on the new House speaker to create another Jan. 6 committee and saying that criminal prosecutions “MUST happen under a Trump DOJ.”
“That’s a law enforcement badge in his hand while disguised as a Trump supporter in a MAGA hat,” Greene falsely claimed in her authentic publish prior to enhancing it. “I’ve said it all along, MAGA did not do this.”
However Greene quickly got rid of the display screen grasp from her publish and deleted the sentence in regards to the badge.
Netizens noted that the rioter in question, Kevin Lyons, appears to have been carrying a vaping device, not a badge. My colleague Ryan Reilly — who literally wrote the e-book on web sleuths who’ve helped determine Jan. 6 contributors — defined the failed conspiracy push in a piece of writing for NBC Information.
So this wasn’t some executive plant. He used to be a self-identified numbskull who rode a wave of MAGA fury to jail.
I feel Jan. 6 revisionism is an extremely silly hill for Republicans to die on. I don’t think that most Americans can be deluded into thinking that the day was actually less violent than it appeared.
But all of this shows just how difficult this effort will be — tactically, not just rhetorically — for Republicans. They need the web to spread their Jan. 6 conspiracy theories. But that’s also where there’s an army of internet sleuths — who are well-versed on the topic, ready and willing to beat back absurd claims at every turn.
