I've Lost My Ability To Be Fascinated By Stupidity, Incompetence, and Corruption

Fascinating watching these people cycle from blaming first Antifa, then the FBI for the insurrection they planned. https://t.co/BrFWK4Waes via @TPM

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) December 14, 2022

And most especially by the refusal to take responsibility for your words and deeds.

Mark we don’t think these attackers are our people. We think they are Antifa. Dressed like Trump supporters.

A text message from MTG.

Tell me again, what is the "Trump supporters" dress code?  Is there a uniform involved, and if so, who decides what it is?

Greene continued to point toward “antifa” in a message sent the day after the attack. 

“Yesterday was a terrible day. We tried everything we could in our objection to the 6 states. I’m sorry nothing worked,” Greene wrote. “I don’t think that President Trump caused the attack on the Capitol. It’s not his fault. Antifa was mixed in the crowed and instigated it, and sadly people followed.”

"Outside agitators!"*  There is, indeed, nothing new under the sun. 

But it raises a question:  if antifa was responsible for the violence, how do we know antifa dressed in Trump supporter clothing wasn't arrested among all those prisoners MTG was so worried about?  Did they put on black masks (revealing themselves as "antifa"!) and slip away like Ninjas?

Constitutional loyal DOJ personnel have 11 days to prove the truth: Antifa led the breach of the Capitol. If the evidence is not shown to the public in 11 days, then it will be subverted & the false narrative will likely be the Trump legacy that DT & his loyal supporters under his urging attacked the Capitol. It was a brilliant leftist op, but its got to be exposed by DOJ quick.

Text message by Louie Gohmert (who, thank the lords and the low creatures, will not be in the House in 2023.  He didn't run in the GOP primary for that office so he could run to be Texas AG. Turns out his appeal in Texas was not statewide.)

These are all variants on the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, coupled with a damned convenient conspiracy theory that someone is creating a "false narrative" which will undermine....well, the Constitution, somehow.

And watch how this game of telephone works, when the people on the "phone" are the Three Stooges:

Louie Gohmert clip on TV. Gist: LG on TUESDAY was warned by Capitol Police that ANTIFI was planning on posing as Trump supporters and using the Trump rally for some nefarious (my word, but LG descriptive word was similar, I just don’t remember it) purpose. In effect, Capitol Police gave LG the same warning about ANTIFA on TUESDAY that they gave to Rick Allen (who shared the Capitol Police warning with me).

Text message from Mo Brooks.  Yeah, that "Rick Allen." The guy who thought he was the star of an espionage thriller because he found a Romanian video on YouTube.  BTW, Brooks now believes it wasn't antifa that got violent, but "right-wing militant groups."

In a Monday phone interview with TPM, Brooks said that he now believed that “right-wing militia groups hijacked what was otherwise going to be a lawful assertion of First Amendment rights.”

“Yes, antifa played a role, but it was very minor,” Brooks told TPM, before complaining that the right-wing militias “were dramatically counterproductive and they dramatically hurt our cause for election integrity by hijacking our ability to communicate to the American people about the fraud.”

60 court cases couldn't do it, either, but Brooks remains resolute in his paranoia and ignorance. 

Denver Riggleman gets the last word:

In a conversation with TPM, Denver Riggleman, a former Republican congressman and Air Force intelligence officer who helped lead the team of investigators for the House select committee that obtained and parsed Meadows’ text messages, suggested some Trump allies were exploiting the “true believers” by feeding them a “false flag” antifa conspiracy theory.  

“First of all, you had a combination of savvy communicators like Jason Miller who saw the antifa false flag as an opportunity, and he knows that Louie Gohmert and Marjorie Taylor Greene are dumb as a bag of rocks,” Riggleman said. 

Riggleman, who wrote “The Breach: The Untold Story of the Investigation into January 6th,” also noted that, in the weeks and months after the attack, elements of the far right — including those in Congress — cycled through various conspiracy theories including trying to pin the attack on the FBI or nefarious government agents. (Full disclosure: TPM’s Hunter Walker co-authored “The Breach” with Riggleman.)

“But you also see that they started to morph away from that conspiracy theory when it wasn’t working,” Riggleman said of the “antifa” narrative. “With conspiracy theories, inconsistency is a feature, not a bug. They want to hit people in the amygdala; all this is a quick fix to hit the emotional note that you need for people to react to.”

So not so much "fascinating" as "Typical."  The Usual Gang of Idiots tried to hold a fire drill and insurrection, and they couldn't organize either, or get out of the way of responsibility for their failure fast enough.

Same song, second verse.  I'm still trying to figure out whether or not we really got close to anything terrible, because the people in charge were all so bloody stupid.  It's like contemplating the incoming House majority, who seems to think they are now monarchs with unlimited power.  If just 5 Republicans decide they've had enough and begin to work (not caucus, just try to get things done) with the Democrats, the remaining 213 GOP members will just have to pound sand.

Idiots.