Stephan: It is hard to believe that anyone in the United States thinks of the 6 January event at the Capitol as anything but an insurrection. But as recently as this last weekend Trump publicly called the whole thing a hoax, and was applauded for saying this. I am publishing this report not because it has any new news about 6 January, but because it illustrates so strongly that to be a Trumper one has to live in a sick fantasy world disconnected from reality and millions do this with enthusiasm.
I think you have to see this as a form of mental illness, and I believe it is important to recognize that about a third of American adults, a cohort overwhelmingly White, are mentally ill. There were reports coming out of the NRA convention, where such people congregated, in which Trumpers claimed the Uvalde massacre of 19 children and 2 teachers, plus 18 more children who were wounded but have not died, was a staged hoax to make the police and Republicans look bad. If the rest of us do not get out and vote in November this sickness will become the defining consciousness of America.
As the House committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol by extremist supporters of Donald Trump prepares to start public hearings next week, the former president called the insurrection on January 6, 2021, a hoax.
Trump spoke at a rally in Wyoming on Saturday night in support of the Republican primary challenger in the midterm elections to congresswoman Liz Cheney. Cheney sits on the committee and has been vilified by Trump since she voted in favor of his historic second impeachment over the insurrection.
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Addressing the sub-capacity crowd at a rally in Casper for Republican candidate Harriet Hageman, Trump slammed Cheney, saying: “As one of the nation’s leading proponents of the insurrection hoax, Liz Cheney has pushed a grotesquely false, fabricated, hysterical partisan narrative.”
He added: “Look at the so-called word insurrection, January 6 – what a lot of crap.”
Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives a week after […]