Here Are the Republicans Willing to Say Anything to Please Trump’s Base
The GOP continues to mimic the former president’s racist rhetoric
Even now, three months after Donald Trump’s White House exit, the former president’s presence continues to loom over the GOP. In a radio appearance with right-wing radio host Joe Pags last week, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson claimed he didn’t feel threatened by the pro-Trump rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol to challenge the presidential election results, but he might have if the mob had been Black Lives Matters or Antifa protesters. Johnson compared BLM to Antifa, basically saying there’s nothing scarier than a bunch of angry Black people (and the white people who support them).
Despite some understandable blowback, Johnson doubled down on his claim in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, where he minimized the trauma caused by events in Washington, D.C., on January 6 and instead focused on the left’s supposedly hypocritical infatuation with the Capitol siege. “570 protests became riots last year,” he wrote. “The vast majority of these protests were organized and attended by leftists. Twenty-five people lost their lives and 700 law enforcement officers were injured.” (For reference, five people died during the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.)
