Donald Trump has finally got it right about the January 6th insurrectionists

Here is a thought experiment. Try to put politics and the presidential race out of your mind and give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt about the attack on the Capitol on January 6th 2021. Accept that he believed the election was stolen and that he meant it when he told the crowd that day to march from the White House to Capitol Hill “peacefully and patriotically”. Accept that he believed none of his supporters was carrying weapons or intended violence of any sort. Accept that he has since come to conclude, as he has claimed, that Nancy Pelosi, then the speaker of the House, somehow “caused” the violence, that the police “ushered in” the crowd, that they were “a loving crowd”, indeed, “patriots” who have since become not just “victims” but even “hostages” of a weaponised system of justice.

Then ask yourself this: after embracing all of those assumptions and assertions, why would you celebrate the rioters as “warriors”, as Mr Trump did during a rally earlier this month?

To call them warriors is not simply to insist their cause was just and that they were somehow tricked into entering the Capitol with the guns, bats, knives and other weapons that Mr Trump once maintained they did not have; it is not just to ignore or minimise the violence that day, which resulted in five deaths; it is not even to shift the blame for that violence to others, whether police officers (some 140 of whom were assaulted), or Ms Pelosi (whom the rioters were hunting, and who can be seen on video from that day urging Mr Trump’s acting secretary of defence to dispatch troops to the Capitol). It is instead to praise the people who attacked the Capitol precisely—definitionally—for their capacity to wage war. That is to move the understanding of what happened on January 6th, at least for Mr Trump’s supporters, onto new and even darker ground.

There was a moment, back in the mists of 2021, when just about everyone in the mainstream of American politics recoiled in shock from the mayhem of January 6th. They agreed that attacking the Capitol was wrong, and that Mr Trump, to some degree, was responsible. Even Mr Trump said so, the leader of the House Republicans, Kevin McCarthy, told colleagues at the time, according to the exacting report delivered in 2022 by the House select committee that investigated the attack. That was briefly Mr McCarthy’s view, too, as it was that of Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, who called Mr Trump “practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day”. During her campaign for the Republican presidential nomination this spring, Nikki Haley called January 6th a “terrible day” and said Mr Trump “will have to answer for it”.

But the times when Republican leaders would say they wanted Mr Trump held accountable for the riot appear to be over. A few days after Mr Trump praised the “J6 warriors”, Mr McConnell joined other Republican legislators in welcoming the former president back on Capitol Hill for the first time since the attack, for a meeting Mr McConnell called “entirely positive”. And yet even as they absolve Mr Trump of responsibility, other Republican politicians at least still seem to see attacking the Capitol as a bad thing to do. “No real Republican with any credibility in the party is still blaming him” for January 6th, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio told reporters. That construction implies the conduct of the crowd was blameworthy. By contrast, Mr Trump is valorising it.

Mr Trump faces federal charges over his efforts to overturn the last election, but that case is on hold. Meanwhile, the exhaustive work of the January 6th committee somehow already smells of mothballs and reads like the relic of a different era, back before polarisation had done its work of rallying Republicans to Mr Trump. Based on sworn testimony from witnesses who were almost all Republicans, the committee showed that Mr Trump ignored repeated assurances from top aides that he had lost legitimately and instead trumpeted lies about electoral fraud; ignored warnings that the crowd he summoned to Washington was primed for violence; used that word “peacefully” just once, as scripted by his speechwriters, but ad-libbed the word “fight” 18 times; and then sat on his hands for more than three hours as staff and family members implored him to call a halt to the riot.

Thousands of the protesters who assembled to hear Mr Trump’s speech on January 6th refused to pass through the magnetometers, or left their packs outside them, the committee found. From those who did pass through the Secret Service collected 269 blades or knives, 18 brass knuckles, 18 tasers and 30 batons or blunt instruments. In other words, Mr Trump has landed on the correct description of many of those who answered his call that day: they were warriors.

And yet some of them came to lament taking part. About 820 people have pleaded guilty to various federal charges so far, and at least another 162 have been convicted in contested trials. “I guess I was like a traitor, somebody against my own government,” one told prosecutors. Another noted that every male member of his family had served in the armed forces, and he had cast “a shadow” over the family name.

This is what seems strange about Mr Trump’s celebration of “those J6 warriors”: He does not need to go that far. In fact, doing so may limit his appeal to the independent-minded voters who seem critical to victory this year, and Mr Trump’s loyalists would surely have accepted his assurances that he wanted to see only peaceful, patriotic protest. Maybe it is simply Mr Trump’s philosophy to insist that every seeming weakness is a strength, that any wrong he may be associated with is actually a right. Or maybe he is getting ready for next time round. ■