“On This Day In History in 2021, thousands of peaceful grandmothers gathered in Washington, D.C., to take a self-guided, albeit unauthorized, tour of the U.S. Capitol building.” — U.S. Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga)
“Watching the TV footage of those who entered the Capitol. … If you didn’t know the TV footage was from Jan. 6, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.” — U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.)
By Jack Bernard, contributing colummist
PEACHTREE CITY, Ga. | Objectively, any person should be able to understand that the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection was an assault on democracy rather than “peaceful grandmothers” on a tour, per Rep. Mike Collins. It is a fact that over 140 police officers were injured by violent rioters attempting to overturn a free and fair Presidential election.
They were not “patriots,” as President Trump termed them. Nor were they “hostages,” although that is how Trump described them when he pardoned them, an act which “erased what little justice there was,” per former Capitol Police Officer Winston Pingeon.
Rep. Andrew Clyde was especially hypocritical. On that day, he barricaded the door to prevent violent rioters, “gentle grannies on a normal tourist visit,” from entering the House Chambers. And these two aren’t the only MAGA folks spouting such non-sense, repeatedly constantly on the right-wing propaganda networks.
I feel compelled to view a variety of television national news sources. I find that all of them have clear biases, except the PBS News Hour. However, the level of bias on Fox, Newsmax and OAN has been steadily increasing as can be seen from their reaction to the recent murders in Minneapolis.
These networks have only been showing certain parts of the videos of the shooting. What they generally are not showing is that Good herself was simply attempting to peacefully drive off from the scene when she was shot in the head by the ICE agent. All of which was recorded for the world to see, as it was with Pretti, the innocent nurse shot in the back by two Border patrol agents.
Instead of news objectively reported, we are getting a politically skewed inaccurate version of the event on Fox, OAN and Newsmax. These networks are pushing the mistruths that are being promulgated by members of the administration which summarily declared that “Democrats constantly rush to take the side of criminals over law enforcement officers.”
MAGA minions in our government made outrageous statements regarding Good, an American citizen, who was simply driving away from the masked ICE officers, avoiding hitting any of them. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem defended the murder of Good by incorrectly claiming her driving away was “an act of domestic terrorism.” She and Miller did the same with the unjustifiable Alex Pretti shooting.
And then we have Rep. Wesley Hunt of Texas who stated, without any proof at all, that Good “tried to use her vehicle as a weapon, mow over an ICE agent.” Plus, he stated that the murder was “avoidable if she would have simply followed the commands of the ICE agents,” thus blaming the non-violent victim rather than the ICE agent who shot her without probable cause. Similarly, Pretti is being blamed for simply having a holstered handgun, although he never attempted to use it.
Whether you are a conservative or a liberal, we are all Americans. And Americans of any political persuasion cannot support the murder of an unarmed mother of three being shot to death by an ICE agent. Or the murder of a caring ICU nurse who simply tried to shield a woman from assault.
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