October 25, 2022

Let's compare the 2020 protests to the Jan. 6 insurrection, shall we? Only because Republicans seem to be suffering from memory loss. People such as Fox News's Brian Kilmeade and Tucker Carlson, for example, try to compare the protests to the violent riot at the Capitol that shocked the world.

In the summer of 2020, while Americans were sheltered at home due to the pandemic, we witnessed the murder of an unarmed Black man (again) named George Floyd by Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis Police Department officer, who knelt on Floyd's neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds as he called out for his deceased mother.

We were going through enough, so that one man's murder after so many before him sparked a worldwide backlash. Americans had had it. Some of the protests that ensued were infiltrated by bad actors, such as the Proud Boys, to create havoc and further unrest and make the protesters appear violent.

Jan. 6.

The Jan. riot started after Donald Trump tried to stop the peaceful transition of power, so he sent his mob of supporters to the Capitol, where they sought blood. Trump supporters wanted to hang Mike Pence, and they were hunting down Democrats, too.

"Mike Pence, I hope you're going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country," Trump told the crowd on Jan. 6. "And if you're not, I'm going to be very disappointed in you."

Pence did his job and refused to be a part of the coup. That's not to be applauded. Here, we don't clap our hands after each person does their job.

So, Trump told them to march to the Capitol with him. The former president, of course, did not march with his people.

Kilmeade and Carlson are just gaslighting us. We remember what happened. They do, too. And the Jan. 6 attack on our country was directed by the President of the United States. The attack happened in response to the injury to one man's ego because he was defeated at the polls. You can't compare the two. You can't overturn an election because your feels are hurt.

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