House Speaker Kevin McCarthy broke from the MAGA wing of the Republican Party and its most popular voices Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene by declaring that Jan. 6 rioter Ashli Babbitt was not killed by a police officer.
The comments illustrate the growing division between those in the Republican Party who saw the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol as a stain on the country and former President Trump, and those who have sought to rewrite the attack as a minor disturbance in which those who violently beat the police and ransacked the Capitol Building have been unfairly persecuted.
Greene, the Georgia Republican who was elected to Congress despite her belief in the deranged QAnon conspiracy theory, fell firmly in the latter camp.
At her first Oversight Committee hearing on Wednesday, Greene claimed Babbitt was “murdered” and compared her killing to the fatal beating of Tire Nichols.
That comparison can be traced back to Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who oddly argued last week after watching a graphic video of the Nichols beating that Babbitt was “murdered… far more clearly” than he was.
Babbitt was fired during the Jan. 6 attacks while trying to leap through a window-paneled door that the rioters had bashed through. Per the Washington Post:
Just before she was shot, Babbitt was among a group of rioters bashing in the glass-paneled doors that led to the Speaker's Lobby, down the hall from the House chamber, where the lawmakers were being evacuated.
“There's a gun! There's a gun!” someone yelled when an officer, on the other side of the door, aimed his weapon in the direction of the mob.
Despite the warning, someone appeared to hoist Babbitt up so she could step through an opening in the door created after its glass panels were smashed. A bullet hit him and he fell back on the floor.
The prosecutors determined it was reasonable for the officer to believe he was firing in self-defense or to protect members evacuating the House chamber.
The claim that Babbitt was murdered is difficult to reconcile with the video of the shooting (and a basic grasp of reality). Despite the facts of the case, Trump and his boosters, including Carlson, have hunted to cast her as a martyr.
The Babbitt case is one piece of a broader attempt to rewrite the Jan. 6. While Republicans initially expressed horror at the hours-long attack, in which Trump supporters were hunted with the intent to Lynch Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, within a few weeks a campaign began to downplay the events of that day.
Carlson has described the attack, in which a mob armed with guns, pipes and other weapons beat the police, wounding 150 officers and resulting in the suicide of four cops, as a “nonviolent election protest.”
His absurdist characterizations conflict with the countless hours of video of the attack as well as reporting from his own colleagues who witnessed it first hand.
McCarthy, who was condemned for the attack but eventually gave Trump up for inspiring it, told reporters on Thursday that he did not believe Babbitt was "murdered."
After bringing up Greene's comments this week, a reporter asked McCarthy: "Do you think Ashli Babbitt was murdered, or do you think the police officer who shot her was doing his job?"
“I think the police officer did his job,” McCarthy said.
Watch above, through C-SPAN.
Source : MSN
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