Most Republicans No Longer View January 6th As A ‘Riot’ Or ‘Insurrection’

While the rest of the country is hoping for prosecutions and accountability for the January 6th Capitol Riots, most Republicans in the country have actually changed their minds about how bad it was. New polling data shows that most Republicans now view the events of that day as a "legitimate protest", even after the hearings from the January 6th Committee became public. This is a very big problem for the country, as Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

So here's a disturbing little factoid for your day. A majority of Republicans in the United States no longer view the events of January 6th as either an insurrection or a riot. In fact, most of Republicans now view January 6th as a legitimate protest. And those numbers have flipped because a year ago, this same poll was taken. Same group, same poll, June of 2021. Let me just read you, let me just read it. While 33% of Republicans said in June, 2021, the January 6th was an insurrection that number's now just 13%. So in one year it's dropped 20 points. While 62% of Republicans called it a riot in June, 2021, that's down to 45% while 47% said it was a legitimate protest. That's now up to 61%.

So even with everything we have learned from the January 6th committee, even with the, the prosecutions that we have had of these capital rioters and the information that has come out of that, the new videos that have been exposed by the January 6th committee, Republicans are looking at this and more of them today than a year ago. When this information wasn't available are saying, no, this is totally legitimate, right? There's nothing wrong with that. I got no problem with what happened here year. And I think probably one of the big reasons for that is because Republicans, uh, it seems to be by nature are contrarians. They're looking at the rest of the population that is appalled by what we're seeing coming out of the January 6th commission. You know, people are shocked. I mean, even Fox news hosts are shocked with what we've seen with the video footage, with the testimony, with all of it.

But these Republicans have to go against the grain and they see that more and more people are calling it an insurrection. So they wanna say, no, it's not. And of course it's their people too. And they wanna protect their people. And most importantly, Republicans are not in large numbers tuning into these televised hearings of the January 6th committee. They would rather bury their heads in the sand than have to acknowledge the reality that what happened that day in the Capitol, not only was it an insurrection, but those are their people. That is what your party has become. This is who you are. And they understand that that this is who they are. They understand the public views that as all of them, which is why they want to downplay it, which is why they want to change the terms. It's not a riot, it's a legitimate protest. I mean, sure, because in legitimate protests, you break into a government building,

Basically stall a, an official government proceeding. You steal stuff, you break stuff, right? I mean, y'all were calling for all kinds of Democrats to be arrested. Progressives activists, everybody, for, as you say, burning down cities, which again, didn't happen, but you see videos of looters and you're like, put 'em all in jail, really because you had looters literally in the capital of the United States. And now you're trying to call that a legitimate protest. And the only reason you're doing that again is because all of you are lumped in with those people. So of course you wanna make it seem as innocuous as.