The Events of Jan. 6 Will Be Remembered For All The Wrong Reasons

By Rob Smith Last week was really, really bad. There’s no sugarcoating this. There is no pussyfooting around it. There’s no use making excuses for it, and there’s no use blaming Antifa or any other far-left factions for what happened at the US Capitol because it’s not true. What happened at the Capitol was the result of months of grifters, hucksters, and bad actors whipping up social media followers with fantastical tales of election fraud. There was Rudy Giuliani, there was Sidney Powell, there was the Kraken, there were all of these things that just got increasingly nuttier and more deranged. That’s not to say that I don’t believe there was election fraud. Of course there was. There is some level of election fraud in every election, but the fact of the matter is, Powell, Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, and all the other people on the Trump legal team didn’t prove it. The cases kept getting thrown out of court. I still -- and will always -- believe that votes were stolen in the Dem machine cities in swing states. Cities like Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Atlanta. But still, the fact remains that Trump lost a healthy amount of the white vote -- particularly in the suburbs -- that his increase in the minority vote just wasn’t enough to even out. So, in the absence of figuring out why he lost this amount of the suburbs; in the absence of hyper-targeting the focus on the machine cities in the swing states; in the absence of all of this stuff, he decides to start leading his followers on wild goose chases. And Trump wasn’t alone. He was aided by the kind of grifters and hucksters whose entire social media personas depend on him. The kind of people who were making Tweet threads about how Mike Pence could overturn the election for him. The kind of people who retweeted and shared every single election conspiracy theory, every doctored video, everything they possibly could to keep the myth of Trump possibly overturning the election alive. And this as we found out was ultimately detrimental to the American people, greatly damaging his legacy. All of the people who spent the last four years pearl-clutching about tweets and off-the-cuff words were always overreacting, and history was never really going to remember any of that stuff. History wasn’t going to remember a few off-color tweets, or a few arguments with nobody journalists that were elevated by going toe-to-toe with the leader of the free world. But what history will remember is those images on the Capitol. History will remember people scaling the capitol, breaking in, in some cases beating police officers with the flag, stealing podiums, taking photos on desks. History will remember that Ashli Babbitt -- a staunch supporter of the President -- was killed in the melee. President Trump, by the way, has yet to say her name. History will remember the people that descended on the Capitol not as revolutionaries, by the way, but as angry, bitter people misled by those they trusted. Misled by social media personalities. Misled by politicians. Because, there was never any real opportunity to overturn the election results. Jan. 6 was supposed to be about talking about the very real election fraud that took place during the 2020 Presidential Election. To expose it. To talk about election reform. To review our systems so that this kind of distrust in our electoral process never happens again. Instead, it became a sad referendum on just how easily people are influenced and misled. And, by the way, this isn’t me “turning” on President Trump. I’ve sacrificed a great deal in my life when I came out in support of President Trump. I lost friends I’d known for years. I lost career opportunities. There are people that will never speak to me again because I followed my gut and my integrity and stood up and said that President Trump was doing the right things for America. Because he was. President Trump passed the most comprehensive criminal justice reform in a generation. President Trump guided the economy to -- at one point -- the best economy in the history of the world. President Trump cut bureaucratic red tape so that we could have a vaccine for the coronavirus that has devastated the American economy and cost us so many lives. It is not “betraying” him or anything he stood for to stand up and say that what happened at the Capitol was as wrong as any of the BLM riots that happened last summer. Because wrong is wrong. Period. And there is nobody on this earth that will ever stop me from saying what is right and what is wrong. What he ultimately couldn’t survive is the lure of social media, with it’s comforting echo chambers which allow you to completely cut yourself off from reality. It’s these social media echo chambers that allowed some grifters online to start different organizations that asked their followers to raise money to fight to stop all this corruption from happening. There were rallies, and there were speeches, and there were bus tours, but ultimately the movement failed. Joe Biden will be president. And those people? The ones who egged people on to fight, fight, fight, and those who spun fantastical tales and Twitter threads about Dominion voting machines being controlled by Venezuela and Pence overturning the election? They’ll cash their checks and move on to the next grift. And Trump? His Presidency is ending on a low note. That is the truth. Will there be another act for Trump? Of course there will. What everyone loves in politics is a comeback. But a word to the wise about why the conservative movement is now in the position it’s in -- having lost the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. If we are to survive this next moment, it is not by keeping a singular focus on President Trump. It’s not by making the same mistakes we’ve made -- chief of which is distilling all of the hopes, dreams, and aspirations of the Make America Great Again movement onto a single person. Instead, it is by looking deeply into ourselves, finding out what attracted us to the movement in the first place, being able to clearly define and articulate it, and to share that message with the world. If we cannot do this; if we cannot learn this tough lesson; if we cannot break out of our echo chambers and have the tough conversations we need to have to get through this moment, it may last much longer than the next few elections. Newt will host a virtual live event at 11 a.m. ET on Jan. 26. We'll continue the conversation on issues concerning you with the start of new administration. JOIN TODAY to be a part of this special event and receive a BONUS GIFT. Click Here to Sign Up. More by Rob Smith: Rob's Latest Podcasts: On Sale Now:

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