Arrest of armed Jan. 6 rioter does new harm to GOP talking points – By Steve Benen (MSNBC) / March 11, 2024
For years, Republicans have tried to argue that Jan. 6 rioters were unarmed during the Capitol attack. The evidence to the contrary is now overwhelming.
About a month after the Jan. 6 attack, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson scoffed at those alarmed by the riot. “This didn’t seem like an armed insurrection to me,” the Wisconsin senator said. “I mean ‘armed,’ when you hear ‘armed,’ don’t you think of firearms?”
In the months and years that followed, GOP lawmakers such as Arizona’s Paul Gosar and Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene also questioned whether the insurrectionists had guns.
As recently as last week, Donald Trump himself used his social media platform to insist, while responding to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, “The so-called ‘Insurrectionists’ that he talks about had no guns. They only had a Rigged Election.”
Such rhetoric has long been foolish, but the GOP voices who’ve questioned whether the rioters were armed looked quite a bit worse late last week. NBC News reported on John Emanuel Banuelos, who allegedly fired two gunshots at the Capitol on Jan. 6, and who was arrested by federal authorities on Friday.
