Elise Stefanik Knows Who Attacked The Capitol On January 6, And It Is ... Nancy Pelosi???
If cravenness were an Olympic sport, Rep. Elise Stefanik would take home the gold. Sorry Jim Jordan, you had a good run, but you'll have to content yourself with the silver this year.
by Liz Dye
Here's the upstate New York representative just moments before Capitol police officers testified about being beaten, tased, and called the N-word, blaming Nancy Pelosi for the violent chaos on January 6.
"There is a reason that Nancy Pelosi is the most disliked elected official in America," Stefanik began, accusing the House speaker of prioritizing "her own partisan politics over what's best for the American people." Which is pretty fucking rich coming from a member of the party that consistently receives fewer votes than Democrats and is moving heaven and earth to make sure that the American people will not be able to vote in the November 2022 popularity contest."
"She's an authoritarian, who has broken the people's house. She is a lameduck speaker, and everyone knows it," Stefanik continued in her best mean girl voice, adding later that "she doesn't want a fair or bipartisan investigation."
And lo, lightning failed to strike her on the spot. Was it Nancy Pelosi who dispatched a mob of crazed lunatics to attack "the people's house," screaming to murder Nancy Pelosi? Not to mention that, with two Republicans on the committee, the investigation is, by definition, bipartisan.
The congresswoman did not explain how using the Speaker's prerogative under House rules to bar "respected" bomb throwers like Jim Jordan and Jim Banks from the January 6 Committee makes her literally Pol Pot. But Stefanik was very clear that Nancy Pelosi was to blame for all those freaks breaking into Congress after Trump invited them to DC, riled them up, and told them to march down to the Capitol and stop the election certification.
"It is a fact that in December of 2020, Nancy Pelosi was made aware of potential security threats to the Capitol, and she failed to act." Leave aside for the moment that this version of events would equally indict then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who controlled the upper chamber. Because this version of events has precious little to do with reality, despite Stefanik's insistence that "It is a fact that the US Capitol Police raised concerns, and rather than providing them with the support and resources they needed and they deserved, she prioritized her partisan political optics over their safety."
Because Elise Stefanik is a lying cow.
Let's be really fucking clear here, since this line of BS is starting to take hold on the Right: Nancy Pelosi does not now and did not then control the US Capitol Police. The commanders of the Capitol Police themselves gave the order not to engage with the rioters and barred their officers from using aggressive means of crowd control like stun grenades, which is why all those commanders have now resigned.
Stefanik leaves it to the listener's imagination to work out how Nancy Pelosi would have lost political capital by bolstering security for the Capitol Police. But here on Planet Earth, the Speaker did not "prioritize her partisan political optics over their safety" for the simple reason that she had no control over their safety. But even if she had, the responsibility for this heinous attack would fall squarely on the attackers themselves and the wicked liars who sent them there, not the target of the attacks.
And lest we forget, Mitch McConnell, Mike Pence, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and Kevin McCarthy were all begging the White House to send in the National Guard during the riot, and the White House did fuck all for three hours. So, if Elise Stefanik wants to talk about endangering the Capitol cops for partisan political ends, by all means let's have that discussion.
"Nancy Pelosi bears responsibility as speaker of the House for the tragedy that occurred on January 6th, and it was only after Republicans started asking these important questions that she refused to seat them," Stefanik went on, because once you've started lying, why stop, right?
Fact Check: Republicans negotiated a resolution authorizing a bipartisan commission to investigate the events of January 6. After the GOP got almost everything it wanted, Trump made them blow up the whole deal and it fell to Mitch McConnell's filibuster. And, not to bring linear time into this, but there was no extended period after Jordan and Banks were named to the committee during which they "started asking those important questions" that supposedly freaked Pelosi out — McCarthy named his proposed committee members on the evening of July 19, and Pelosi said no the fuck thank you to the two men promising to sabotage the committee by lunchtime on July 21.
"House Republicans will continue to follow the truth and the facts and continue to support our law enforcement officers," Stefanik concluded, before handing the microphone over to Jim Jordan, known devotee of truth and facts, to explain why it's evil and partisan to hold hearings with law enforcement officers to discover what happened on January 6.
And, okay, it's not news that Republicans are appalling bloody liars. But today of all days, after watching what we all watched, it's particularly egregious. And these lies should follow Elise Stefanik around for the rest of her miserable life.