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Capitol Insurrection

Gaslighting: Trump Cultist Eric Metaxas Tries To Rewrite Jan. 6

In the immediate aftermath of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 when Trump supporters violently attacked Capitol police and rampaged through the building in an attempt to prevent the certification of Joe Biden's electoral victory, even those on the far-right openly admitted that MAGA activists were responsible. 

But shortly thereafter, the MAGA movement set about attempting to shift the blame onto left-wing activists while painting Trump supporters as heroic figures who were merely trying to protect democracy. 

When President Donald Trump returned to the White House in 2025, one of his first orders of business was to issue "full, complete and unconditional pardons" to nearly everyone convicted of participating in the Jan. 6 insurrection, which included hundreds of people who had been found guilty of violent criminal acts.

Predictably, this has caused Trump supporters to double down on their efforts to rewrite history, with former Rep. Michele Bachmann claiming that Jan. 6 had been "like a prayer meeting" and Christian nationalist Rick Green hailing as heroic a man who had been convicted of, among other things, punching a Capitol police officer while wearing brass knuckles. 

Never one to be outdone, far-right commentator Eric Metaxas delivered a stunningly dishonest and absurdly hypocritical rant on his program last week during which had the gall to claim that the media was lying and "gaslighting" the nation about what really happened on Jan. 6. 

It must be remembered that Metaxas was the emcee of a major “Stop the Steal” protest on the National Mall in December 2020 that was billed as a prayer rally but featured violent and extreme rhetoric, including one speaker, the Oath Keepers’ Stewart Rhodes, who demanded that if Trump did not use his powers as commander in chief to stay in power, right-wing militia groups would have to wage a “much more bloody war.” In 2023, Rhodes was found guilty of seditious conspiracy for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection and sentenced to 18 years in prison, only to have his sentence commuted by Trump upon his return to office.

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"Folks, in case you didn't already know, CNN is despicable," Metaxas said. "The mainstream media must die. We must starve it and die because they lie. They are foul liars, and they have been lying all day yesterday about the J6 stuff, all these violent protesters. These are lies. We know that on this program but most Americans and most people who watch Fox News, they have this muddled view, 'Oh yeah, but there's some violence.' Yeah, you tell me who the violent insurrectionists were. You tell me who the pro-Trump violent people were; I'll be all for them staying in jail. You tell me who they are. They are like FBI plants."

"This narrative is such a wicked lie, and CNN is pushing this filthy lie," Metaxas fumed. "When you see somebody lying brazenly, you think this is disgusting. Like, this is really gross for your soul to be lying brazenly. It's not just presenting a different. This is now brazen lying. But I want to be clear: There are tons of Americans that believe these lies. They believe these lies. And this is the gaslighting of the mainstream media."

"The FBI was very complicit in this," Metaxas continued. "The elites were complicit in this. It doesn't get bigger in terms of scandal. It does not get bigger. Nancy Pelosi and whoever else was in on this, these are despicable, treasonous figures, and they make Benedict Arnold look like a good guy. I'm not even kidding."

"What they have done is so despicable," Metaxas declared.

The FBI, of course, was not responsible for what happened on Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol; that was the work of MAGA activists and Trump supporters and no amount of gaslighting from the likes of Metaxas can hide that fact.

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