Get it straight - Jan. 6 rioters good, LA rioters baaad

Hegseth tries to explain why protecting ICE agents in LA is critical but Capitol police - not so much

Intro by Sam Bellamy

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is still feeling rather snowflakish about being yanked from National Guard duty for 2020 election victor Joe Biden’s inauguration. His superiors sent him packing because of concerns that his assorted tattoos, many of them associated with right-wing extremist groups, made him a potential “insider threat.”

Hegseth, who – let’s give credit where credit is due – appeared to be sober at his appearance Wednesday before the Senate Appropriations Committee, complained about the inauguration incident during questioning from Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., about the Trump administration’s double standard in dealing with protesters.

The inauguration, of course, was irrelevant to the Murphy’s point – it happened a full two weeks after Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol, brutally attacked police officers, urinated and defecated on floors inside the Capitol and walked off with souvenirs such as then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s podium.

But Hegseth, clearly ticked off by the line of questioning, felt the need to bring up his banishment. He also dutifully repeated the lie that Trump had requested National Guard troops prior to Jan. 6, the day Biden’s election triumph (a mandate, people were saying) was to be certified inside the Capitol.

Trump claims over and over again that he asked Pelosi to bring in troops in advance to keep the peace that day but that she turned him down.

There are at least three problems with that – (1) Pelosi didn’t have authority to direct the National Guard anywhere, (2) Trump clearly thinks he has that authority as president and doesn’t need anyone’s permission, including a governor’s, and (3) then-Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, a Trump loyalist, has testified that Trump didn’t ask anyone for National Guard troops ahead of Jan. 6.

Sen. Murphy is calm and measured in his questioning – a tactic that should be noted by some of his colleagues, who are prone to mugging for the camera and losing sight the nonpartisan reasons they’re objecting to Trump’s many abuses of power.

Hegseth, in contrast, seems to be trying and failing to restrain himself. He dodges the substance of Murphy’s questions about Jan. 6 and asserts that the president. was completely justified in sending the National Guard and Marines to LA, ostensibly to protect ICE agents from protestors.

But the cops beaten by — to use Trump’s words — MAGA “patriots” on the Jan. 6th “day of love”? Apparently, they brought that on themselves.