CNN’s Anderson Cooper Pounds Trump Over Jan. 6 Site With Relentless Barrage of Receipts

CNN host Anderson Cooper torpedoed President Donald Trump’s new January 6 propaganda website with a relentless fact-check that included a barrage of receipts demonstrating the falsehood of the revisionist site.

The Trump administration chose Tuesday  — the 5th anniversary of the January 6 attack on the Capitol — to unveil the site. It sparked immediate and widespread outrage over the stunning falsehoods, omissions, and concoctions. Those included the claim that “it was the Democrats who staged the real insurrection” and that police escalated the violence.

On Tuesday night’s edition of CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, Cooper called out the falsehoods in a “Keeping Them Honest” segment that included Republicans denouncing the riot at the time:

COOPER: A mob of Trump supporters lied to by the President and his allies stormed the Capitol building in an attempt to stop the lawful certification of Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 Presidential election. Instead of the solemn remembrance of a day that should live in infamy for all Americans today, the President continued to dodge responsibility and peddle falsehoods.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Nancy Pelosi was offered 10,000 soldiers, National Guard soldiers, whatever you want. No, I don’t want them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Blaming Nancy Pelosi for January 6th is nothing new for the President. What is new is an entire page launched today on the official White House government website. That is a one-stop shop of disproven conspiracy theories and frankly, lies about January 6th, including the one about then House Speaker Pelosi.

Now keeping them honest, there’s no evidence she ever turned down an offer of 10,000 National Guard troops by President Trump. In fact, it’s the President, not the Speaker, who is in charge of the D.C. National Guard. There’s also no evidence the President called in the National Guard, either, despite desperate pleas by his own allies to do so, including some who were under attack inside the Capitol.

There’s documentation, however, President Trump, watching the violence erupt on television, “Fanning the Flames”.

In the felony indictment against him for January 6th, one section reads, “When advisers urge the defendant to issue a calming message aimed at the rioters, the defendant refused, instead repeatedly remarking that the people of the Capitol were angry because the election had been stolen,” went on to say, “… after advisers had left the defendant alone in his dining room, the defendant issued a tweet intended to further delay and obstruct the certification”.

That tweet read in part, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and the Constitution.” That’s Mike Pence right there, being hustled out of the building, down to a garage. The indictment notes that Pence was evacuated to that secure location one minute after that tweet.

The new White House website also claims that Capitol Police were responsible for escalating tensions with the mob, not the rioters themselves, who were at fault. Approximately 140 officers were injured that day, five died in connection to defending the Capitol, defending our democracy.

The violence also led directly or indirectly, to the deaths of four Trump supporters. Now, the time there was outrage from all corners of the political spectrum about what happened, here’s how some in the President’s party reacted on January 6th or in the days afterward, beginning with Senator Lindsey Graham, who in this moment tried but soon just couldn’t quit DJT.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (D-SC): Trump and I, we’ve had a hell of a journey. I hate it to end this way. Oh my God, I hate it.

SEN. JAMES LANKFORD (R-OK): We do not encourage what happened today.

SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): Chaos, anarchy. The violence today was wrong and un-American.

REP. CHIP ROY (R-TX): There is no excuse for it. A woman died and people need to go to jail. And the President should never have spun up certain Americans to believe something that simply cannot be.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the President and other powerful people.

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): The President bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress. He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Five years later, the new White House webpage celebrates that mob and takes a victory lap for releasing all those convicted back onto the streets, writing, and I quote, “On his first day back in office, January 20, 2025, President Trump issued sweeping blanket pardons and commutations for nearly 1,600” what they call “patriotic Americans prosecuted for their presence at the Capitol.”

Now, a number of those pardoned by the president, those “patriotic Americans,” quote unquote, have not gone on to see the error of their ways. Like this man circled in the video. His name is Christopher Moynihan, and he was convicted of breaking into the Capitol. He eventually made it onto the floor of the U.S. Senate.

And I want to play a part of what a reporter captured him saying and doing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There’s got to be something in here we can f*cking use against these scumbags.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Well, Moynihan, who you see there standing next to the so- called QAnon Shaman, was eventually sentenced to nearly two years. Back in October, he was arrested for threatening to kill House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

And highlighted in this video is Edward Kelley, one of the first insurrectionists to actually breach the Capitol. He was found guilty of assaulting a police officer. He was pardoned by President Trump before he could be sentenced. He then went on to conspire to kill the FBI agents who’d investigated his case.

According to an affidavit, Kelley had a list of 37 law enforcement members he wanted to assassinate and spoke of attacking an FBI office with drones and car bombs. He’s now serving a life sentence for that crime and so far has not been pardoned.

Watch above via Anderson Cooper 360.

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