COLUMBIA, Md. — There’s a reason U.S. Sen. Todd Young has been fanning out across Indiana, meeting with police officers and sheriff deputies in recent weeks. He’s up for reelection next year, but he will likely be confronted with some controversies over the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
According to multiple media reports, about 140 U.S. Capitol and Washington Metropolitan PD officers were injured by the mob inspired by President Trump. They suffered injuries ranging from a lost eye, cracked ribs, severed fingers, smashed spinal disks, heart attacks after being repeatedly tased by their own weapons, to dozens of concussions. Some 38 Capitol Police employees have tested positive for COVID-19 since the attack, almost all of them had responded to the riot.
“I have officers who were not issued helmets prior to the attack who have sustained head injuries,” said the Capitol Police officer’s union chairman, Gus Papathanasiou to the Police1 website. “One officer has two cracked ribs and two smashed spinal discs and another was stabbed with a metal fence stake, to name some of the injuries. The officers are angry, and I don’t blame them. The entire executive team failed us, and they must be held accountable.”
Capitol PD officer Michael Fanone told CNN that he suffered a heart attack and a concussion during the insurrection and is now dealing with a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.
“I experienced the most brutal, savage hand-to-hand combat of my entire life, let alone my policing career,” Fanone said this past week.
In the days and weeks that followed, here’s what House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said, urging a congressional censure of Trump:
“The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters. He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding. Some say the riots were caused by antifa. There is absolutely no evidence of that. And conservatives should be the first to say so.”
Here’s what Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor following Donald Trump’s impeachment trial acquittal on Feb. 13: “January 6th was a disgrace. American citizens attacked their own government. They used terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of democratic business they did not like. Fellow Americans beat and bloodied our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They tried to hunt down the Speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chanted about murdering the vice president.”
McConnell continued: “There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day. The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president.”
Trump unleashed the MAGA mob in an attempt to stop Vice President Mike Pence and members of Congress from counting 50 sets of state-certified Electoral College votes that would confirm the election of Democrat Joe Biden as president.
Fast-forward to this week when House Democrats and Republicans reached a deal for a congressional commission to investigate the first attack in the U.S. Capitol since Puerto Rican terrorists breached security and shot up the House chambers in 1954, and the first invasion since the War of 1812. The problem was that these two “minority leaders” have gotten cold feet.
A back bench Republican, U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde, said of the mob: “If you didn’t know the TV footage was a video from January the 6th, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.” Subsequent tweeted photos show a terrified Clyde barricading the House doors.
On Tuesday, Trump put out this statement: “Republicans in the House and Senate should not approve the Democrat trap of the January 6 Commission. Hopefully, Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy are listening!”
And they were!
“After careful consideration. I’ve made the decision to oppose the House Democrats slanted and unbalanced proposal for another commission to study the events of January the 6th,” McConnell said Wednesday on the Senate floor of the proposed bipartisan commission would have an equal number of Republicans and Democrats, five on each side. A final report would be produced by Dec. 31.
The day before, McCarthy pulled his support. “Given the political misdirections that have marred this process, given the now duplicative and potentially counterproductive nature of this effort, and given the Speaker’s shortsighted scope that does not examine interrelated forms of political violence in America, I cannot support this legislation,” McCarthy said.
U.S. Reps. Jim Banks and Jackie Walorski, who originally sponsored the commission legislation, both reversed course and voted nay. The only Hoosier Republican to back it was Rep. Trey Hollingsworth.
This has everything to do with politics, as Indiana’s other senator, Mike Braun, acknowledged on Wednesday. “I was here that day,” he said. “Most of us understand exactly what happened.”
McConnell and McCarthy dream of become majority leader and speaker after the 2022 elections. A bipartisan Jan. 6 commission report that mirrors their initial reaction of the mob-induced savagery has the potential of spilling into the mid-term elections, unnerving the suburban voters they need to complete their quest.
Here’s what many of us don’t understand, senator, which is when our kids in school go to see the U.S. Capitol, of rite of passage many of us experienced and cherished, they now find it barricaded and wrapped in razor wire.
The columnist is publisher of Howey Politics Indiana at www.howeypolitics.com. Find Howey on Facebook and Twitter @hwypol.
