Yesterday Ben Shapiro wrote a short Twitter thread on the new January 6th footage that Tucker played on his show Monday night.
Marc Thiessen then accused Ben Shapiro of playing down the Capitol riot just like the media played down the violent BLM riots.
I’ll start with the Shapiro thread since it’s the basis of this Twitter brawl between Thiessen and Shapiro.
First, the footage shows officers walking the so-called QAnon Shaman around the Capitol building. That doesn’t look like a violent insurrectionary on the verge of overthrowing democracy — but that’s how QAnon Shaman’s behavior was originally (and for years!) promoted.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) March 7, 2023
Second, the footage shows Officer Brian Sicknick walking around energetically AFTER the supposed incident in which he was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher. We’ve known for a long time that he died of “natural causes” according to the medical examiner.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) March 7, 2023
But that didn’t stop the narrative that he was a direct casualty of the rioters.
What the footage shows, beyond anything else, is that we were deliberately barred from seeing the full spectrum of footage b/c a simplistically cooked narrative was what we were supposed to be fed.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) March 7, 2023
But that didn’t stop the narrative that he was a direct casualty of the rioters.
What the footage shows, beyond anything else, is that we were deliberately barred from seeing the full spectrum of footage b/c a simplistically cooked narrative was what we were supposed to be fed.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) March 7, 2023
We were supposedly too dumb to hold the simultaneous thoughts that rioters breaking into the Capitol was bad, but many people there weren’t rioters; that it was bad, but it wasn’t a threat to democracy; that it was ugly, but the cops were indeed ushering some people around.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) March 7, 2023
Wonder why conspiracy theories are up? Because the media-Democratic complex keeps cooking the narrative, burying evidentiary landmines it hopes will never be triggered. Then the landmines blow up, and they’re shocked at the explosion.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) March 7, 2023
Thiessen saw this and accused Shapiro of downplaying the Capitol riot on January 6th, suggesting that he was doing the same thing that the media did when they called the BLM riots ‘mostly peaceful protests’. But Shapiro strongly disagrees and defends himself:
C’mon Ben, you’re better than this. When the left pointed to scenes of calm and said BLM riots were “mostly peaceful protests” you correctly said that was ridiculous. You said “O.J. Simpson was mostly peaceful that night.” Now you’re making the same argument as BLM on Jan. 6? https://t.co/HCqLFPNMOy
— Marc Thiessen 🇺🇸❤️🇺🇦 (@marcthiessen) March 8, 2023
In what way, exactly? January 6 was a riot. Many people were violent. They were arrested and sentenced. But it's not newsworthy that the cops were apparently walking around the inside of the Capitol with QAnon Shaman?
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) March 8, 2023
They were outnumbered more than 50-1. Try going into the Senate chamber today to take your seat at the president”s desk and see what the Capitol police do. Again, I have lots of respect for you Ben. But you’re making the BLM argument downplaying riots by showing scenes of calm. https://t.co/4J7O9ftPri
— Marc Thiessen 🇺🇸❤️🇺🇦 (@marcthiessen) March 8, 2023
I have never downplayed the riots. This wasn't a "mostly peaceful protest," and I never said it was. But the footage of cops ushering people around is there. Is the contention that it is utterly irrelevant that it was not revealed to the public?
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) March 8, 2023
When you say “a huge majority of people in the Capitol that day were not rioters” a reasonable person would conclude you’re downplaying the riots just like MSM saying a huge majority of BLM protesters were not rioters downplays the riots. It’s the same “mostly peaceful” fallacy. https://t.co/ZsPNZYlpFa
— Marc Thiessen 🇺🇸❤️🇺🇦 (@marcthiessen) March 8, 2023
There was a video that accompanied this Twitter thread and I’ve watched it twice and didn’t hear Shapiro say “a huge majority of people in the Capitol that day were not rioters”. But that being said, I believe that’s probaby the case. As Shapiro said in the Twitter thread, “many people there weren’t rioters.”
My take is that Shapiro isn’t downplaying anything. He’s pointing out that multiple narratives can be true at the same time, namely that many people weren’t rioting but that many did. But the media and the Democrats only want us to believe that it was an armed insurrection and hid the footage from us because they don’t want us to know the truth.
Shapiro is merely debunking the falsehoods that Democrats and the media sold us based on this new footage that we werne’t allowed to see until now. He’s not pretending that the Capitol riot wasn’t a riot. He makes clear that it was a riot, but also that there was large swath of people in the Capitol not rioting. Thiessen’s premise is just wrong in my opinion.