Crenshaw: ‘Many’ in Congress Were ‘Lying to People’ and Calling for a Fight, But Hawley and Cruz Didn’t
On Thursday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “The Story,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) stated that “many members of Congress” and members of the media hyped January 6 as a time to fight and were “lying to people” in doing so. Crenshaw also said that Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) did not do that.
Crenshaw said, “Sen. Cruz and Hawley, I disagree with them in a fundamental way about the constitutionality of this process on January 6, the ability of Congress to overturn any electoral votes, period. But, let’s be very honest, Sen. Cruz and Sen. Hawley were not hyping up January 6. They were not calling for people to fight in the streets. They were not saying this was our last stand. That being said, many members of Congress did do that. Many commentators did do that. Many in the media have been doing that, for the last few weeks, constantly, saying, this is our time to fight. And let me tell you something very clearly, they’ve been lying to people.”
He added, “And when people fought, they came to fight, and then they fought Capitol Police, and now people are dead. And those same members of Congress who called people to fight, well, they were nowhere to be found. Because it was all fun and games to them. They never knew what a real fight was. Real fights are scary. Bullets flying, that’s scary. The glass breaking, that’s really scary. They were nowhere to be found. They scattered.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
Simon & Schuster Cancels Sen. Josh Hawley’s Book over Electoral Vote Objection
Publishing giant Simon & Schuster canceled U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley’s (R-MO) book Thursday after he participated in a constitutional effort to challenge the 2020 election results.
Hawley’s upcoming book, titled, The Tyranny of Big Tech, was scheduled to be released on June 22, 2021, according to a listing on the company’s website that is still live:
In The Tyranny of Big Tech, the current senator and former attorney general of Missouri argues that these companies, once hailed as the future of America, are now what ails the country. They are threatening America’s republican form of government. To reverse the concentration of these companies, which define our era, Senator Hawley argues that we must correct the mistakes of the progressive past and recover a more truly republican politics, a politics premised on the importance of the working man and woman. That means recovering the link between liberty and democratic participation. It means getting an economy that makes the working class strong, independent, and accountable to no one. It also means curbing the influence of corporate and political elites—and understanding how we got here in the first place.
The listing said Hawley’s book “investigates the overwhelming impact these companies have on our daily lives—and what we can do to control it.”
“We did not come to this decision lightly,” Simon & Schuster said in a statement, the New York Times reported.
“As a publisher it will always be our mission to amplify a variety of voices and viewpoints: At the same time we take seriously our larger public responsibility as citizens, and cannot support Senator Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat.”
Before Simon & Schuster’s announcement, Hawley had denounced the violence:
Statement from Senator Josh Hawley:
Thank you to the brave law enforcement officials who have put their lives on the line. The violence must end, those who attacked police and broke the law must be prosecuted, and Congress must get back to work and finish its job
— Senator Hawley Press Office (@SenHawleyPress) January 6, 2021
“The violence must end, those who attacked police and broke the law must be prosecuted, and Congress must get back to work and finish its job,” he said.
Congress ultimately affirmed the Electoral College votes late Wednesday despite Hawley’s leadership in an effort by over 100 members of Congress who sought debate over the results from several battleground states.
Hawley fired back at the “Orwellian” company Thursday night:
My statement on the woke mob at @simonschuster pic.twitter.com/pDxtZvz5J0
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) January 7, 2021
“Let me be clear, this is not just a contract dispute. It’s a direct assault on the First Amendment. Only approved speech can now be published,” he said, adding he would see the company in court.
Hawley himself was the target of intimidation on Monday when members of Antifa protested outside his Virginia home:
Tonight while I was in Missouri, Antifa scumbags came to our place in DC and threatened my wife and newborn daughter, who can’t travel. They screamed threats, vandalized, and tried to pound open our door. Let me be clear: My family & I will not be intimidated by leftwing violence
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) January 5, 2021
“They screamed threats, vandalized, and tried to pound open our door,” he said, alleging they “threatened my wife and newborn daughter.”
During a season of rioting, looting, and violence across the country by activists associated with Black Lives Matter, Simon & Schuster expressed support for the organization:
#BlackLivesMatter. Black stories matter. We stand against racism and violence. We stand with Black authors, illustrators, readers, colleagues, educators, librarians, creators—now, and always. pic.twitter.com/0bre9Ufwcu
— Simon & Schuster (@simonschuster) May 31, 2020
Kyle Olson is a reporter for Breitbart News. He is also host of “The Kyle Olson Show,” syndicated on Michigan radio stations on Saturdays–download full podcast episodes. Follow him on Parler.
'Failure and fragility': U.S. foes seize the moment to help Trump mob undermine democracy
LONDON — For America's adversaries, there was no greater proof of the fallibility of Western democracy than the sight of the U.S. Capitol shrouded in smoke and besieged by a mob whipped up by their unwillingly outgoing president.
Already China, Iran and Russia have pointed to the tumult in Washington as evidence that the much-vaunted U.S. system of government is fundamentally flawed and riddled with hypocrisy.
Across Europe there is grave concern, too. Not just at the division and instability rocking their powerful trans-Atlantic ally, but also at what it means for their relationship with Washington after President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated in two weeks.
Many question how the U.S. can ever again lecture other countries about democratic values or how it can tell other countries that they aren't internally stable enough to have nuclear weapons.
"You are now seeing the situation in the U.S.," Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a live televised speech Friday. "This is their democracy and human rights, this is their election scandal, these are their values. These values are being mocked by the whole world. Even their friends are laughing at them."
While Iran criticized, its government in Tehran has clamped down on its own people's rights of freedom of expression and assembly, and its security forces have used lethal force to crush protests, killing hundreds of people and arbitrarily detaining thousands more, according to Amnesty International in London.
In China and Russia, officials asked why U.S. lawmakers have been so quick to support pro-democracy protesters in other parts of the world while unrest rages in their own streets.
"You may all remember the words that some U.S. officials, legislators and some media used about Hong Kong then," China's Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson, Hua Chunying, said at a briefing Thursday. "What do they say about the United States now?"
Police in Hong Kong arrested more than 50 pro-democracy figures Wednesday for allegedly violating the stringent new national security law. Antony Blinken, Biden's nominee for secretary of state, said on Twitter this week that the new administration would "stand with the people of Hong Kong and against Beijing's crackdown on democracy."
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In Russia, Leonid Slutsky, chair of the foreign affairs committee of the lower house of Parliament, told state media that "the boomerang of the 'color revolutions,' as we can see, is returning to the United States," referring to the wave of Western-endorsed democratic uprisings across former Soviet republics in the 2000s.
Plenty of people have pointed out that many of the demonstrators — in the former Soviet republics and Hong Kong — were advocating for more democratic rights. Under President Vladimir Putin, the rights of regular Russians have been severely eroded, according to monitors.
The mob at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, however, was seeking to overturn a legitimate election.
The distinction hasn't stopped America's detractors from making a vivid comparison.
"This an absolute gift for authoritarian leaders whose prime narrative is that democratic systems are weak and unstable," said Matthew Harries, a Berlin-based senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a think tank.
"Someone like Xi Jinping can say: Look, these people can't get a grip on Covid-19 and they can't even protect their legislature," he said, referring to China's leader, whereas with the Chinese Communist Party "you get stability and growth."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., echoed that sentiment Thursday, calling Trump "a complete tool of Putin" and saying that by encouraging the Capitol riot the president gave "the biggest of all of his many gifts" to the Russian president.
Victor Gao, who was an interpreter for China's late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, said the scenes in Washington were a vivid riposte to those wanting to transplant American political values elsewhere.
"Our system has its own problems, but this system for China works for China for the past 45 years," he said of the one-party state. "China will never accept any attempt by the United States to impose its system onto China because it doesn't work" for China.
Although President Donald Trump has spoken warmly about Xi, he has also hit China with tariffs and sanctions for what the U.S. says is its restriction of Hong Kong's autonomy and its human rights abuses against the Uighur Muslims, both of which Beijing contests.
Perhaps the most notable recent attempt to export an American-style democracy was in Iraq, with institution-building being one of the stated aims of the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. After Wednesday's events, a meme circulating showed Iraq tanks launching an invasion "to bring democracy back to the United States."
"It has been 20 years since George W. Bush tried to export American democracy as a model for the rest of the world, and these days this model is in deep crisis," said Giovanni Orsina, director of the School of Government at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome.
"After what we saw, the idea that Americans can teach democracy to the rest of the world is a lot weaker," he said. "And to make matters worse is the fact that there are no great alternative democracies out there — so America's crisis reflects a crisis of democracy in the world."
The sense of a shared crisis was clear in the statements of alarm by several European leaders. The U.S. is far from the only country grappling with its populist right, fueled by disinformation conspiracy theories online.
"Inflammatory words turn into violent acts — on the steps of the Reichstag, and now in the Capitol," German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas tweeted, referring to an attempt by anti-coronavirus lockdown protesters to storm the German Parliament in August. "The disdain for democratic institutions is devastating."
After a bruising few years of Trump, few European leaders have kidded themselves that Biden's win means they can go back to the way things were. There are moves headed by French President Emmanuel Macron, for example, to become less reliant on Washington militarily.
And yet this week's events in Washington have brought the future of their relationship with the U.S. into sharp focus.
In Paris, François Heisbourg, a senior adviser for Europe at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said, "The outside world has to assume there is an uncertainty, a high degree of instability as to where the U.S. will be in the next few years."
European powers "have to assume the fate of the U.S. is uncertain," he said. "And if that is the case, we have to prepare for a world in which the U.S. is not the partner that we use to have."
Alexander Smith reported from London; Saphora Smith from Bristol, England; Claudio Lavanga from Rome; Nancy Ing from Paris; Andy Eckardt from Mainz, Germany; Tatyana Chistikova from Moscow; and Dawn Liu from Beijing.
Democrats hit out at 'Sedition Caucus' of Republican senators who voted to throw out election results
A group of Republican senators who objected to the election results have been called the "Sedition Caucus" and accused by Democrats of "standing with the mob".
Eight Republican senators and over 130 of the party's members of Congress voted against certifying election results even after the debate was shut down by rioters.
The Senate contingent led by Texas senator Ted Cruz, and Missouri senator Josh Hawley, faced demands from Democrats to resign or be expelled from the Senate.
Mr Cruz and the others condemned the violence but still objected to the certification of the results.
They argued that large numbers of voters, including many Democrats, did not have faith in the results, and therefore a commission should be established to audit them. Initially, more than a dozen Republican senators had objected, but some withdrew their protest after the siege of the Capitol.
Those included Oklahoma senator James Lankford, who was speaking on the Senate floor when it was shut down.
On his return hours later a stunned-looking Mr Lankford said: "I was literally interrupted mid-sentence speaking here...peaceful people in my state want their questions [about the election result] answered, but they don't want this, what happened today. We must set a peaceful example."
An editorial by the Kansa City Star newspaper in Missouri said Mr Hawley had "blood on his hands".
Claire McCaskill, a former Democrat senator from Missouri, said the "Sedition Caucus" had "stood with the mob".
Beto O'Rourke, the Democrat who ran against Mr Cruz in Texas in 2018, said: “It is your self-serving attempt at sedition that has helped to inspire these terrorists and their attempted coup."
The Texas Democratic Party called on the US justice department to investigate Mr Cruz for incitement of sedition and treason.
A party spokesman said: "Ted Cruz led a charge of the 'Sedition Caucus' which ignited the people who stormed the US Capitol. "Ted Cruz's presidential ambitions are dead in the water."
Mr Cruz and Mr Hawley are both potential candidates in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. In a statement Mr Cruz called for the rioters to be prosecuted.
He said: "The attack at the Capitol was a despicable act of terrorism and a shocking assault on our democratic system. "Now, we must come together and put this anger and division behind us.'
Mr Hawley said: "It is my responsibility as a senator to raise their (my constituents') concerns."
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