Majority of Republicans blame non-existent ‘left-wing protesters’ for 6 January Capitol attack: poll

It’s yet another election-related falsehood that’s become mainstream in the Republican party

Most Republicans blame the non-existent presence of “left-wing protesters” for the 6 January pro-Trump attack on the US Capitol, according to a new poll, while few think the former president, who spread election-related lies for months and helped incite the riot, is to blame.

Just 41 per cent of Republicans in a Yahoo News/YouGov poll conducted this week said Trump supporters bore responsibility for the attack, which sought to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s election win and “Stop the Steal”, while 73 per cent says “some” or a “great deal” of the blame rests with “left wing protesters trying to make Trump look bad”.

This finding in the 1588-person poll is striking because there’s no concrete evidence of any meaningful left-wing involvement behind the riot, according to the FBI as well as Republican minority leader Kevin McCarthy. But the claim, reported by the conservativeWashington Times newspaper and later championed by Trump-esque congressman Matt Gaetz, has proved a popular one, with similar results from an American Enterprise Institute poll in February.

But it’s also not that surprising. Both the Republican party faithful, its elected leaders, and its media allies have sought to downplay the relevance of the Capitol breach, even though it left multiple people dead, injured more than 140, and is the most significant attack on the seat of US government in two centuries.

Their reasons vary from genuinely believing lies about what happened, to seeking to protect the party’s reputation ahead of 2022 midterm elections.

Republicans in the Senate on Friday killed a proposal for a bipartisan commission to investigate the riots, which would mark a significant expansion of the narrow Congressional investigation into the attacks, which is focused on the government response and security planning on 6 January.

Despite a push from victims of the Capitol attack, including friends and family of deceased US Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick, many Republicans argued the 9/11-style, 50-50 split commission, which would require majorities to exercise its subpoena power, would still be politically biased somehow.

Privately, Mitch McConnell urged his party members to vote against it as a “personal favour” so its findings wouldn’t tar the GOP in 2022, according to CNN.

The Republican party’s repeated efforts to distance itself from its continued attempts to spread doubts about the legitimacy of the 2020 election have clearly sunk in: a majority of Republicans in a May poll said they still view Donald Trump as the true US president.

Not that this distance is anything new. Once Congress resumed its session the night of the Capitol attacks, nearly 150 Republicans still voted to challenge the election results, despite no evidence of meaningful voting irregularities, the same premise that sent many right-wing demonstrators to Washington on 6 January in the first place.