Condoleezza Rice criticised after insisting Americans want to move on from Capitol riot

Citizens now concerned with ‘kitchen table issues’, former national security adviser says

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is facing pushback over her assertion on The View this week that Americans are ready to “move on” from the violence siege of the US Capitol that took place less than a year ago.

Ms Rice, who was the Bush administration’s national security adviser in the days following the 9/11 terrorist attacks and later took over the State Department, joined the talk show’s hosts on Wednesday to discuss a range of issues.

During one exchange with co-host Sunny Hostin on the all-women panel, Ms Rice insisted that many Americans were now more focused on “kitchen table issues” rather than the violent attack on the Capitol and the ongoing efforts of former President Donald Trump and others to sow distrust in US election systems.

“[Y]es, it’s time to move on in a lot of ways,” said the former Bush administration official. “I’m one who believes that the American people are now concerned about what we call their kitchen table issues: the price of gasoline, inflation, what’s happening to their kids in school… And so we do have a lot of issues, and I hope what we’ll do is move on on to the next generation of leadership.”

Her remarks come as some political analysts and experts such as Fiona Hill, a Trump-era former official with the national security council, have argued that the former president is engaged in a so-called “slow-moving coup”, or a long-term concerted effort to weaken US democratic systems in order to return to power.

The insistence that America must move on, even as Ms Rice claimed that “we will” get to the bottom of everything that occurred leading up to and during 6 January, was battled on The View by Ms Hostin.

“It’s really politically ... to say ‘Let’s move on, let’s move on,'” said cohost Sunny Hostin, while referring to a quote from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, “especially when the former twice-impeached disgraced president enjoys attacking Mitch McConnell. But the problem is that past will become prologue if we don’t find out exactly what happened January 6th.”

Others not on the panel pilloried Ms Rice’s remarks both on Twitter and on cable news shows, including one of the Capitol Police officers who testified about his experiences responding to the 6 January attack during a congressional hearing.

“I would love to move on”, said Officer Michael Fanone on CNN, while adding that it was impossible until America had a “greater discussion” about the divisiveness and mistrust in modern US society that he argued was exploited by Mr Trump to win the presidency and manipulate the mob on 6 January.

MSNBC’s Joy Reid added: “Imagine Condoleezza Rice saying something like this about 9/11 or any other terrorist attack. We haven’t even moved on from the Civil War.”

Imagine Condoleezza Rice saying something like this about 9/11 or any other terrorist attack. We haven’t even moved on from the Civil War. The 1/6 attackers flew confederate treason flags INSIDE OUR CAPITOL as they defecated, urinated and hunted congress members and Mike Pence. https://t.co/hMYxFJo2o0

— Joy-Ann (Pro-Democracy) Reid 😷 (@JoyAnnReid) October 21, 2021

Ms Rice has been considered a critic of Mr Trump in the past but has notably softened her criticism of the former president in recent years, even following the attack on the Capitol.

In the hours after the siege, Ms Rice, now head of the Hoover Institution, released a statement calling the attack one of the “most difficult days that I can remember for America and for us as citizens of this great country”, but did not mention Mr Trump by name and stopped far short of the immediate calls for his resignation that some critics released after he waited hours to release a video telling his supporters to leave the Capitol and did not condemn the scene.