The White House recognized the fifth anniversary of the 2021 riot at the Capitol in an unintentionally fitting manner: spreading lies about what happened in an effort to bolster Donald Trump’s power.
This anniversary is the first since the riot in which Trump and his allies control the levers of federal power, so they wasted no time in creating a page on the White House website detailing what was presented by communications director Steven Cheung as “all the facts” about what unfolded that day.
Some of us still believe that there’s value in honesty and accuracy, particularly when presented with the imprimatur of the federal government.
Instead of facts, however, the page overflows with nonsense and dishonesties. In characteristic Trump administration fashion, the White House team hopes to have it both ways, presenting a litany of lies as “the truth,” while Cheung guffawed about creating the page in an effort to troll their unwitting opponents. This is the sort of juvenile engine for much of what Trump and his allies do: putting forward garbage that attempts to subvert reality while dissuading criticism by suggesting that only a jerk or elitist would take it seriously.
Some of us, however, still believe there’s value in honesty and accuracy, particularly when presented with the imprimatur of the federal government. As such, here is a step-by-step explanation of how and where the Trump administration misrepresents or lies about the events of Jan. 6, 2021.
The page begins by explaining that Trump issued a blanket pardon to the “patriotic Americans prosecuted for their presence at the Capitol.” Their attempted reframing: These were just good Americans, doing little more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But, of course, they weren’t. Trump’s Jan. 6 pardons wiped away more than 600 years of sentenced prison time, much of it following plea agreements reached with the rioters themselves. He absolved even the most obviously violent actors, drawing no distinction between someone who’d committed the equivalent of trespassing and someone who tried to murder a police officer.
The page then attributes the negative repercussions of the day not to the rioters but to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. It suggests that the House select committee formed to investigate Trump’s effort to retain power after he lost the 2020 election “produc[ed] a scripted TV spectacle to fabricate an ‘insurrection’ narrative and pin all blame on President Trump.”
Of course, there is no question that Trump bears the blame for the riot. Had he not responded to his 2020 loss by insisting that he’d won and that the election was stolen, there would have been no effort to overturn the results and no mass gathering at the Capitol on Jan. 6. But more on that in a moment.
The Trump webpage’s alternative history of the day suggests Pelosi “repeatedly acknowledg[ed] responsibility for the catastrophic security failures,” including not having the National Guard deployed, something Trump has long suggested that he called for. But he didn’t. Multiple assessments of the events leading up to that day indicate Trump never made such a request. Pelosi is being attacked for her willingness to accept responsibility for the riot’s scale — on a page that serves as an effort by Trump to deflect his own culpability.
The most Orwellian assertion in the White House’s narrative centers on Pelosi’s party.
“The Democrats masterfully reversed reality after January 6, branding peaceful patriotic protesters as ‘insurrectionists’ and framing the event as a violent coup attempt orchestrated by Trump — despite no evidence of armed rebellion or intent to overthrow the government,” it reads. “In truth, it was the Democrats who staged the real insurrection by certifying a fraud-ridden election.”
It is a myth that no one was armed at the Capitol; many people carried firearms, bear spray and other items deployed as weapons.
It is a myth that no one was armed at the Capitol; many people carried firearms, bear spray and other items deployed as weapons. Trump reportedly instructed the Secret Service to turn off metal detectors at entry points for his speech near the White House that day, since anyone with a weapon was “not here to hurt me.” It is also obviously true that the mob didn’t want to overthrow the government led then by Trump. Instead, it was trying to prevent Trump from having to cede power.
Fortunately, that effort failed.
The White House page says Democrats are “gaslighting” America by claiming that Trump and his allies engaged in an insurrection since it was Democrats doing so by finalizing the election results. “Gaslighting” is actually a good term to describe what Trump and his team are doing here. The claim operates on the assumption that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and “fraud-ridden,” which it was not. In the five-plus years since that election, precisely zero evidence of significant fraud has emerged despite a fervent, unrelenting effort to uncover any.
To claim that Democrats were the bad actors by moving forward with the election results and that the rioters were patriots for objecting is so obviously inverted that these statements read more like tests of fealty to Trump’s upside-down reality than assertions of facts.
Next comes a timeline of events that is similarly disconnected from what actually happened.
First, it claims that Trump “invited Americans to D.C.,” by “emphasiz[ing] standing up for election integrity while calling for peaceful demonstration.” In reality, Trump on Dec. 19, 2020, tweeted a laughable “report” on election fraud and called on people to gather in Washington on Jan. 6.
“Be there!” he wrote, adding, “Will be wild.”
This message triggered his supporters to plan to come to Washington, including members of violent, right-wing extremist organizations.
The timeline then describes Trump’s “powerful speech,” in which he called for protesters to “peacefully and patriotically make their voices heard.” (The crowd, it adds, responded with “massive enthusiasm.”)
You can read the speech for yourself. You can also read assessments of the parts the White House timeline leaves out, such as when he says that “we will never concede” and that if you “don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
Even before Trump finished speaking, protesters had arrived at the Capitol and begun pushing past law enforcement protecting the building. But the White House timeline indicates that once Trump was done, a “peaceful crowd” marched to the Capitol. It then jumps ahead to the violence, ludicrously claiming that the “Capitol police response escalate[d] tensions.” “Video evidence shows officers inexplicably removing barricades, opening Capitol doors, and even waving attendees inside the building — actions that facilitated entry — while simultaneously deploying violent force against others,” the site claims. “These inconsistent and provocative tactics turned a peaceful demonstration into chaos.” Again, completely upside down. That the protesters, led at the outset by members of the extremist group the Proud Boys, began the violence is uncontested and well-documented. Capitol Police found themselves overwhelmed by a mob trying to push into the building and attempted to stop them from doing so. There were different responses at different parts of the massive Capitol complex, but it is undeniable that rioters attempting to illegally enter the Capitol were responsible for the escalating violence and damage. The timeline claims that, from 2:24 p.m. until 4:17 p.m., Trump “urged calm,” “repeatedly call[ing] for peace.” That’s not true. At 2:24 p.m., he excoriated Vice President Mike Pence for refusing the last-ditch effort to shift electors from President-elect Joe Biden to Trump. This intensified rage against Pence, who was still inside the Capitol. By then, so were rioters. Trump did post a message urging people to “support our Capitol police” at 2:38 p.m., but then he said nothing until 4:17 p.m. By then, scores of police officers had been injured and the building had been overrun, delaying certification of the election results. Even then, Trump told the rioters that he loved them and that he understood their anger about the “stolen” election. That Trump didn’t act more forcefully to quell the riot is one of the most damning aspects of the day. That Trump didn’t act more forcefully to quell the riot is one of the most damning aspects of the day. There are numerous accounts of his attempting to use the turmoil to pressure legislators to block the election finalization. He dismissed the rioters’ violence in a call with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., telling McCarthy that the rioters simply were more concerned about the election than the speaker was. Trump’s timeline including this claim about his attempt to tamp down on the violence is all the more ludicrous explicitly because he didn’t actually do so. After another attack on Pelosi, the timeline makes what is perhaps its most outrageous assertion. “Unarmed Air Force veteran and Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt is fatally shot by Capitol Police Lieutenant Michael Byrd without warning as she climbs through a broken window toward the Speaker’s Lobby,” its 2:44 p.m. entry reads. “No weapon was found on her, and she posed no threat. Byrd faced no charges. Three other Americans were also killed: Rosanne Boyland, Kevin Greeson and Benjamin Philips. Zero law enforcement officers lost their lives.” Babbitt, you might recall, was the first person to attempt to enter a window close to where members of the House were evacuating. She did pose a threat, as the leading edge of a mob attempting to push further into the building and closer to the legislators many of the rioters were targeting. As for the other three people killed, Boyland apparently died of a drug overdose. Greeson and Philips died from heart attacks. None, it seems, were injured by police. More than 170 police officers, however, were injured by rioters. Several died in the days that followed, including several who took their own lives. The rest of the timeline centers on what happened after police regained control of the building. Pence refusing to recognize invalid slates of electors (“an act of cowardice and sabotage”). The election being certified by Congress (because “widespread fraud [was] deliberately ignored by courts, officials and the media”). Trump being booted from social media and then investigated for his obvious and widespread efforts to upend the election results. The timeline also includes dashed-off references to conspiracy theories about FBI plants and “Ray Epps,” a guy who had the bad luck to be a focus of Trump’s defenders for years. This is the Trumpian approach at its purest: You only need people to cling to one suspicious thread in a web of doubt. So you might as well weave a massive number of threads. This is how the White House “history” of Jan. 6 should be understood. It’s not informative and it’s not a troll. It is, as always, an effort to get people to look for wrong-doers everywhere except for where the wrong was done: by Donald Trump himself.
Philip Bump is a data journalist and MS NOW contributor. 
