At a campaign event over the weekend, a reporter asked Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance about Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 attack. The Ohio senator didn’t just downplay the significance of the insurrection violence — he referred to the rioters as “a few knuckleheads” — before insisting that the former president wasn’t responsible for the assault on the Capitol.

This continues to be bizarre. Vance apparently expects voters to believe that Trump wasn’t responsible for the attack that he instigated. Sure, the public might’ve seen Trump summon a mob, fill them with lies and deploy them to Capitol Hill with instructions to “fight like hell,” but to hear his running mate tell it, that’s no reason to blame him for the pro-Trump riot.

But as misguided as the GOP senator’s comments were, the former president’s related rhetoric four days later was worse. NBC News reported:

At his interview with Bloomberg News’ editor-in-chief, John Micklethwait, Trump dodged the question on whether he would accept the election results this year and insisted he did have a peaceful transfer of power after the last one, when his supporters overran the U.S. Capitol, battled police and rioted for hours.

As part of the Q&A at the Economic Club of Chicago, Trump lied about the size of his crowd at his pre-riot remarks, lied about the 2020 election being “crooked,” lied about police officers inviting rioters into the Capitol, and even lied about the number of deaths related to the Jan. 6 violence.

But of particular interest was Trump lying about the insurrectionists being armed. “Not one of those people had a gun,” the Republican said in reference to the rioters.

I realize the former president often struggles to keep up on current events, but it was earlier this year when NBC News reported on John Emanuel Banuelos, who appeared to have been filmed firing gunshots at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

NBC News’ report added, “While numerous rioters were armed with guns on Jan. 6, none were known to have actually fired their weapons; Banuelos is the first to be charged with doing so.”

That distinction is relevant. Despite Republican talk about the rioters not being armed during the pro-Trump violence, the facts have been evident for quite some time. Remember this Washington Post report from nearly two years ago?

The full picture of how many among the crowd were armed before the riot occurred is unclear, but court records, trial testimony and accounts from police officers and rioters have supplied growing evidence that multiple people brought firearms to Washington for Jan. 6, 2021. Six men were arrested that day for having guns in the vicinity of the U.S. Capitol, and a seventh who arrived after the riot ended was arrested the following day.

The same report noted one Jan. 6 defendant explaining at his trial that from his vantage point on the west side of the Capitol, he counted eight firearms carried by five people. Other rioters have been charged with taking guns onto the Capitol grounds.

A New York Times report highlighted a series of other specific Jan. 6 rioters who were found to have carried firearms during the attack.

I mention all of this for a few reasons. First, Trump and his running mate are lying about Jan. 6. Second, these lies are the latest in a series of related lies.

And third, whether the Republicans appreciate this or not, the more they talk about Jan. 6, the more it reminds voters about the violence Trump instigated because he didn’t like what his own country’s voters had to say in the last presidential election.