Jack Cashill began his June 12 WorldNetDaily column with another shot of the Capitol riot revisionism he’s been trading in of late:
For the last three-and-a-half years, the Democrats have owned the Jan. 6 narrative. Republicans in Congress and the media gave it away without a fight.
The good news is that party standard-bearer Donald Trump appears intent on taking it back. On Sunday in Las Vegas, Trump made his strongest statement yet about that memorable day, saying, “There has never been people treated more horrifically than J6 hostages.”
Trump offered no evidence to back up that claim, and Cashill didn’t either. But who needs facts when a conspiracy theory is much more interesting? The main purpose of Cashill’s column is to create a false narrative about a clip of Nancy Pelosi talking about the riot, just as his fellow WND writers have:
Shot in the backseat of Pelosi’s vehicle as she was being driven away from the Capitol on Jan. 6, Pelosi speaks about her own role in allowing the chaos to happen.
“We take responsibility, Terri,” a testy Pelosi says to her chief of staff Terri McCullough. “We did not have any accountability for what was going on there, and we should have. This is ridiculous.”
At this point, Pelosi appears to respond to a question McCullough asked earlier about calling in the National Guard. “You’re going to ask me in the middle of the thing when they’ve already breached the inaugural stuff that should we call the Capitol Police. I mean the National Guard,” Pelosi snaps. “Why weren’t the National Guard there to begin with?”
“They thought they had sufficient resources,” says McCullough referring to the Capitol Police.
“No, it is not a question of how they had … They don’t know,” a rattled Pelosi shoots back. “They clearly didn’t know. And I take responsibility for not having them just prepare for more.”
Pelosi has a lot to take responsibility for. Not since the War of 1812 has congressional leadership so clearly failed in its duty to keep the nation’s capital secure.
The question remains, however, whether the failure was by design. “People don’t really want to get to the bottom of this,” former Capitol Police Chief Steve Sund told Tucker Carlson in 2023. “This didn’t have to happen.”
Sund’s requests for assistance from the National Guard were denied before Jan. 6 and inexplicably delayed during the siege.
Within minutes of the first breach by Ray Epps and crew at 12:53 p.m., Sund called the House sergeant at arms, Paul Irving, demanding help from the National Guard. Irving told Sund he had to run the request up the chain to Pelosi.
Cashill is also taking the Pelosi video out of context — she never claimed that she took “responsibility” for the riot, and Pelosi was not in charge of security at the Capitol. As Rep. Joseph Morelle pointed out when Sund peddled this same story to a House committee, Irving as appointed by Republicans, and the Pentagon, which then was controlled by Trump appointees, also contributed to the delay in sending National Guard troops. Morelle also called out Sund for blaming only Pelosi and not Trump or the rioters. Also, despite Cashill’s claim of a “breach” by Epps, he never entered the Capitol building.
Cashill repeated another right-wing lie in claiming that “Although President Trump had pre-authorized the deployment of 10,000 troops – unusual behavior for an insurrectionist – the Pentagon hesitated.” The claim that Trump authorized National Guard troops has been repeatedly debunked, but the truth doesn’t serve Cashill’s narrative. Indeed, he sought to promote a conspiracy theory, as he is wont to do:
Challenged about her own leadership, Pelosi rushed to the MSNBC studios on Monday to shore up the Democrat narrative.
“The president of the United States, the former president and his toadies, do not want to face the facts,” said Pelosi. “They are trying to do revisionist history on January 6, but we cannot let us be dragged into their again false impression about what that happened that day. They know what happened that day.”
No, Republicans don’t know what really happened that day, and Pelosi is desperate to keep it that way.
The fact that Cashill is promoting discredited claims as part of his conspiracy theory tells us he really doesn’t actually care about the facts.