Jack Cashill’s obsession with whitewashing Capitol rioters is such that he’s mad other conservatives aren’t joining in his counter-narrative. He spent his Jan. 22 WorldNetDaily column lashing out at National Review for not buying into his conspiracy theories:
“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” the proudly insufferable British-born Charles C.W. Cooke told Megyn Kelly on her Jan. 21 podcast.
A senior writer for National Review, Cooke was drawing a comparison between Joe Biden’s 8,000 pardons, many of them preemptive, and President Trump’s pardon of 1,600 or so J6ers.
From Cooke’s perspective, the January 6 protesters “behaved in a way completely unbecoming of a republic, with the encouragement of the president.”
National Review editor-in-chief Rich Lowry was less critical but still objected to the “sweeping pardons” and thought they should have been applied on a case-by-case basis.
Although her heart was in the right place, Kelly did not have command enough of the facts to quiet her guests. Said Kelly, for instance, “The only person who died that day was Ashli Babbitt.”
In fact, four protesters died that day, three as a result of police action. Although the attack was captured on video, neither Kelly nor her guests knew that policewoman Lila Morris repeatedly struck the head of the dying Rosanne Boyland with a tree branch.
They were unaware, too, that Kevin Greeson suffered a fatal heart attack when an illegally discharged flash-bang exploded near his face.
When Kelly spoke of the false reporting around the death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, Cooke and Lowry had nothing to add.
As we’ve noted, Cashill has falsely claimed that authorities were blaming Boyland’s death on a methamphetamine overdose; in fact, it’s entirely likely she took a larger-than-prescribed dose of Adderall, an amphetamine, which on top of other health issues such as obesity and diabetes contributed to her death. Cashill again insisted that officer Brian Sicknick “died of natural causes on Jan. 7 unrelated to the events of the day before.” in fact, a medical examiner ruled that “all that transpired” that day contributed to Sicknick’s stroke-related death. He also offered no evidence that “many” of Biden’s pardons were preemptive.
Cashill continued to whine without evidence that “The courts uniformly denied J6ers a change of venue. Afforded full media protection – and the silence of entities like the National Review – prosecutors boldly suppressed evidence and manipulated facts to make their cases,” further grumbling: “D.C. juries acquitted exactly zero J6 defendants. Knowing their fate should they go to trial, most defendants reluctantly accepted plea deals, only to hear prosecutors and the media boast of how the accused admitted their guilt.” He concluded by rehashing another conspiracy theory:
From the NR perspective, the hundreds of thousands of patriots who descended on Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, were “kooks.”
Only kooks would be so naive as to say the obvious out loud, namely that the election was stolen. Were NR staffers to support these people and their unbecoming conduct, they would jeopardize the grudging status they labored to earn in the liberal community.
Better to remain ignorant and to prove it by insisting “two wrongs don’t make a right.”
Of course, Cashill is wrong to insist that rioters were completely blameless. Narrative before truth, remember?