How Trump's Allies Are Still Defending Him: Denial, Deflection, Disinformation

[Zorro]

They falsely claimed President Trump had no role in spurring the assault on the Capitol. They resorted to false equivalencies. Some even questioned whether the mob was an anti-Trump “false flag.”

This was one mob they found a way to excuse.

Even as scores of President Trump’s usually unfailing loyalists condemned him for moving too slowly to call off the swarm of demonstrators that stormed and ransacked the Capitol, many of his most vocal and visible allies in Congress, the media and conservative politics still could not bring themselves to fault him for the surreal and frightening attack carried out by people he had just urged to “fight like hell.”

They downplayed the violence as acts of desperation by people who felt lied to by the news media and ignored by their elected representatives. They deflected with false equivalencies about the Democratic Party’s embrace of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Some even tried to dispute the fact that Trump supporters were actually the perpetrators, suggesting that far-left activists had infiltrated the crowd and posed as fans of the president.

These were not isolated or trivial assertions from little-known people on the fringes of Mr. Trump’s movement. Rather, they came from some of his highest-profile allies who helped enable his rise in the Republican Party and have aided him in his unrelenting assault on anyone who questions his actions.

“To any insincere, fake DC ‘patriots’ used as PLANTS — you will be found out,” wrote Sarah Palin, the Republican Party’s vice-presidential nominee in 2008, who demanded that the media look into the allegiances of the people who smashed their way into the Capitol.

Responses like these — full of misdirection, denial and specious comparisons — sounded almost like typical fare coming from stalwart defenders of a president who considers admitting fault to be a sign of weakness. That they persisted in the face of such an extraordinary and unsettling strike on the seat of American government is a sign of how premature it may be to conclude that Mr. Trump’s iron grip on his followers is loosening, though some prominent Republicans are distancing themselves.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/us/politics/trump-allies-congress.html

[msongs]

1. palin is gonna get her wish, big time - demanded that the media look into the allegiances of the ppl

who smashed their way into the Capitol

[SCantiGOP]

2. When your face had already been on the Internet

with captions like “QAnon activist,” gun proponent, right wing activist, neo-Nazi, etc. , it’s not going to be real hard to figure out your allegiance when you’re arrested.