Ron Johnson goes completely off the deep end during Senate hearing
Every time new evidence comes to light about the Capitol insurrection, things always look much worse than we were led to believe. Despite the testimony from the former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund that the insurrectionists showed up on Jan 6 prepared for war, Sen. Ron Johnson is now trying to push a right-wing conspiracy theory that Capitol Police were the ones responsible for the attack. The biggest problem with this is that six officers are no longer alive due to the events of that day, and over 100 of them seriously injured.
Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that Johnson is now sinking to this low as he spent last week trying to sell a conspiracy promoted by the Federalist that Antifa is somehow to blame for the attacks. Trumpers themselves have called him out on this one, angrily venting on social media that the non-existent organization is getting credit for what they did themselves. He’s also contradicted himself by lying that the insurrectionists weren’t armed when they showed up at the Capitol, something that any basic Google image search could disprove.
Even as senators are hearing testimony, Johnson is using his seat to amplify right-wing lies that aid and abet dangerous criminals, and it’s not even the first national tragedy he’s using to do this. He did the same thing with promoting hydroxychloroquine earlier this year, long after it was proven to be an ineffective treatment for COVID, and after a number of states want to be reimbursed for their early investment in the drug. Johnson hails from a fairly moderate state that was pivotal to Democrats taking back the White House in 2020. We need to find a strong candidate to run against him when he’s up for re-election next year and stop right-wing extremists from having a voice in the federal government.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making