Watch This CNN Host Cleverly Deconstruct Republican Lies As Jan.6 Anniversary Looms

Some Republicans will slap you with harsh words and then say it never happened. Really, this sort of thing is easy for far too many of them. They will say one thing and then do something else. Lies fall off their lips like water from a duck’s back.

So of course, this isn’t any different when it comes to the deadly January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol building as the third anniversary of that terrible day looms on Saturday.

CNN anchor Phil Mattingly is apparently fed up with Republicans and their shenanigans and handed several of their behinds in a decidedly pointed segment Friday on CNN This Morning, HuffPost reports.

“Tomorrow will mark three years since thousands of americans, lied to by the president of the united states and their elected representatives, perpetrated an assault on the building that has come to symbolize democracy across the globe, and the men and women who work on its grounds,” mattingly told viewers.

“That’s not an opinion. it’s not an interpretation. it’s not one side of a debate. it is an unequivocal, demonstrable fact.”

Mattingly sharply criticized a recent story by the Associated Press that contrasted how President Joe Biden and ex-president Donald Trump, whose followers attempted the failed siege of the Capitol. “One attack, two interpretations: Biden and Trump both make the Jan. 6 riot a political rallying cry,” the report’s headline read.

“there aren’t, in fact, two interpretations,” he said. “there is what happened, and then there are lies.”

Republican lies. Natch.

Mattingly drove home his point by playing clips of GOP lawmakers describing the Jan. 6 attack “in their own words, on or shortly after that day.”

He used former Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) own words and we hear him describing how rioters overwhelmed law enforcement at the Capitol.

“They scaled walls,” McCarthy, who was House Minority Leader at the time, said in an audio recording. “They brought ropes. they were scaling the scaffolding. They overtook the place.”

McCarthy, ever the Trump brown-noser, still supports the former president even after the hell his supporters put innocent people through. He’s disgusting that way, and Mattingly tore him a new one.

“that was kevin mccarthy a week after the attack,” the cnn anchor said. “he’s currently unemployed, but he was once the house speaker and did more than any other republican to halt the party’s break from trump after jan. 6.”

I seem to remember that McCarthy paid a visit to Trump at Mar-a-Lago not long after the attack. That’s how much of a brown-noser he is.

Tomorrow will mark 3 years since the assault on the U.S. Capitol – but there are many who still deny the reality of the violence that unfolded that day. @Phil_Mattingly breaks down the truth about January 6th. pic.twitter.com/onbKKEH3VH

— CNN This Morning (@CNNThisMorning) January 5, 2024

No level is too low for some particularly vile Republicans. This includes Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley (can someone please kick this nudnick to the curb, please?), who insisted, “You’re not going to get anything but condemnation from me for what happened with those criminals at the Capitol on Jan. 6.”

I think we can safely place Marjorie Taylor Greene in the category of vile Republican as well. Mattingly read aloud a text message the Georgia Republican sent as the attack unfolded.

“i was just told there’s an active shooter on the first floor of the capitol,” she wrote to mark meadows, trump’s then-chief of staff.

“please tell the president to calm people,” she continued. “this isn’t the way to solve anything.”

Can we kick her to the curb too?

Despite what happened on this day, McCarthy, Hawley, and Greene have hewn to Trump like flies on…well, you know. Even though, as Mattingly noted, what each had described “was the reality of that day.”

Every single day in the overweening years since the riot Republicans have downplayed and whitewashed the violence of that day and perhaps that’s why we still seem to have Trump being dangled in front of us as if he were some sort of prize.

Ugh. I fail to understand how this can happen, but he’s still the leading candidate in the GOP presidential race. Even as he faces a federal indictment because he tried to overturn the 2020 election, not to mention all the other legal problems he’s embroiled in.

But what’s more worrisome is that the percentage of Americans identifying as Republican who believe that Biden’s election victory was legitimate has dropped since 2021, according to a poll released earlier in the week. The poll also found that fewer Republicans believe the failed siege was “mostly violent” and fewer believe Trump bears responsibility for the deadly attack.

And because America is conspiracy-theoryland, the Washington Post-University of Maryland poll also found that a quarter of Americans believe the FBI instigated the riot. So, maybe Republicans have been successful in this little game of “how many people can we trick into believing our lies.”

Oh, and as for Marjorie, she posted this gem earlier Friday.

All based on LIES!

This is what communism looks like and it’s happening in America!!

Weaponization of government against political enemies is NOT defending democracy, it’s DESTROYING democracy!!

Letitia James should be disbarred!!! pic.twitter.com/O5UQQJT1UF

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) January 5, 2024

No wonder I live somewhere else.