All The Times Trump Tried To Reframe And Rewrite Jan. 6
To Commemorate The 5th Anniversary Of Jan. 6, Here’s All The Times Trump Tried To Rewrite Its History
Five years ago today, a massive mob of MAGA Americans stormed the U.S. Capitol, broke through barricades, brutally assaulted police officers, scaled walls, broke into and vandalized the offices of government officials, and threatened the very lives of legislators, all in an attempt to stop the certification of votes in a free and fair election that their messiah lost. These domestic terrorists committed these offenses because they took at face value round-the-clock propaganda spread by the president of the United States about a rigged election, who presented zero evidence to substantiate his claims, which had been denied, debunked and denounced by dozens of judges across lower courts, appellate courts and the Supreme Court, the former head of election cybersecurity — whom Trump fired for refusing to go along with his lie — Trump’s own attorney general, his own vice president, and the Department of Justice.
And every day since Jan. 6, 2021, President Donald Trump has been trying his hardest to rewrite and redefine the attack itself as well as his bid to undermine democracy, which demonstrably led to it. Trump’s many attempts to reframe the events of Jan. 6 are something I have written about before, but that was several months ago, and, again, Trump rarely lets even a day go by without lying about Jan. 6 and lying about the lie that inspired it. So, on this day — the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attack Trump is directly responsible for — we at NewsOne are providing a comprehensive list of ways Trump has backed his revisionist history regarding Jan. 6 since the start of his second term.
Let’s get into it, shall we?
Trump pardoned all Jan. 6 offenders on day 1
On Jan. 20 of this year, just hours after he was sworn in for his second term, Trump pardoned around 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants and commuted the sentences of the other 14. Many of those Trump pardoned had criminal records for offenses including rape and domestic violence; dozens of them have been rearrested for alleged crimes related and unrelated to Jan. 6 since they were legally absolved by the president, and one of them was killed by an officer while resisting arrest just one week after Trump issued his sweeping pardons.
But my point isn’t even that Trump blindly pardoned people who are and continue to be dangers to society. As I wrote previously, “he didn’t free the Jan. 6 prisoners for their benefit, he freed them because their freedom, in his mind, legitimizes what they did and, by extension, what he did.”
Trump contemplated paying reparations to Jan. 6 convicts
Just like the president’s pardon of Jan. 6 convicts served as a symbolic pardon of himself, his previous suggestion that those he pardoned might be owed restitution was also about presenting Jan. 6 as anything other than the Trump-inspired terrorist attack that it was.
“A lot of the people that are in the government now talk about it because a lot of the people in government really like that group of people,” Trump said, referencing Jan. 6 rioters during an appearance on NewsMax back in March. During the interview, he floated the idea of creating a “compensation fund” for the people who tried to violently overthrow the government to keep their wannabe dictator in office, or as Trump described it, they protested “peacefully and patriotically.”
I’m not sure if it’s cognitive decline, delusion, or just his nature as a compulsive liar, but it’s almost as if Trump is completely unaware that we can all see what’s on our screens.
Anyway, moving right along…
Somehow, Jan. 6 was Biden’s fault
I brought this one up recently, during our two-part series, chronicling the dumbest moments of 2025. Still, it’s worth reminding America that, just a few months ago in October, our sitting president seemingly forgot who was still the sitting president on Jan. 6, 2021. This is the only conceivable reason I can think of for why he was out here claiming “the Biden FBI” was sent to the U.S. Capitol, presumably to stage the riot, or — you know — the act of protesting “peacefully and patriotically.”
Actually, there’s another reason Trump might have conveniently forgotten that President Joe Biden wasn’t inaugurated until Jan. 20 of 2021, and pivoted to bolstering his supporters’ conspiracy theories regarding the feds infiltrating the Jan. 6 crowd and causing the riot: he knows his supporters are stupid and will accept his revisionist history without bothering to make a note of how inaugurations, transfers of power and calendars work.
Or maybe the reason Trump can seamlessly go from claiming there was no riot to claiming there was a riot, but it was somehow staged by his future presidential successor, is that he and his supporters are just a gaggle of idiots, living in a bubble of buffoonery.
Trump is still lying about the 2020 election being rigged
Months before Trump desecrated what was meant to serve as a “living memorial” to assassinated President John F. Kennedy by tacking his name onto the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Trump paid a visit to the center in May and said this:
“And then they rigged the election, and then I said, ‘You know what I’ll do? I’ll run again and I’ll shove it up their ass. So if they would’ve left us alone, and wouldn’t have cheated on the election, and wouldn’t have rigged it, I would’ve been retired right now. I would’ve been happily doing something else. And instead, they have me for four more years. Can you believe that?”
Again, neither Trump nor his legal team ever presented a single shred of tangible evidence that the 2020 election was rigged, despite his many promises to, at some point in time, show “irrefutable” and “conclusive” evidence, including just before Election Day 2024, when he said he had “many different papers” to substantiate his claims. He was still singing the same tune as recently as last month, when he said, “It was a rigged election. It’s gonna come out over the next couple months too, loud and clear. Because we have all the information.”
Hell, Trump had a whole field day with his election fraud propaganda in August.
From PBS:
Trump sent a fundraising appeal in August that said his victory needed to be “TOO BIG TO RIG” by the Democrats.
He works similar talking points into rallies and interviews.
“We have to vote and we have to make sure that we stop them from cheating, because they cheat like dogs,” Trump said Aug. 3 in Atlanta.
“Watch for the voter fraud, because we win without voter fraud, we win so easily,” he said Sept. 6 to the Fraternal Order of Police.
“Anytime you have a mail-in ballot, there is going to be massive fraud,” he told Dr. Phil McGraw on Aug. 27.
Trump vowed “long-term prison sentences” for election “cheaters.” At a Sept. 13 rally in Las Vegas, he said, “We have a good lead, but we’ve got to be careful because remember, they cheat like hell.”
Trump summarized his concerns into one rant in an interview with conservative radio host Wayne Allyn Root: “We have a rigged election. We have bad borders, we have very bad elections. We have a bad voting system. We have mail-in ballots.”
Trump persistently demonstrates his belief that if he repeats a lie often enough, it becomes truth, but this is about more than just that. This is about Trump trying to take control of his legacy by divorcing it from reality.
On that note, I’ll leave you with what I wrote the first time I wrote about Trump trying to rewrite Jan. 6:
“Trump can’t have history remembering him as the bumbling commander-in-chief who responded to losing an election by launching a propaganda campaign that ultimately inspired criminals to attack the U.S. Capitol, physically assault police officers, and attempt to forcefully overturn a legal and fair election. A president like that would certainly be remembered by objective historians as one of America’s worst, not best.”
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