Last night, I appeared with Joe Concha on Sean Hannity’s TV show to talk about disgusting attempts by the administration and the media (same thing) to distort what FOX News personalities texted in real time about the Capitol Hill breach. This happened after Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney took to the floor of Congress and, like a monster, read aloud private text messages to try to imply something nefarious.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/byron-yorks-daily-memo-about-those-jan-6-texts

The funniest part of that wall-to-wall media coverage, I thought, was watching someone from CNN talk about all the “lying” on FOX News. As I told Sean, the people on CNN make Jussie Smollett look like Abraham Lincoln when it comes to honesty. There was nothing untoward going on at all. This was just people saying, “Look, this is getting out of hand; it’s gonna hurt the President’s legacy and his reputation.” An honest concern. These were people who cared deeply about the President and the country and about what was happening.

As Byron York said, “The bottom line is there is much less to the texts story than the critics would have you believe. Of course, don’t look for those critics to admit that.”

I’ve been very clear from Day 1 that I strongly condemn what happened that day, and every last conservative I know feels the same way about what those chuckleheads (who were, in fact, unarmed) did. As Joe Concha said on the show, our feelings about this are well-documented.

What we’ve never heard from the other side is any real concern about the fate of the only person who lost her life to violence that day: Ashli Babbitt. This whole thing is just a political game that the Democrats are playing.

Indiana Rep. Jim Banks, current chairman of the Republican Study Committee, and Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan are the two Republican members of Congress nominated by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s “Special Committee” who were actually denied a seat. Instead of seating these two as she was supposed to, Pelosi took it upon HERSELF to choose the only two Republicans she allowed on the committee, the aforementioned Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois. She could have searched the world over and not have found two more vicious political enemies of President Trump than these. And in seating them instead of Banks and Jordan, she violated the terms of the legislation that had been passed to set up the committee in the first place. Also, as we’ve reported, she didn’t even appoint enough total committee members to comply with the law. Her committee is, by all appearances, bogus, a kangaroo court.

Obviously, the fix was in from the beginning, courtesy of Madame Speaker. This “investigation” is a sham, every bit as much as her two sham impeachments were.

https://redstate.com/bradslager/2021/12/14/as-the-january-6-commission-stumbles-who-has-it-worse-the-democrats-or-the-media-n491400

Rep. Banks, in another segment of Hannity’s Tuesday show, said, “Today, we had over an hour of debate on the floor, and there was absolutely not a word spoken by Liz Cheney or the Democrats about anything related to protecting the Capitol, the breakdown of security of the Capitol...or what we’re gonna do to make sure another [similar event] doesn’t happen…...they don’t care about that. The only thing they care about is tearing down their political opponents, in this case putting their political opponents in jail. They know that [former Trump chief of staff] Mark Meadows is a good man, because they served with him for seven years.”

Meadows reached across the aisle, Banks said, even working with Liz Cheney to write over 40 bills. “They know he did nothing wrong,” Banks said, “but because he worked with Donald Trump, they want to put him behind bars.” If they could do that to Meadows, he said, imagine what they could do to any Trump supporter.

As Hannity reported Tuesday evening, the ex-Capitol Police chief said his requests for National Guard troops was denied six times by Pelosi, who had the duty of oversight. Finally, days later, his request was granted, but the damage had been done, no doubt to her delight. Significantly, President Trump had made the National Guard available to her, and so had Mark Meadows. If Trump had really wanted to have an “insurrection” on Capitol Hill, why would he have offered the services of the National Guard to thwart it?

And why did YOU, Nancy, refuse the additional security when you were in charge? THIS IS WHAT NEEDS TO BE INVESTIGATED, but she’s preventing that. Even such liberal news outlets as the Daily Beast and Politico have raised questions about the lack of security that day. But Banks told Hannity that the real reason she kept him and Jordan off the committee is that they were daring to ask about that.

“We had the leadership of the United States Capitol Police Union tell us that they weren’t prepared for what happened...they weren’t equipped for it, they weren’t trained for it. Even though there was intelligence weeks before...that something like this could happen, we were asking those questions, and that’s why Pelosi immediately fired us from the committee, because she didn’t want to go there.”

Banks said the Republicans were continuing to conduct interviews and investigate to determine what happened and how to keep the Capitol secure, and also were “telling the American people the truth about this fake, politicized commission that Pelosi and Liz Cheney and others are leading.”

“Liz Cheney is the new Adam Schiff,” he said. “She’s got her hands on emails and texts, she’s leaking them, she’s using them for political purposes and abusing her power...We’re actually digging into the facts...[to] change the bureaucratic mess that allowed that travesty to happen and make sure that something like that never happens again.”

Personally, I like what Dan Bongino said about the committee and Cheney: “This committee’s an embarrassment. It’s an immoral, unethical, unconstitutional disgrace to humanity. What Liz Cheney did last night was disgusting. Liz Cheney should never be welcomed in polite company in the Republican Party again….She decided yesterday to go and read people’s private text messages, pursuant to subpoena power they don’t have in Congress...This is an attempt to silence conservatives like you and I from communicating before the ‘22 election.” It sends the message that it’s open season on Trump supporters.

(Side note: I’d link to the HANNITY segment with Bongino but would rather spare you the nasty argument between him and Geraldo Rivera that always ensues. FOX News might think putting them on together is good for ratings, but it’s not good for television, so please think again. I digress.)

Recall that after his speech on the day of the rally, President Trump said to his supporters, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol Building, to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard...” That should be the most important take-away from the story of that day, but it’s being deliberately upstaged by all the shameless political theatre in this hideous third act.