The conservative Red State website on Monday published and then retracted an article that angrily and falsely stated that there was no riot, insurgency, or “storming!” at the US Capitol last week.
“Let me be very clear. There was no riot in Washington. There was no insurgency. There was no “storming” of the Capitol, ”wrote playwright Mike Ford, A Retired Infantry Office. “There was a peaceful rally. There was a largely peaceful protest that was marred by bad acts committed by very few people. There was and there is absolutely nothing that could be traumatized or intimidated. It’s time to tell the press, politicians and even our pastors to stop the gas. “
The play dismissed last Wednesday’s riot – which left five people dead, including a policeman defending the building – as the actions of just “a few bozos”. The vast majority of the rioters, Ford asserted, “all remained within the velvet guide ropes, surely not the actions of a rabid mob doomed to violence or chaos.” The Conservative writer also described the violence as akin to “beating and pushing along the fence” and claimed that the death of Capitol Hill cop Brian D. Sicknick was “not officially linked to any violent act. and illegal ”.
After the immediate reaction online from critics pointing to the article’s many factual inaccuracies and potentially dangerous suggestions, RedState deleted the post. “Overnight, this article on January 6 was published,” the publication wrote in a note replacing the text of the article. “Many of the details, opinions and analysis in the article were either incorrect or inappropriate. It has been withdrawn and we regret its publication. “
Following its deletion, Ford stepped back into the comments section of the article to justify its work, tell readers that his article was withdrawn for showing how “in fact there was no ‘riot’, ‘insurrection’ or ‘storm’ of the Capitol building.” Elsewhere in comments, he traded the popular right-wing conspiracy theory – a theory denied by numerous reports and an FBI investigation – that “the ANTIFA / BLM infiltrators wee [sic] definitely proven to be on the pitch in advance and in the crowd.
In recent years, RedState – launched in 2004 and currently owned by Salem Media, a publicly traded conservative Christian company – has morphed into another loudly pro-Trump blog on the right, at times pushing potential critics out of its own ranks. . .
As The Daily Beast reported, in April 2018 the site fired a handful of its most prominent writers, all of whom were openly and often critical of Trump. “There was a time when Republican politicians were terrified if [RedState] excoriated them from the front page, ”said Ben Howe, a fired contributor at the time. “But the modern conservative movement seems to have had enough of the blame. “Liberal tears” is the new operating principle. Unless you shed those tears, you are not a team player. “
And just last year, the right-wing site was caught in a media scandal when, as The Daily Beast first reported, its trollish editor, who went by the pseudonym “streiff” and took writes blogs destroying immunology chief Dr Anthony Fauci as a ‘Nazi mask’ and suggesting that some government officials should be hanged for the ‘massive fraud’ known as the ‘fear of the Wuhan virus’ , turned out to be William B. Crews, a public affairs specialist working for the Fauci agency.
#RedState #publishes #retracts #Bonkers #claims #riot #Capitol #Hill
