Susan Collins accidentally makes a revealing admission about her first thought during the Capitol siege
January 11, 2021 in Blogs
By Cody Fenwick
In a new piece for the local paper Bangor Daily News detailing her experience in the Jan. 6 attack on Congress, Republican Sen. Susan Collins made a revealing admission on Monday about her first thoughts during the siege.
The lawmaker from Maine, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said:
My first thought was that the Iranians had followed through on their threat to strike the Capitol, but a police officer took over the podium and explained that violent demonstrators had breached the entire perimeter of the Capitol and were inside. Several of us pointed out that the doors to the press gallery were unlocked right above us. That tells you how overwhelmed and unprepared the Capitol Police were, although many, many of them were very courageous. [emphasis added]
Many commentators noted that it was a pretty stunning admission for Collins to say that her first thought during the attack was that it was Iranians. People who had been paying attention to President Donald Trump and his supporters in the past two months had noticed that their rhetoric was becoming increasingly radicalized and dangerous. Trump and some Republican lawmakers had stoked expectations that Jan. 6 would be a significant date in the president’s fight to overturn the election, putting observers who had been warned about right-wing extremism on edge as the usually ceremonial day to count Electoral College votes approached. FBI Director Christopher Wray had previously warned Congress that groups including white supremacists, “anarchist violent extremists,” and “militia types” — groups often associated with the far right and support for President Trump — are committing the “the most lethal activity” and acts of domestic terrorism in the United States.
The fact that this threat, which came from a crowd that was literally directly outside of the building where Collins was standing, wasn’t first in her mind says a lot. It says she has underestimated the true threat of Trump’s radicalism and right-wing extremism, and she is likely overestimating the threat posed from countries like Iran. Iran may want to do the United States harm, but it was the right-wing radicals who had specifically focused on Jan. 6.
Collins’ failure to clearly see this threat, however, does not come as much of a surprise. After she voted to acquit Trump during his first impeachment in 2020, she infamously said Trump learned “a pretty big lesson” from the …read more
Source: ALTERNET
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