Lying, Russian asset Sen. Ron Johnson rewrote history about what happened on January 6 at the Capitol and adoring host Mark Levin ate up the lies – while attacking the rest of the media.
Johnson is not “merely” a dishonest propagandist, though he is that. But there are serious questions about his behavior with Russia-linked operatives feeding him disinformation about then-presidential candidate Joe Biden. MSNBC sums up:
Johnson helped take the [Congressional] lead in the search for anti-Biden dirt, and a Russian agent claimed he fed information to Johnson. Asked last summer whether he'd possibly relied on information from Kremlin-backed sources, the Wisconsin Republican evaded direct questions.
What we didn't know at the time was that the FBI specifically alerted Johnson that he was "a target of Russian disinformation," but he questioned the value of the briefing.
In other words, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee was targeted by the Kremlin, while the senator was seeking dirt on the future American president, and when the FBI warned him directly about what was transpiring, Ron Johnson thought the smart thing to do would be to blow off the FBI's concerns.
But Fox News host Levin called Johnson “a great senator” when introducing him on the Life, Liberty & Levin show last night.
Johnson was there to validate Levin’s suggestions that those charged as the result of their January 6th behavior (there was no insurrection, according to Levin) were victims of some overreaching Democratic/liberal cabal that has treated them worse than prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. While the far more dangerous (as per Levin) Black Lives Matter and their supporters are destroying our country.
And guess what? The “January 6 protesters are being persecuted for their politics” falls right in line with Russian propaganda.
LEVIN: Senator, you, and only four of your colleagues penned a letter to the Attorney General of the United States on June 7th, you asked a myriad of crucially important questions, including: who are all these people you're rounding up? What are you doing to all these people? What are you charging them with?
Why are you treating them one way and Black Lives Matter and Antifa another way, particularly when you compare the kind of damage that's been done to the country?
We get these erratic reports from the press that really isn't given access about how they are being treated in jails, what kind of food they're getting, their solitary confinement.
Senator, first of all, why isn't all of the United States Senate concerned about this rather than just five or a handful of Republican senators?
JOHNSON: Well, because if you raise these issues, Mark, you know, you get slaughtered and attacked in the press. I mean, the fact that I just questioned the narrative that there were thousands of armed insurrectionists, intent on overthrowing the government, you've seen how that's worked out for me. …
But this is highly alarming. Every American should be concerned when we see the unequal administration of justice. And it's not just within the Justice Department, but it's also within our media.
I mean, how many reports have you seen -- I know people like you have shown it, Tucker has shown these videos of people being beaten to a pulp during the summer riots, and it doesn't even get covered. They want to sweep over 500 riots that injured over 2,000 law enforcement officials, up to $2 billion of property damage, they want to sweep all that under the rug and just concentrate on what we all condemned by the way, what happened in the Capitol.
Like Levin, Johnson went through the motions of condemning the insurrectionists' behavior – right before suggesting the media and the Democrats had drastically overblown what wasn’t really such bad behavior.
JOHNSON: I found that violence repugnant, the racial slurs repulsive. You know, I condemned those actions. I want those individuals prosecuted to the full extent of the law, but I don't want the media and I don't want Democrats and politicians painting with a broad brush that just because, you know, a hundred or a couple hundred people assaulted law enforcement, that somehow 75 million Americans that voted for Donald Trump are somehow suspected domestic terrorists, and if given the chance, they'd be armed insurrectionists as well.
As I wrote in my last post, Levin’s history of race-baiting bigotry is well documented. He digressed in order to demonize Black Lives Matter as the real enemies of America who belong in jail as traitors. I’m sure it made Tucker Carlson and his admirer, Lachlan Murdoch, proud.
LEVIN: You talked about the damage that was done by these groups, Black Lives Matter, which is celebrated. I mean, Black Lives Matter is a violent Marxist, anti-Semitic, anti-American organization and has done precious little to go into the black communities and help Black communities build, help Black communities with school choice, help Black communities at all.
It wants to overthrow the country and it believes in this critical race theory where it's really a white-dominated society, and that white-dominated society needs to be destroyed.
At that moment, Johnson was more interested in downplaying the insurrection (also just what Putin would have wanted!) and trying to blame January 6 on Democrats.
JOHNSON: Well, understand, you know, one of the reasons a lot of people support the “thousands of armed insurrectionists” narrative, obviously, that works politically for the Democrats. The media loves it. But it also works pretty well for anybody who is responsible for Capitol security. You know, and that includes congressional leadership.
The people who are actually responsible for having a plan, for having an appropriate force structure in place, when there are going to be tens of thousands of people protesting the counting of the electoral votes. I mean, people obviously dropped the ball.
You know, we had a recent Senate report, and they certainly talked about the intelligence failures, but nobody is really talking about the leadership failure at all levels.
After the break, Levin and Johnson went back to the Putin-friendly message of “the insurrection was just a bunch of concerned citizens who are now being punished for their politics.”
LEVIN: Senator Ron Johnson, in your letter with four of your other colleagues, you indicate through your questions that there's been -- they've utilized geolocation data from defendant's cell phones to track down individuals. There have been SWAT team used, SWAT team raids, and you're trying to figure out how many times that's been done.
And so, they really are going to the ends of the earth to try and track down every single person. Some of these people are serving time in jail for trespassing, as I understand it, while the prosecutors are trying to figure out how to shake them down.
So, the sweep is so huge, that in addition to people who may have broken in and hit police officers, we're getting people who may have sat on the Capitol Hill steps or wall, they're being swept into this, too. …
JOHNSON: … [W]e are trying to get information from the Attorney General, but we're also creating, trying to create public pressure. But I think, we do need to be concerned.
You know, I go back to Wisconsin, and I got -- I get Wisconsinites coming up to me, first of all, thanking me for telling the truth about January 6. They were there. You know, I entered into the record an eyewitness account by Jay Michael Waller, a very knowledgeable observer. He teaches Political Warfare at Fort Bragg.
He went through -- he wrote a 14-page, eyewitness account before you ever listened to news media, I entered that in the record, and I was immediately labeled a conspiracy theorist. But when you take a look at what his eyewitness account was, you know, basically, the vast majority the crowd, they were -- they were in a jovial mood. They were serious, but they weren't violent.
And so you have Wisconsinites coming up. “That was me. Now, I didn't commit any insurrection.” So, people actually are appreciative of the fact when people tell the truth, and Mark, I think it is extremely important to create an accurate historical record of exactly what happened. So the false narrative, the thousands of armed insurrectionist doesn't last.
[…]
JOHNSON: [W]e’ve seen plenty of video of people in the Capitol and they weren't rioting. They don't -- it doesn't look like an armed insurrection when you have people that breached the Capitol and I don't condone it, but they're staying within the rope lines in the rotunda. That's not what an armed insurrection would look like.
LEVIN: And I believe in armed insurrection requires arms. And –
JOHNSON: Precisely.
Levin was pleased. He closed the discussion by saying, “God bless you. Take care.”
You can watch Levin and Johnson spout talking points in sync with Putin, below, from the June 13, 2021 Life, Liberty & Levin.
The notion that she was just having a tourist visit of the building is nonsense. And the other notion – that the crowd was unarmed – is blatantly false. Many of them were carrying implements of various types – including the rope they intended to hang various politicians with. And for the people who weren’t carrying actual weapons, their sheer force of numbers would easily have allowed them to overwhelm the armed security and take their weapons from them.
Johnson and Levin’s conduct here is simply despicable, and they should be called out for it.