Francis Wilkinson, Columnist

MAGA’s Jan. 6 Stories Are Taking a More Dangerous Turn

A new GOP congressional report on the House select committee shifts the counternarrative about the storming of the Capitol to the retaliation phase.

January 2, 2025 at 12:00 PM UTC

By Francis Wilkinson

Francis Wilkinson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering US politics and policy. Previously, he was executive editor for the Week and a writer for Rolling Stone.

The counternarrative just took a new twist.
Photographer: Samuel Corum/Getty Images North America

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The construction of the MAGA counternarrative about Jan. 6 has been something of an iterative process. The latest version, which exists alongside multiple alternate versions, is contained in a report by Republican Representative Barry Loudermilk’s House subcommittee, released in late December amid the House GOP/Elon Musk/Donald Trump chaos over funding the government. As its title suggests, Loudermilk’s “Interim Report on the Failures and Politicization of the Jan. 6 Select Committee” is probably not the final account.

Loudermilk’s report focuses on the workings of the House Jan. 6 select committee, and the voluminous fact pattern that the committee established about Donald Trump’s role in the attempted overthrow of the American republic. (End democratic elections, and you end the republic.) This is a departure from previous MAGA concoctions, which sought to recast the events of the day itself.