“The View” lamented that the U.S. Capitol police chief Thursday rejected the January 6 committee’s suspicions about Republican Georgia Rep. Barry Loudermilk.
The House Select Committee alleged that a group, who Loudermilk said are his constituents, took photographs of the hallways, staircases and security checkpoints based on Capitol surveillance footage from January 5, 2021. Chief of Police J. Thomas Manger said Wednesday there is “no evidence” that Loudermilk entered the U.S. Capitol with a group of 15 people the day before the January 6, 2021, riot, but rather appeared to have looked at an exhibit with the representative inside the Cannon House Office Building.
Loudermilk then told Fox News he showed children the trains that took congressman to the House chambers.
“Why build up all this tension like something’s wrong?” co-host Whoopi Goldberg said. “I’ve never seen the kids’ photographs there. I have not seen them there, and I’ve been there a couple times but I never noticed them hanging that down there.”
“First of all, Loudermilk should be called Lying Butter,” co-host Ana Navarro said. “I’ve been in the Capitol a bunch of times and I’ve got to tell you, I’ve never seen people take pictures of the magnetometer or the hallways or the staircases … The bottom line is this. It should be so troubling to all of us just how far the tentacles of January 6 extend into the Supreme Court, into the White House, into the Capitol, into Congress. They had inside help.”
Co-host Joy Behar claimed Loudermilk changed his story repeatedly: first that he gave no tours, then that he gave a tour to a young family and their guests, and finally that he gave a tour to 15 people. Co-host Sunny Hostin said the truth does not “morph,” then criticized the representative for refusing to testify and the police for debunking the committee’s suspicions after conducting an investigation.
“The Capitol Police, I don’t understand why they did release a statement that said ‘well we’ve investigated this and there’s nothing to see here.’ That part does actually concern me,” Hostin said. (RELATED: ‘Push Back All You Want’: Sunny Hostin And Conservative Guest Spar Over Inflation, Baby Formula)
“There is no evidence that Representative Loudermilk entered the U.S. Capitol with this group on January 5, 2021,” Manger concluded in a letter to Republican Illinois Rep. Rodney Davis.
Behar alleged that Loudermilk was “casing the joint” by guiding supporters of former President Donald Trump to parts of the Capitol that they could enter into.
Navarro said there is a vast number of people who were directly involved in the cause of the riot and it is difficult to know who to focus on. Hostin said the committee should focus on the congresspeople since many are still serving.
Behar chimed in claiming half of Americans do not care about democracy and should focus on the hearings as gas prices and inflation will go away.
“They should start caring about this because inflation will go away … and gas prices because that’s really on the oil companies,” Behar said. “But democracy is with us if we keep it. Benjamin Franklin famously said ‘you have a republic if you can keep it.’ We cannot keep it with these people … People who watch Fox, do you ever wonder ‘well gee, this Loudermilk … I wonder why this Lying Butter doesn’t appear on The View or CNN or any other channel. Only on Fox.'”
Goldberg called on all Americans to “absorb” everything that is happening regarding January 6 and gun violence in order for anything to change in the next 30 years.
Democratic Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the committee chairman, called on Loudermilk to testify before the committee regarding the surveillance footage in a Wednesday letter, to which the Republican representative then accused the committee of creating a “smear campaign” against him.
“The Capitol Police already put this false accusation to bed, yet the Committee is undermining the Capitol Police and doubling down on their smear campaign, releasing so-called evidence of a tour of the House Office Buildings, which I have already publicly addressed,” Loudermilk said on Twitter.