Republican Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw said Thursday that members of Congress and media personalities had lied to the American people about what was supposed to happen at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Crenshaw alleged to Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum that because of the way so many had presented the situation, rioters at the Capitol had been under the impression that Jan. 6 was the last stand, their last chance to defend election integrity and overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. (RELATED: ‘Who Says Campaign Ads Have To Suck?’ Dan Crenshaw Releases Joint Ad That Riffs ‘The Avengers,’ ‘Mission: Impossible’)
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MacCallum began the segment by noting that Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, among others, had called for Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley to resign, saying that they had incited the rioters who ultimately breached the Capitol. (RELATED: ‘I Find It Really — It’s Offensive’: Martha MacCallum Challenges ‘Whiteness’ Assumptions In Museum Learning Tool)
Crenshaw said that while he certainly disagreed with the way Cruz and Hawley had gone about challenging the electoral college vote count, he did not hold them responsible for the violence and vandalism that took place on Capitol Hill.
“Let’s be honest. Sen. Cruz and Hawley were not hyping up January 6,” Crenshaw explained. “They were not calling for people to fight in the streets and saying this was our last stand. That being said, many members of Congress did do that. Many commentators did do that. Many in the media have been doing that, for the last few weeks, constantly saying this is our time to fight and let me tell you something very clearly. They’ve been lying to people, they’ve been lying to millions.”
Crenshaw went on to say that the objections were never going to net a reversal of the election outcome — all they could yield was some time for debate on the House and Senate floors — and that when push had literally come to shove, the members of Congress who had encouraged Americans to fight were nowhere to be found.
“It was all fun and games to them,” Crenshaw continued. “They never knew what a real fight was. Real fights are scary. Bullets flying, that’s scary, glass breaking, that’s really scary. They were nowhere to be found, they scattered. They’ve been talking about the courage to stand up to this, the courage to fight for weeks and weeks but when it came down to it, there’s no courage. That’s what happened then that’s what people need to know.”
“They were lied about what January 6 was,” Crenshaw concluded, adding that he was ready and willing to fight for election integrity but that it had to be done the right way. “We hear you. We hear you but we have to come together and work at the state level and change these things,” he said.
The Daily Caller reached out to Crenshaw’s office for clarification as to which House members and media personalities had encouraged people to “fight in the streets,” but had received no response at the time of publication.