Daily Caller reporter Kay Smythe called out the “blatant hypocrisy” Sunday regarding treatment of the Jan. 6 rioters and the 2020 BLM rioters.
“Wake Up America Sunday” host Carl Higbie said there is no mainstream Republican that had not openly condemned the events that took place at the Capitol riot, yet the entire party is being blamed.
“Congressman McCarthy has gotta be kicking himself right now, don’t you think? Because by refusing to cooperate and participate in this important investigation, he’s kinda forfeited the right to even complain about the results. You should’ve joined the process instead of sitting on the side refusing to participate and then maybe you would have some input in it,” Dow Jones MarketWatch columnist Ellis Henican said.
Smythe argued that there is a double standard between the accountability held toward the rioters at the Capitol versus the BLM riots that erupted across the U.S. in response to the death of George Floyd in 2020.
“I’m never, ever going to condone the actions of everyone that rioted on Jan. 6,” Smythe said. “I just think it’s really interesting that we can watch the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, we can watch the Amber Heard [and] Johnny Depp trial. I don’t know why that was aired, I just thought it was so disgustingly tasteless. We can see the Jan. 6 hearings, ‘Oh it’s going to be on primetime isn’t that amazing,’ and yet we haven’t heard a peep about the Ghislaine Maxwell trial, and I’m sure there are countless others that we should as a general public have access to.”
Smythe compared the $1.5 million in damage done by the Capitol rioters to the $1.2 billion caused by the BLM rioters and questioned why BLM rioters are not being held to the same standard as those that breached the Capitol. (RELATED: We Asked Every Jan. 6 Committee Member When They’d Hold Hearing On The 2020 Riots. Here’s What They Said)
“Why are we having these hearings about Jan. 6 but we can’t have the same amount of accountability when a targeted organization attacks pretty much every major city in the country,” she said. “That’s what’s confusing me. It just seems a bit hypocritical and it just seems a bit one sided at this point.”
Higbie then pressed Henican on the definition of an insurrection, to which the columnist pushed back explaining the importance of the hearings.
“Do you guys really not understand why this is important? You can’t measure it by the physical damage, this is a group of people who in a very violent, aggressive fashion, stormed the Capitol building, demanded the head of [former Vice President] Mike Pence, tried to overturn the results of an election, threaten the lives of our elected representatives and most important of all, undermined our democracy —”
“I don’t think there is any undermining of our democracy at all,” Smythe interjected.
Higbie argued that the Senate returned and certified the electoral votes a few hours after the riot. He then asked Henican to name Republicans who he claimed defended the riots. Trump told the rioters in a January 6, 2021, address to “go home in peace” after the riot took place.
Henican said Trump “complimented” the rioters and has diminished “the seriousness” of the incident.
“I don’t think he’s diminishing the seriousness of this of it,” Smythe pushed back. “No one is doing that. All we’re saying is why is this whole thing so one-sided in accountability? It’s just blatant hypocrisy. Why is it that we’re having hearings for this and yet no one from BLM is being dragged for the George Floyd riots? No one is getting in trouble for that.”
“Why don’t we have greater accountability? Why is the American public only presented with one side of the argument? And thank goodness for Newsmax and other networks for everything that you guys do, because if it wasn’t for this network, we wouldn’t know half of what’s actually going on in this country and that’s typically the half that the left doesn’t want us to see,” she continued. “No one is condoning the actions of those who rioted on Jan. 6, but I would like is further accountability for people who tried to burn down our cities.”