Republicans Seek To Distance Themselves From The Mob That Stormed The Capitol: Poll
The willingness of some Republicans to stand at least partially behind the rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol has dissipated, a HuffPost/YouGov survey finds, with the share saying they approve of the riot or feel personally represented by it smaller than in earlier polling on the incident.
Only 7% of Republicans now say the actions of President Donald Trump’s supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 were mostly right, down from 22% who said the same initially. Also, 41% now say the insurrection was mostly wrong, up from 23% previously.
Just 17% of Republicans say they feel those storming the Capitol represent people like themselves, down 10 percentage points from the previous survey. And just 16% of Republicans say the Capitol rioters represent most Trump supporters, down 18 points.
Rather than defending the mob’s actions, significant numbers of Republicans now distance themselves from the violence, casting blame for it on “antifa” (anti-fascist activists) or left-wing agitators.
A Pew survey that asked Americans to describe their reaction to the rioting in their own words found that 17% of Republicans volunteered their doubt that Trump supporters were responsible, while another YouGov poll found that nearly 7 in 10 Republicans believed antifa was involved.
An Associated Press review of arrest records and social media revealed that the mob was, in fact, “overwhelmingly made up of longtime Trump supporters, including Republican Party officials, GOP political donors, far-right militants, white supremacists, off-duty police, members of the military and adherents of the QAnon myth that the government is secretly controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophile cannibals.”
At the rally Trump spoke at before the siege, he urged his tens of thousands of listeners to march to the Capitol as he repeated his false claims that the November election he lost to Joe Biden was rigged. Congress was meeting that day to certify Biden’s victory.
The public...
