MaddowBlog-Republicans denounce political violence but can't shake the events of Jan. 6

[LetMyPeopleVote]

For Lindsey Graham and Karoline Leavitt to borrow the left’s script on conflict resolution reflects the latest in a series of failures of self-awareness.

Republicans like Lindsey Graham and Karoline Leavitt spent yesterday arguing that Americans resolve our differences at the ballot box, not with violence.

That’s unambiguously true — though it seems fair to ask whether they remember Jan. 6.
www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2026-04-28T17:19:30.765Z

https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/republicans-denounce-political-violence-but-cant-shake-the-events-of-jan-6

Late last year, FBI Director Kash Patel spoke to reporters about the suspect in the Capitol Hill pipe bombing case and declared, “[W]hen you attack our institutions of legislation, when you attack our nation’s capital, you attack the very being of our way of life. And this FBI and this Department of Justice stand here to tell you that we will always refute it and combat it.”

Observers noticed one flaw in Patel’s rhetoric: Jan. 6 rioters attacked “our institutions of legislation” and “our nation’s capital,” and they ended up with rewards from Donald Trump.....

The GOP senator’s comment came on the heels of similar rhetoric from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt:

We can and we should have fierce disagreement in this country. As you all know, we disagree often, myself in this role and all of you in the news media, but those disagreements must remain peaceful. Debating, peaceful protesting and voting are how we need to settle disagreements, not bullets.

At face value, the comments from Graham and Leavitt were unambiguously correct. In fact, their rhetoric was eerily familiar because Democrats, scholars, progressives and other proponents of democracy used nearly identical language when Trump invited a group of radicalized followers to the nation’s capital after his 2020 defeat, filled them with conspiratorial lies, told his mob, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” deployed his followers to Capitol Hill and even used social media to add fuel to the fire during the violence.

It was at that point when it was the president’s opponents who were eager to remind Trump and his allies that we, as Americans, are supposed to resolve our differences through debate, peaceful protests and elections, not political violence.