Almost every media talking point turned out to be untrue. No Capitol police officer died at the hands of the mob. (Early reports that Officer Brian Sicknick had been beaten into a coma by protesters were incorrect. The Washington, D.C., medical examiner ruled Sicknick died the next day of a stroke.) The media all but ignored the lethal police shooting of a military veteran and unarmed petite female trespasser, for the apparent crime of trying to enter Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office through a broken window. There were no gun-toting “insurrectionists” arrested inside the Capitol. Another irony. The three retired generals say nothing about the Russia collusion hoax in which Obama administration officials at the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the CIA helped to seed a fake dossier—paid for by candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Ex-British intelligence operative Christopher Steele’s made-up opposition research was designed first to derail Trump’s campaign, then to disable his transition and finally sabotage his presidency. All that seems rather coup-like. In truth, coups were regularly discussed during the last four years—but only in the context of a by-any-means-necessary way of deposing Donald Trump extralegally before his term ran out.
