The author of “Hillbilly Elegy, who is one of the four major Republican candidates running to replace Ohio Republican Sen. Robert J. Portman, spoke out Wednesday on Twitter about the first anniversary of the storming of the Capitol.
“Hi, guys. Tomorrow is the anniversary of January the 6th, the most traumatic moment in the history of American democracy,” said James D. “JD” Vance, who served a combat tour in Iraq as a Marine public affairs NCO.
“So traumatic in fact that the Left has felt the need to talk about it eight times a day for the past year,” he said
“It’s often framed as an assault on our democracy, but the assault on our democracy that too few people are willing to talk about is the fact that dozens of nonviolent protestors on January the 6th are being held in disgusting conditions in Washington, D.C., jails,” he said.
Vance said he was concerned about the treatment of the protesters now held in custody.
“No Democrats and too few Republicans are willing to speak up for them. They’re being denied their Constitutional rights, and the fact that so few in our media or in our political establishment are willing to speak up for them is the height of corruption,” he said,
Another concern was the conduct of the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, which he said was a different sort of corruption.
The fraudulent J6 Select Committee is the real assault on Democracy. Dems are using it to bully & torture their political opponents.
The weak Republicans who can't see this are part of the problem.
A GOP Majority MUST fight fire with fire & investigate BLM's Summer of riots. pic.twitter.com/PwG8BbcSGo
— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) January 5, 2022
“The Select Committee, which is at this point, an obvious political show trial—take, for example, Sebastian Gorka,” Vance said.
“He was not a member of the administration on January the 6th, 2021. He was not an organizer of any of the rallies, did not even speak at any of the rallies, and yet he is having his cell phone records subpoenaed by the January 6th Select Committee, by the Democrats who are using it—using January the 6th to go after their political enemies,” he said.
“They’re not trying to look at what actually happened on January the 6th. They’re trying to attack their political enemies,” he said.
Vance said a third concern was how Democrats were using the storming of the Capitol as a pretext to create a new Patriot Act, the federal surveillance law, which was a mistake when it became law after the September 11 attacks.
He said that this new Patriot Act would be used against American citizens for the next decade if it becomes law, based on the political climate Democrats created with their sham trial investigation of the Capitol storming.
“This entire sham trial is motivated by embarrassing political opponents and ultimately passing a piece of legislation that will make Americans enemies of the state in their own country.
Vance is running in the May GOP primary against former state treasurer and also a Marine veteran of Iraq, Joshua A. Mandel, former state party chairwoman Jane E. Timken and investment banker Mike Gibbons.
The author said Republicans need to learn a lesson from how the Democrats handled the events in the last year for their political advantage.
“When Republicans get power, we often just talk a big game but don’t do anything about it,” he said.
“The Democrats have power, and they’re using it to convene a committee that will attack their political opponents and millions of Americans if we let them,” he said. “We should be looking into what happened on July, August of 2020, the ridiculous riots and looting, the destroyed American cities.”
Vance said a select committee looking into the summer riots of 2020 would be appropriate, given the example set by Democrats.
“Let’s convene a committee about that,” he said. “Let’s investigate the text messages and subpoena the phone records of George Soros, who funded those riots—of Rachel Maddow and other Democrats in the media who encouraged those riots.”
Vance said what leftists did to American cities was more consequential than anything that happened at the Capitol.
“Let’s subpoena the people who actually made it possible to set American cities on fire without suffering any consequences,” he said. “They are far bigger threats to American democracy than the nonviolent protestors of January the 6th.”
The Marine veteran pledged to take action when he became a senator.
“When I’m elected to the Senate when Republicans control the Senate, we’re going to investigate that assault on our democracy,” Vance said.
“We’re actually going to fight fire with fire when we get power back. It’s time to stop complaining about how our people are being treated,” he said.
“It’s time to start using the power in our constitutional Republic to fight back against it.”
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Neil W. McCabe is the national political editor for The Star News Network. Send him news tips: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter: @neilwmccabe2.
Photo “JD Vance” by JD Vance.
