Jose Luis Magana / AP
Rioters loyal to President Donald Trump rally at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. Federal prosecutors say Taylor Taranto, 37, who prosecutors say participated in the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol and arrested last week near the home of former President Barack Obama, told followers on his YouTube live stream that he was looking to get a “good angle on a shot” and that he was trying to locate the “tunnels underneath their houses” shortly before he was taken into custody by the Secret Service.
Published Saturday, Jan. 6, 2024 | 2 a.m.
Updated Saturday, Jan. 6, 2024 | 8:57 a.m.
Most Republicans nationally say it’s time to move on from the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, while an overwhelming number of Democrats and most independents say the event should “never be forgotten,” according to a poll released this week.
The poll, conducted last month by The Washington Post and University of Maryland, showed that 53% of the 1,024 respondents felt former President Donald Trump bears either a “great deal” or “good amount” of responsibility for the riots, while 43% say he had little or nothing to do with the attack that resulted in five deaths and millions of dollars in damages to the Capitol.
Approximately 86% of Democrats, 56% of independents and 14% of Republicans pinned the blame on Trump for the Jan. 6 attacks, while 84% of GOP voters think he had little or nothing to do with what transpired.
The poll also asked whether a candidate running for Congress is qualified to hold office if he or she supported efforts to overturn the presidential election in 2020. Forty-one percent of all respondents (68% of Democrats, 16% of Republicans and 38% of independents) said no, and another 28% said it casts doubts on that candidate’s fitness but is not disqualifying.
Sampling from that question found that 53% of Republicans said it was not relevant to their fitness for Congress (compared with 8% of Democrats and 29% of independents).
The Washington Post poll this week posed another question, whether or not the protesters who entered the Capitol represented a threat to democracy. Of that, 58% (86% of Democrats, 30% of Republicans and 61% of independents) said the breach threatened democracy, while just 12% of respondents (but 23% of Republicans) answered that the episode defended democracy.
A plurality of Republican respondents, 41%, said it neither threatened nor defended democracy.
“That insurrection was an attack on the very rights and freedoms that we have fought for from the very beginning of the Revolutionary War and that we hold dear,” Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., who was in Congress the day of the attack, told reporters during a Friday press call. “It sets a very dangerous precedent for the future of our democracy.”
The partisan split over Jan. 6 will likely remain through the November presidential election, said Sondra Cosgrove, a political science professor at the College of Southern Nevada.
“Right now, candidates are just talking to their base and their message is going to be tailored to their base,” Cosgrove said.
Given the Trump campaign’s appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court over the candidate’s removal from primary ballots in Colorado and Maine pursuant to the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause, justices will likely have to determine whether Jan. 6 constituted an insurrection, and if so, whether Trump was responsible for leading it, Cosgrove added.
“The court often is the last arbiter,” Cosgrove said. “But I think we’ve kind of already moved beyond it. Trump is leading in the polling, so apparently it’s not hurting him.”
Nevada’s U.S. Senate candidates’ stances
An October poll commissioned by the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) estimated 41% of likely GOP senate primary voters were undecided on which candidate to back in Nevada. The poll, completed by the Tarrance Group, found that retired U.S. Army Capt. Sam Brown had the support of 24% of respondents, compared with 9% for former Nevada Secretary of State candidate Jim Marchant, 5% for retired Air Force Lt. Col. Tony Grady and 1% for Jeff Gunter, the former U.S. Ambassador to Iceland under Trump. Stephanie Phillips, a Las Vegas-based real estate agent, and Ronda Kennedy, a practicing criminal and civil litigator, received less than 1% in the poll.
Most of the six GOP candidates running to challenge incumbent Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., in the Nov. 5 general election have said little publicly about the Jan. 6 insurrection. The Sun this week sent three standardized questions, asking whether they:
• Consider the events of Jan. 6, 2021, an insurrection? If not, why?
• Believe those who entered the Capitol that day and have faced criminal charges since have been rightfully charged or believe they are being politically persecuted by federal authorities?
• Believe Joe Biden is the duly elected president of the United States. If not, why?
Requests to comment from Marchant — who has publicly questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 election on several occasions — and Grady were not returned.
Combining the first two questions into a single answer Brown, who finished second to Adam Laxalt in the 2022 Senate primary, said via email: “Any person who knowingly trespassed into the Capitol or participated in violence against law enforcement should be prosecuted, and they are entitled to their constitutional rights of due process and a speedy trial.”
He also affirmed that Biden was duly elected.
However, critics of Brown say that’s a different tune compared with comments he made in a February 2022 interview with the local NBC affiliate, KSNV-TV channel 3.
When asked how Brown defines the events of Jan. 6, he said “Jan. 6 is another sad sort of point in history where we have an event where it’s so complex that you have a mixture of, what I imagine, some people believe was just a patriotic expression of their love of country and some of their concerns. But there’s obviously bad actors involved as well.”
In that same interview, Brown, like respondents to the Sun’s questions, said the conversation around the attack had become politicized and there were other key issues to focus on.
“I am afraid that a focus on Jan. 6 has become political and divisive,” Brown told the station. “When we live in reflecting on things that are extremely divisive, and we have antagonistic viewpoints on that, that doesn’t serve Americans’ interests well.”
Gunter, who describes himself as an ally of Trump, told the Sun in a statement he stands with the former president and accused the Justice Department of interfering in the election process.
“I stand with President Trump and his position on this issue,” Gunter said. “Of the hundreds charged in connection with Jan. 6 protests, none have been charged with ‘insurrection’ under (federal law), and the efforts to use the justice system to interfere in the election process is a disgrace — the people choose their president, not the courts or the federal bureaucracy.”
Gunter did not answer whether Biden was the duly elected president.
Phillips declined to answer the questions in a statement.
Kennedy said via email the events of Jan. 6 do not constitute an insurrection because the participants did not go to the Capitol with the intent to overthrow the government, adding that she has “successfully” defended Jan. 6 participants in court using that argument.
“Jan. 6 was a protected First Amendment protest that got out of hand,” Kennedy said. “Each person should be charged based on their individual crimes. … While some have been rightfully charged, many are being politically persecuted.”
Kennedy said Biden is legally the president, but stopped short of saying he was duly elected.
“As far as ‘duly’ elected by the people, I feel until the 2020 election is properly investigated, a dark cloud will forever loom over our elections and we cannot definitively say the vote tally of legal votes was correct,” Kennedy added.
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