On the five year anniversary of the Capitol riot the White House quietly rolled out a new webpage that immediately drew attention for how it reframed Jan. 6. The page pushed claims critics call false and misleading portraying Democrats as the real insurrectionists criticizing police officers and praising Donald Trump for standing up for what it called “innocent Americans” who took part in the riot.
The page set off a sharp exchange on CNN when anchor Kaitlan Collins pressed Scott Jennings a strong Trump supporter about why the administration would publish something that appears to rewrite a day many Americans watched in shock.
Jennings said the move did not surprise him and framed it as consistent with Trump’s long held views. “The President has a point of view on this, and has never been shy about stating it. Not everybody agrees with him. Not everybody in the Republican Party agrees with him,” Jennings said on “The Source.”
He added that the website simply echoes what Trump has said for years. “And so, I wasn’t surprised to see him use his website to effectively lay out the message that he often lays out in his speeches and in his answers about these issues when he gets questions on them.”
Collins pushed harder pointing to language on the page that suggests police escalated tensions that day. “But when it says Capitol Police Response Escalates Tensions? I mean, that’s blaming the cops for what happened that day. Is it not, Scott?” she asked.
Jennings acknowledged how it reads but drew a line between Trump’s view and his own. “Yes, I mean, that’s how you could read it. Look, I have a point of view on this that’s somewhat different than the President’s. And look, I also don’t treat it like a national holiday, like the Democrats do. It was a bad day, but I don’t look forward to moralizing it every year. It’s a bad day. It should never happen again,” he said.
He also argued voters have already weighed in. “The President has a point of view on it. He’s got a messaging point of view on it, that he’s never backed away from. And the American people frankly adjudicated these questions in the 2024 election, and he’s the sitting president.”
Former Obama adviser David Axelrod later praised Jennings for condemning the riot in real time back in 2021. Jennings repeated that sentiment saying “It was a bad day, and I don’t ever want to see it happen again. I mean, you want election days and days that sort of mark time in our democracy to go off as smoothly as possible.”
He said he was grateful for a peaceful transfer of power after the 2024 election adding “We appear, at least to my eye, after 25 years of some election denialism in both parties, to have gotten somewhat off of this slippery slope.”
Axelrod was not convinced. “Who’s gotten off of election denialism?” he asked pointing out Trump still promotes false claims about the 2020 results.
Trump was impeached in his final days in office for inciting the riot and later faced federal charges tied to Jan. 6. Those charges were dropped after his 2024 election victory. At least five people died in the siege and its aftermath including Ashli Babbitt who was shot by police and Officer Brian Sicknick who died after battling the mob. Several other law enforcement officers later died including by suicide.
