Trump and the January 6 Memory Hole

Radio Atlantic

The Atlantic

Politics, News, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 24 October 2024

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The way Donald Trump talks about January 6 has evolved over time. Directly after the insurrection, he condemned the rioters, although he added that they were “very special.” For the next few years, he played around with different themes, implying the protests were peaceful or that the people jailed for their actions that day were “political prisoners.” But these descriptions are mild compared to the outrageous ways he’s been talking about January 6 in these weeks leading up to the election. Recently, he described the day as “love and peace” and upped the metaphor from political prisoners to Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II. Why is he leaning so hard into the political revisionism? And what exactly should we be afraid of? In this episode of Radio Atlantic, we talk to Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who has a unique view of that day. Raskin explains what January 6, 2025, might look like and what is historically unique about Trump’s claims. And I ask Raskin the question I’ve been wondering: When might it be appropriate to let January 6 go? Listen to We Live Here Now, a new podcast series from The Atlantic hosted by Lauren Ober and Hanna Rosin: https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/we-live-here-now/ Also, we want to know more about you and about what you think about the show. Fill out our listener survey at TheAtlantic.com/survey. The earliest respondents will receive a $20 gift card. Thank you in advance! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:21.2	Join for free at racketon. Co. Or get the racketon app. That's R A K U T E N. Over the last many months I've been thinking a lot about January 6 and about how memory can become a weapon in an election. Just the other day at an
0:47.6	economic forum in Chicago, candidate Donald Trump described that day as
0:51.9	love and peace.
0:55.0	Love and peace. Can you imagine?
0:58.0	You want to hear some sounds of love and peace from that day? We start making the list, put all those names down, and we start hunting them down one by one.
1:09.0	And in this first minute of tear gas in the rotunda.
1:13.2	Please be advised their mask under your seats.
1:16.6	Please grab a mask.
1:19.2	In the last couple of weeks of the campaign,
1:21.4	Trump has been really digging into this bizarre sentiment. of the during World War II. He reposted a meme saying January 6 would go down in history as the
1:36.3	day the government staged a riot to cover up a fraudulent election. He said, quote,
1:42.4	there were no guns down there. We didn't have guns. Now, if you follow
1:48.7	the work of Atlantic Staff writer Ann Applebaum, who was on this show just last week, you know what it means when a leader
1:55.0	starts to rewrite history in such a shameless way.
1:59.0	It's a thing that want to be dictators do and have always done.
	...

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