Thread by @benshapiro

Today is the first anniversary of January 6, a riot predicated on a falsehood pushed by President Trump -- a riot which did not prevent the certification of the 2020 election by Vice President Mike Pence and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

It was not a "coup" or an "insurrection," nor was it charged criminally as such. It was not a turning point for the republic or a referendum on American political violence.

It is now being exploited by the political class to dramatically revise republican institutions including federalism and the filibuster. The outsized focus on January 6 by the media and Democrats is a pure act of political opportunism, and should be seen as such.

The game is to suggest that January 6 was a grave threat to democracy, and that the threat has now metastasized into a full-blown political program pressed by the mainstream Republican Party -- and that this requires concerted Democratic destruction of institutions.

Biden is not hiding the ball. Schumer is not hiding the ball. Pelosi is not hiding the ball. If the question of January 6 had remained whether riots are bad, whether the criminals should go to jail, or whether we ought to follow legally-certified election results, we'd agree.

But the question has now morphed -- and it morphed within hours of the January 6 events. The question morphed into whether the entire Republican Party and all of its voters could be saddled with the mantle of "insurrectionary violence."

And the follow-on question became just how much should evil Trump voters be censored (Parler and AWS) or whether we should dispense with the filibuster to "save democracy" or whether we ought to federalize voting procedures like ballot harvesting and banning voter ID.

The crocodile tears from the Left about the woes of police officers on January 6 ought to be taken with precisely the seriousness they deserve, given their 2014-2021 quest to label police systemically racist and ignore massive violence against the cops throughout the BLM riots.

And the crocodile tears from the Left about refusal to accept election results ought to be taken with precisely the seriousness they deserve from the party of Stacey Abrams and "Russian election interference" and "Facebook is to blame."

One need not downplay the evils of January 6 or the lies of President Trump post-election in order to recognize the game being played. Politics is always politics. Always.