Republican Claims Democrats Paid US Capitol Rioters To Make Trump Look Bad

Republican Congressman Madison Cawthorn has claimed the Democrats paid rioters at the US Capitol to make President Donald Trump ‘look bad’. 

Right-wing supporters were out in force on January 6, when they attended a Trump rally before descending upon the Capitol building to protest the election results.

Trump told his supporters he would ‘be there’ with them as they marched to the Capitol, and after rioters stormed the building, the president was charged with ‘incitement to insurrection’.

Cawthorn’s belief that Democrats are responsible for part of the chaos comes after Biden expressed his disdain for the events, describing those involved as ‘a riotous mob, insurrectionists, domestic terrorists’.

During an appearance on the conservative talk radio program The Charlie Kirk Show, per Newsweek, the North Carolina Congressman expressed his opinion that the mob was spurred by ‘agitators strategically placed inside of this group’.

He continued:

You can call them Antifa, you can call them people paid by the Democratic machine – but [they were there] to make the Trump campaign, the Trump movement, look bad, and to make this look like it was a violent outrage, when really the battle was being fought by people like myself and other great patriots who are standing up against the establishment and standing up against this tyranny that we see in our country.

Cawthorn appeared to be prepared for chaos at the Capitol as he added that he carried multiple loaded weapons in the House chambers on the day of the insurrection. Two days before, on January 4, he told his Twitter followers, ‘It’s time to fight.’

The congressman is not alone in his opinion that members of the anti-fascist and anti-racist political movement Antifa were behind the riots, with vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, Alabama Republican Mo Brooks, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton all voicing similar theories.

However, an FBI investigation into the events determined that there was no evidence to link Antifa to the riot.

It is clear that the extreme events of January 6 were not down to ‘agitators’ in the crowd on the day, as members of the mob were making plans to storm the Capitol weeks before actually doing so.

In the month before the insurrection, the phrase ‘Storm the Capitol’ was used 100,000 times online, as Trump supporters voiced plans on mainstream social media platforms as well as on pro-Trump forums such as ‘TheDonald’.

The president has denied responsibility for the riot, making a U-turn after initially telling protesters he ‘loved’ them by stating that ‘no true supporter of [his] could ever endorse political violence’.

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