From WBW:
It’s WBW challenge time! Dear readers we challenge you to find one…just one…truth in insurrection denier Wendy’s show today! pic.twitter.com/45LO84HK3y
— WENDY BELL WATCH (@JonInPGH) May 7, 2022
Ok. I'm game. I'll go take a look.
Wendy starts with:
On January 6, 2020 at the ellipse in Washington, DC, in front of an audience estimated to be upwards of a million people...
This is incorrect. From Newsweek 12/23/21:
The Secret Service added: "There are approximately fifty nine (59) groups identified as potentially participating in First Amendment activities on January 6, 2021 at or around the White House Complex (WHC) ... Expected attendance is around 20,000 participants."
Six times as many protestors—as many as 120,000—would show up on the Mall on January 6, according to classified numbers still not released by the Secret Service and the FBI but seen by Newsweek. But there is still not an official estimate, nor have any of the Congressional committees or task forces offered a number. Nor is there a clear number of how many people actually entered the Capitol, or tried to get in.
And from a little more than a year later The LA Times 01/05/2022:
Rally organizers told the National Park Service that they anticipated 30,000 people would attend. Law enforcement said the crowd size ahead of the protest was possibly as much as 80,000, according to then-Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy. The crowd size at the rally was at least 10,000, according to the Associated Press.
Even if the largest number mentioned (120,000) is accurate, that's still less than one eighth of Wendy's "an audience estimated to be upwards of a million people."
Not a good start, Wendy. But she went on and then said:
A million people who support the whole “Make America Great” notion, is a safe place to be. First, a hell of a lot of them are carrying, so that makes me feel good right away.No real way to fact check this. But I'd question the word "safe." Ask the people punched out at Trump rallies if they feel safe.
But let's go to the main part of Wendy's gaslighting. You can read a transcript of Trump's remarks that day here. It's a long run-on sentence so we'll take in phrase by phrase:
And so when Donald Trump was there urging his fellow Americans to peacefully and patriotically protest the certification of the election results...
While Trump did say:
I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
He also said:
All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats, which is what they're doing. And stolen by the fake news media. That's what they've done and what they're doing. We will never give up, we will never concede. It doesn't happen. You don't concede when there's theft involved.
Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore and that's what this is all about. And to use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with: We will stop the steal. Today I will lay out just some of the evidence proving that we won this election and we won it by a landslide. This was not a close election.
And:
And again, most people would stand there at 9 o'clock in the evening and say I want to thank you very much, and they go off to some other life. But I said something's wrong here, something is really wrong, can have happened.
And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.
Our exciting adventures and boldest endeavors have not yet begun. My fellow Americans, for our movement, for our children, and for our beloved country.
And I say this despite all that's happened. The best is yet to come.
So we're going to, we're going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue. And we're going to the Capitol, and we're going to try and give.
The Democrats are hopeless — they never vote for anything. Not even one vote. But we're going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don't need any of our help. We're going to try and give them
So let's walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.
So Wendy left out the part where Trump told his crowd that the election was stolen. She left out the part where he told them, "if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore." She left out the part where he told them to go to The Capitol to give the "weak" Republicans "the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.
Didn't she already say that the crowd was carrying? Why did she leave out the parts where Trump was telling the armed crowd to go The Capitol to convince those weak Republicans to do his bidding?
Kinda makes you wonder why she left those parts out when she wanted to convince yinz that he said nothing other than "peaceful" and "patriotic" to his armed and angry mob.
Then she criticizes with this:
[The Democrats] stopped at nothing to dig into his cell phone data, and “Why didn't he speak sooner about the violence at The Capitol?”
Hmm. Cell phone data and asking Trump to stop the violence. Wait, wasn't that The Republicans?
Yes, it was. Wendy, you might want to read this. It's a news article about Republican Liz Cheney's remarks regarding the text messages Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows received on January 6:
First, President Trump's failure to stop the violence. On January 6th, our Capitol building was attacked and invaded. The mob was summoned to Washington by President Trump. And, as many of those involved have admitted – on videotape, in social media, and in Federal District Court – they were provoked to violence by President Trump's false claims that the election was stolen.
The violence was evident to all – it was covered in real time by almost every news channel. But, for 187 minutes, President Trump refused to act when action by our President was required, indeed essential, and compelled by his oath to our Constitution. Mr. Meadows received numerous text messages, which he has produced without any privilege claim – imploring that Mr. Trump take the specific action we all knew his duty required.
These texts leave no doubt: the White House knew exactly what was happening at the Capitol. Republican members of Congress and others wrote to Mark Meadows as the attack was underway.
And as crazie as Wendy sounded up until that poiint, she finally broke the psycho-sack open with this:
...the violence at The Capitol?” which I believe was planned by the Democrats, by Nancy Pelosi specifically not allowing sufficient security to be there, enabled by specific members of The Capitol Police.
Oddly several have committed suicide since – makes you wonder why.
It was certainly aided by ninja-looking antifa thugs and by specific plants in the crowd who were put there to create chaos.
Lots o'crazie to unpack here.
First off, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is not in charge of the Capitol Police so she had no say in allowing or not allowing sufficient security that day.
Second, the suicides. Is Wendy saying that they were not suicides? Makes you wonder what Wendy was thinking when she said that. Is she saying they were they silenced for knowing too much? The video played at that QAnon Conference PA State Senator Doug Mastriano attended made the same case about JFK and "the high risk of cabal exposure" whatever that means.
Hey, Wendy! Next time you talk to Doug maybe you can ask him about the QAnon conference he attended. Maybe you can get him to show you The Sword of David they gave him or the contents of that heavy goodie bag also gave him.
In any event Wendy's assertion is simply disgusting.
Finally, were there "ninja-looking antifa thugs" in the crowd that stormed The Capitol that day?
The FBI has found no evidence so far that far-left groups such as Antifa participated in the violent mob of President Donald Trump supporters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 despite persistent conspiracy theories, the bureau's director said Tuesday, adding that racially motivated violent extremists – white supremacists – and members of militant groups such as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers represent the preponderance of people arrested.
"We're equal opportunity in looking for violent extremism of any ideology," FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday morning about the bureau's investigations since the deadly violence at the U.S. Capitol. "We have not seen, to date, any evidence of anarchist violent extremist or people who subscribe to Antifa in connection with Jan. 6."
In fact according to the AP (and that's a news organization, Wendy):
They came from across America, summoned by President Donald Trump to march on Washington in support of his false claim that the November election was stolen and to stop the congressional certification of Democrat Joe Biden as the victor.
“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” Trump tweeted a week before Christmas. “Be there, will be wild!”
The insurrectionist mob that showed up at the president’s behest and stormed the U.S. Capitol was overwhelmingly made up of longtime Trump supporters, including Republican Party officials, GOP political donors, far-right militants, white supremacists, off-duty police, members of the military and adherents of the QAnon myth that the government is secretly controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophile cannibals. Records show that some were heavily armed and included convicted criminals, such as a Florida man recently released from prison for attempted murder.
The Associated Press reviewed social media posts, voter registrations, court files and other public records for more than 120 people either facing criminal charges related to the Jan. 6 unrest or who, going maskless during the pandemic, were later identified through photographs and videos taken during the melee.
The evidence gives lie to claims by right-wing pundits and Republican officials such as Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., that the violence was perpetrated by left-wing antifa thugs rather than supporters of the president.
So how much of Wendy's gaslight was actually correct?
Well, she got the date and place of Trump's attempted coup correct: January 6 at The Ellipse
And Trump did use these two words as he incited his crowd to go influence the weak Republicans in Congress to overturn the election; peacefully and patriotically.
Most everything else the noxious Wendy Bell got wrong.