GOP lawmaker honors police 1 day after calling Capitol riot 'normal tourist visit'

Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA) attended an event Thursday morning hosted by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy in support of law enforcement one day after Clyde minimized violence committed by supporters of Donald Trump on Jan. 6 against officers of the U.S. Capitol Police.

On Wednesday, during a hearing of the House Oversight Committee on the response to the insurrection at the Capitol, Clyde downplayed the behavior of the mob that violently attacked law enforcement officers as they broke into the building in an effort to block Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory in the 2020 presidential election.

Reading from prepared remarks, Clyde said:

There was no insurrection, and to call it an insurrection in my opinion is a boldfaced lie. Watching the TV footage of those who entered the Capitol and walked through Statuary Hall showed people in an orderly fashion staying between the stanchions and ropes, taking videos and pictures. You know, if you didn’t know the TV footage was a video from January the 6th, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.

Video of “those who entered the Capitol” shows just how violent they were.

New body camera footage released Wednesday on CNN shows rioters beating and tasing Metropolitan Police Department Officer Michael Fanone.

At least 140 law enforcement officers who responded to the mob attack were injured. Officers suffered everything from concussions to broken bones to burns on their skin, according to a report from the New York Times.

Two NBC News reporters confronted Clyde after “Back the Blue Bike Tour” event, asking him if he stands by his statement that there was no insurrection.

Clyde claimed that the reporters didn’t take his comments “in context at all,” saying, “You don’t listen to what I said.” He then got into a pickup truck and left the event without answering their question.

This morning @LACaldwellDC @DaniellaMicaela gave Rep Andrew Clyde a chance to explain his comments yesterday that Jan 6 looked like a “normal tourist visit.”

Take a listen—> pic.twitter.com/wf99KjRvzT

— Haley Talbot (@haleytalbotcnn) May 13, 2021

A number of Republican lawmakers tried whitewashed the pro-Trump mob’s actions.

Fanone, the law enforcement officer who was beaten and tasered, told CNN in April, “I experienced the most brutal, savage hand-to-hand combat of my entire life, let alone my policing career, which spans almost two decades. It was nothing that I had ever thought would be a part of my law enforcement career, nor was I prepared to experience.”