Former Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) — President-elect Donald Trump‘s original nominee for Attorney General before Gaetz withdrew his name from consideration as the release of a House Ethics Committee report threatened his viability — launched his new show on One America News this week.
On the anniversary of the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters who wanted to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election win, Gaetz wrote on X: “Today is the four year anniversary of @laurenboebert getting accused of leading recon tours of the Capitol. Which is hilarious to everyone who knows and loves Lauren… (because she still gets lost in the Capitol).”
The Colorado congresswoman replied: “Can hardly find the dang bathrooms!”
[Using “recon” as shorthand for military-style reconnaissance, Gaetz is referencing the suspicions of Rep. Steve Cohen (D- TN) after he, as CNN reported, “personally saw Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado guiding a group of people through the Cannon House Office Building tunnel in the days leading up the Capitol insurrection on January 6.”]
Today is the four year anniversary of @laurenboebert getting accused of leading recon tours of the Capitol.
Which is hilarious to everyone who knows and loves Lauren…
(because she still gets lost in the Capitol)
— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) January 6, 2025
Gaetz makes light of the attack today in a very different moment, as the fourth anniversary of the attack also marks the (peaceful) certification of the 2024 vote, which Trump won.
And though the narrative about the attack — once nearly universally derided — has been successfully altered in some quarters since the attack and is now viewed differently by many on the right, yet neither side commonly portrays the events of that day in the jocular way Gaetz does. (174 police officers were reported injured and four officers who responded to the attack died by suicide within seven months.)
Boebert, who has denied any involvement in the Jan 6 riot, has vowed to fight for the release of the rioters serving time in prison for their actions at the Capitol that day.
According to the DOJ, of the 1,265 people who have been charged for their actions surrounding the Capitol riot, 718 pleaded guilty and 139 have been found guilty at contested trials. President-elect Trump promised multiple times on the campaign trail to pardon what he characterizes as the “patriots” who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021.