Following the Jan. 6 riot at the United States Capitol, numerous commentators and even Democrat politicians have equated the events of that day to the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, when Al Qaeda murdered nearly 3,000 people.
Retired New York Deputy Fire Chief Jim Riches, who lost friends and colleagues in the 9/11 attack, is among the many other survivors who spoke to Fox News to say that they were disgusted when they hear the two events being compared. Some have even suggested that the riot, while a spectacle for cable news, was worse than 9/11.
“It’s a shame,” Riches stated. “Are they kidding me? 3,000 people died, plus we have more people dying from the air that was down there … They’re comparing it to score points politically. The families are really [angry]. When I talk to them, when they compare it to that, they find that outrageous.”
Following the events of Jan. 6, liberal pundits have taken to likening the two events, claiming that they both were direct attacks on democracy. Democrat lawmakers have repeatedly stated that they want a “9/11-style” commission to investigate the riot at the Capitol. As detailed by Fox, former George W. Bush strategist Matthew Dowd claimed that the riot was in fact worse than 9/11 because it divided the country. The Lincoln Project’s co-founder Steve Schmidt argued that Dwod was not only right, but that it would be even worse in the long run because the divisions would cause a greater loss of life than 9/11.
“He couldn’t be more right,” Schmidt said at a virtual town hall for the Lincoln Project last week. “The 1/6 attack for the future of the country was a profoundly more dangerous event than the 9/11 attacks. And in the end, the 1/6 attacks are likely to kill a lot more Americans than were killed in the 9/11 attacks, which will include the casualties of the wars that lasted 20 years following.”
The group even released an ad directly comparing the two events, as if the deaths of thousands of Americans, who died aboard four airplanes, the Pentagon, and the New York World Trade Center, is equitable to any loss of life that happened on Jan. 6.
https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1415657407506640899?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1415657407506640899%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fconservativebrief.com%2Finflammatory-911-families-slam-democrats-45557%2F
On social media, White House correspondent for HuffPost, S.V. Date called Jan. 6 “1000 percent worse” than 9/11.
White House correspondent for Huff Post 👀👀 pic.twitter.com/baFhDuE9f6
— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) May 25, 2021
“Clear thinking people see these inflammatory statements as the bullshit they are,” said Don Arias, whose brother Adam died on 9/11. “There’s no comparison.”
“The people making the assertion likely don’t believe what they are saying,” said Cornell Law School professor William A. Jacobson to Fox News. “The riot, while it obviously never should have happened, is being exploited by Democrats and liberal media.”
“It’s unfortunate because we’re coming up in the 20th anniversary,” said Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles Burlingame was murdered while piloting American Airlines Flight 77, the plane that crashed into the Pentagon, according to Fox News.
“There are a lot of young people who have no living memory of 9/11 … When you have all these comparisons and analogies, which are inflated and ridiculous, it minimizes what actually happened, and that’s what’s happening here. It’s a deliberate ploy,” she said.
Burlingame had previously penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal declaring such comparisons to be a “travesty.”
“They just dehumanize our families for political gain,” said Joe Connor, whose cousin Steven Schlag was one of thousands who died that day. “I guess they call it gaslighting. They can say these things that will make people believe that these riots were worse than the worst thing that happened on American soil. Either they’re ignorant or they’re just really devious and clever, and you can put nothing past them, because if you’re willing to lie to that degree … It’s a disturbing trend to me.”