What You're Saying Vs What You Really Want To Say

 So far, here is what I've heard Republicans say about the Capitol Riots:
1. "Antifa had committed a false flag attack." A false flag attack is when Group A tries to frame Group B for something Group A did. Most of the mob weren't wearing masks and weren't trying to hide who they were. Quite a few of the people arrested were already famous influencers before the election. Tim Gionet, better known as "Baked Alaska", was one of the alt-right goons who marched at Charlottesville in 2017. He was arrested after livestreaming from within the Capitol. Brandon Straka achieved 15 minutes of notoriety when he refused to wear a mask on an American Airlines flight in 2020 and tweeted about getting kicked off the plane. He said that he had a medical condition known as "sanity" that prohibited him from wearing a mask. Then he went on to film himself at the Capitol riot wearing a powder blue disposable mask. (I guess he got over his self-diagnosed case of sanity).

2. "It was just some tourists." Except tourists don't cause millions in damage, injure over 100 cops, and get five people killed.

3. "The FBI had lured the rioters into storming the Capitol." Recently the FBI had been tricking violent morons into planting fake bombs at buildings. It's debatable if the FBI should continue using this tactic or if such losers are even smart enough to pose a threat. But if you fall for this kind of trick, you have to address the possibility that you are a violent moron too. It's also quite a stretch to claim that Christopher Wray would use Congress as the bait when entrapping Proud Bois.

4. "Ashleigh Babbitt was a victim." This woman was at the front of a mob of people trying to break through a set of locked doors that separated them from a group of members of Congress. If you watch the video of her shooting, you see somebody with a drawn weapon on the other side of the door. Most of the crowd takes the hind and gets down. Babbitt is still attempting to climb through the broken window, presumably to unlock the door from the other side. Stopping an entire mob is a lot to ask from a service pistol, so it was critical that the doors stay closed long enough for Congress to be evacuated. Now I suppose someone who knows more about police work than me could explain a way for that cop to hold back the mob without resorting to lethal force. But that cop also had to make a split second decision. Her death was a foreseeable outcome. Indeed, if the goal was to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and that goal was achieved, then her death might considered "acceptable losses" from a hypothetical military standpoint. But our real non-hypothetical military is backing Joe Biden as President.

What many Republicans really want to say is that they support the January 6th coup attempt. They can't really say that on social media because their accounts will get deleted. They won't say it around anyone who they think is wearing a wire either. 

There are other Republicans who want to say that the coup attempt was Trump's doing, and that it was wrong and foolish. They can't say that out loud at all, because they fear the wrath of Trump supporters. They secretly hope that Trump will go to prison and things will go back to normal. But nobody can say for sure who will be in charge of a post-Trump GOP, or even if such a thing will exist at all.