.MaddowBlog: Fmr. Pres. Trump didn't do his most dangerous followers any favors on Jan. 6. Twenty weeks later, he's still making their lives worse.
Supporters of President Donald Trump gather at the west entrance of the Capitol during a "Stop the Steal" protest outside of the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021.Several hundred suspected rioters have been charged in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrectionist attack on the Capitol, and many have appeared in courtrooms in recent weeks asking to be released pending trial. Those requests aren't going especially well for an important reason.
To hear the defendants and their lawyers tell it, there's no reason to keep them in jail ahead of their criminal trials because the accused insurrectionists don't pose a public threat. The argument is relatively straightforward: Jan. 6 was an unusual, onetime event -- a singular, unrepeatable moment in time -- in which a violent mob was whipped into a frenzy by Donald Trump's lies.
Twenty weeks later, with Trump out of office, the alleged rioters keep telling judges that there's no reason to see them as dangerous. There's just one problem, whichTrump's refusal to accept the reality that he lost the 2020 election — reflected in a torrent of recent statements renewing discredited claims about a "rigged" vote — has become a feature of prosecutors' latest attempts to jail Capitol riot defendants they deem too dangerous to release pending trial.
It's a difficult truth to get around: if Trump's election lies led these suspected rioters to launch a violent attack, and Trump is still telling the exact same election lies, then judges have a reason to believe these same suspected rioters may be dangerous. Indeed, the former president seems wholly incapable of curtailing his uncontrollable dishonesty, issuing