According to CNN, there was a “wild exchange” between Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga) Tuesday evening at a rules committee meeting after Raskin asked Clyde if he stands by his comment comparing MAGA rioters storming the Capitol on Jan. 6 to “a normal tourist visit.”
“Watching the TV footage of those who entered the Capitol and walked through Statuary Hall, showed people in an orderly fashion in between the stanchions and ropes taking pictures. If you didn’t know the footage was from January 6, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit,” Clyde said during a hearing in May with former Trump administration officials about the response to the assault.
The 10 minute back-and-forth began when Raskin asked Clyde if he watched the hearing with the four officers earlier on Tuesday.
Clyde objected and said, “Let’s stick to the amendment.”
Raskin continued to press him about whether or not he watched the officers’ testimony.
“Do you stand by your statement that they were tourists?” Raskin asked.
“Quote my exact statement, not your interpretation of my statement,” Clyde said.
Raskin read Clyde’s exact words from the hearing in May. “Those are your words,” Raskin said.
“I stand by that exact statement as I said it,” Clyde responded.
Watch a clip of the full 10 minute back-and-forth on Mediaite.
Raskin is a member of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. The panel had their first hearing on Tuesday with four police officers who were defending the Capitol that day.
The officers rejected Clyde’s comparison of the riot to a typical “tourist visit.”
Asked how he felt about the comparison, Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges, who repeatedly referred to members of the pro-Trump mob as “terrorists” said: “If that’s what American tourists are like, I can see why foreign countries don’t like American tourists.”
“I can see why someone would take issue with the title of terrorist. It’s gained a lot of notoriety in our vocabulary in the past few decades, and we’d like to believe that no, that couldn’t happen here. No domestic terrorism. No homegrown threats,” Hodges said.
“But I came prepared,” he continued, reading an excerpt of U.S. statute that defines “domestic terrorism” as “activities that involve acts dangerous to human life” that violate criminal law and “appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.”
Capitol Police Sergeant Aquilino Gonell said, “I don’t know how you would call an attack on officers a tour.”
