Five months ago, D.C. police officer Michael Fanone was tased and beaten unconscious by pro-Trump supporters while defending the Capitol on January 6. On Wednesday, freshman Rep. Andrew Clyde—one of the lawmakers Fanone risked his life to protect—refused to shake his hand and bolted as soon as he had the chance. “Like a coward,” Fanone told CNN’s Don Lemon. “I took it as a representation of Andrew Clyde giving the middle finger to myself and every other member of the Metropolitan Police Department and U.S. Capitol police that responded that day.”
The interaction came a day after Clyde, joined by 20 other House Republicans, voted against awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to all law enforcement who responded on January 6. Fanone on Wednesday returned to the Hill alongside Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn in an effort to meet with the lawmakers who had opposed the bill and share his experience fending off the mob. Finding himself in an elevator with Clyde—who last month tried to downplay the footage from the insurrection as resembling a “normal tourist visit”—Fanone gestured to shake the congressman’s hand, but Clyde did not extend his hand in return, claiming he didn’t know who the officer was. Fanone said he then introduced himself as someone who “fought to defend the Capitol,” recounting the brain injury and heart attack he suffered as a result. “His response was nothing,” Fanone told the Washington Post. “He turned away from me, pulled out his cellphone and started thumbing through the apps.” (Clyde’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, according to the Post and CNN.)
Clyde is among the numerous Republicans who have tried to minimize the riot that left five people dead and, in doing so, has undermined the party’s longstanding pro-police messaging. GOP support for law enforcement was particularly strained last month, when Senate Republicans blocked the creation of an independent commission to investigate the Capitol riot—a measure supported by fallen Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick’s family. Rep. Paul Gosar has since made the claim that Ashli Babbitt, the insurrectionist fatally shot while trying to breach the building, was “executed” by a Capitol police officer who was “laying in wait” before firing.
All of which has presented Democrats with an opportunity, Politico reports. Just as Republicans seized on the liberal “defund the police” movement as a line of attack against their opponents, Democrats have jumped at the contradiction between the GOP’s professed support for law enforcement and disrespectful treatment of police in the aftermath of the Capitol attack. The “GOP loves to say ‘back the blue’ but really it is only when politically convenient,” Rep. Ruben Gallego tweeted following Gosar’s comments. In refusing to recognize Jan. 6 responders with the highest congressional honor on Tuesday and declining to shake one such officer’s hand a day later, members of the GOP this week have bolstered attacks being leveled by those across the aisle. “Was there prior support [in the GOP] for law enforcement? Or just phony political pandering? Because when the rubber meets the road, they’re choosing Trump over the cops,” Rep. Eric Swalwell, who tweeted a similar point following Fanone’s interaction with Clyde, told Politico.
Right-wing media is not far behind lawmakers like Gosar, who have dragged law enforcement in the aftermath of the insurrection. Fox News’ Tucker Carlson is pushing the bizarre conspiracy theory that the FBI, rather than a pro-Trump mob, was at least in part responsible for the Capitol attack—a theory since amplified by Georgia congresswoman and QAnon promoter Marjorie Taylor Greene. “If Republicans actually believed that Jan. 6 was an ‘inside job’ they’d support a commission to investigate what happened that day and before,” Digital Forensic Lab’s Jared Holt points out. “That they would rather outsource that role to misinfo swamps online says about everything one needs to know about the genuineness here.”
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