HuffPost’s senior White House correspondent called the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol “1000 percent worse” than the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
S.V. Date made the comment in the course of a long Twitter battle in which he called the riots earlier this year an attempt to destroy democracy.
The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks killed nearly 3,000 Americans and led to still ongoing wars in the Middle East that killed many more people than that. One Jan. 6 protester was killed by police and four people associated with them died of natural causes in the vicinity.
But Mr. Date didn’t back down Tuesday, asking “did the US president incite Sept. 11?
Encourage it? Basically set the date for it to happen? Try to remain in power indefinitely because of it? No.”
The Sept. 11 / Jan. 6 comparison began when conservative commentator George Will wrote that he wanted that latter date “burned into the American mind as firmly as 9/11 because it was that scale of a shock to the system.”
Mr. Will’s claim was criticized by Byron York of the Washington Examiner, prompting Mr. Date’s frustrated intervention.
“Trump Apology Corps in full apology mode,” he tweeted at Mr. York.
“The 9/11 terrorists and Osama bin Laden never threatened the heart of the American experiment. The 1/6 terrorists and Donald Trump absolutely did exactly that.”
The Sept. 11 attacks were merely an “act of war,” but Jan. 6 was an “attempt to END OUR DEMOCRACY.”
The comparison prompted some eyerolls, including from one Twitter user who noted that “United 93 was intended to crash into the Capitol. You think January 6th was worse than that?”
That prompted Mr. Date’s one-upmanship.
He retweeted and replied: “1000 percent worse.”
Conservative commentator Stephen L. Miller concluded, “This person is a lunatic who belongs nowhere near a job that is meant to inform people.”
Source:Washington Times
