Jan. 6 Deniers

Susan Estrich on Jan 10, 2026

When he entered the camps for the first time, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, confronting the horror, insisted that photographers create a full record of the atrocities, lest future generations deny that it had happened. Which hasn't fully stopped the deniers.

On Jan. 6, 2021, we all saw an insurrection directed at our democracy. It was on live television. Those who bore witness continue to remind us. Which hasn't stopped the president from denying that it happened.

In a brilliant guest essay in The New York Times, Congressman Jamie Raskin writes of the horrors that took place at the Capitol, how "the rampaging mob drove members of Congress out of our chambers, conducted a search-and-destroy mission for the mahogany boxes containing Electoral College votes and prepared a gallows on the Capitol grounds for the vice president as they hunted him down, chanting, 'Hang Mike Pence!'"

And of the Capitol Police, who put their lives on the line to protect our democracy. He describes how one Daniel Rodriguez repeatedly plunged a stun gun into the neck of Officer Michael Fanone as the mob chanted, "Kill him with his gun." The officer, who was not even on duty that day but had rushed to the Capitol to help, suffered a heart attack and traumatic brain injuries. The judge in the case called Mr. Rodriguez a "one-man army of hate" and sentenced him to more than 12 years in prison. President Donald Trump pardoned Rodriguez.

Or consider Patrick McCaughey III, who used a stolen police riot shield to crush Officer Daniel Hodges in a metal door frame, leaving him trapped, bleeding, unable to breathe and crying for help. The judge, a Trump appointee, described Mr. McCaughey as the "poster child for all that was dangerous and appalling" about the Jan. 6 riot and sentenced him to more than seven years in prison

President Trump pardoned him too, along with all the others. Then he turned around and fired or demoted all the federal agents and prosecutors who worked on the Jan. 6 investigation. As if it never happened.

But this year, on the fifth anniversary, Trump's denial of Jan. 6 reached new heights. The White House unveiled a new website about Jan. 6, which blames the riot on the Capitol Police and Nancy Pelosi. Forget what you saw with your own eyes. On the official White House website, the history of Jan. 6 has been replaced by lies. "Discover the real January 6 story: peaceful protest turned tragedy, Deep State entrapment, media deception, and President Trump's triumphant pardons."

The site accuses Democrats of creating a "gaslighting narrative" about Jan. 6 in their efforts to certify "a fraud-ridden election" and to "persecute innocent Americans." There's no mention of Officer Fanone or Officer Hodges or any of the 140 police officers who were injured that day, nor any of those who died afterwards. "Zero law enforcement officers lost their lives." Not so.

Next year, will they be rewriting the textbooks?

Are we so far apart that we cannot agree on what our eyes can see, what hard evidence establishes?

The mainstream media that covered the new White House website, and many of them did, were careful to point out all the mistakes, with some taking the space to recount the details. But so what? We used to say that today's paper wraps tomorrow's fish. Now it just disappears. The official White House website and the myriad conspiracy theories that float around it live a life of their own on social media.

There are not two sides of the story of what happened on Jan. 6 any more than there are two sides of what happened in the Holocaust. There is what General Eisenhower and his photographers saw, what Holocaust scholars and museums have meticulously documented; there is what television and surveillance cameras captured on Jan. 6, and what happened in courts across the country when the president tried to prove that the election was stolen. There is truth, and there are lies. Has the battle to speak the truth -- and have it be accepted as true -- ever been so fraught?

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To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.