The Meaning of January 6th | John Wood, Jr. & Ciaran O’Connor

I appreciate the dialogue surrounding the January 6th riots, in observance of its anniversary. This was my first interaction with both hosts and think highly of both. Ciaran’s comments and leading questions (about a fundamental potential move of millions in the Republican Party to the fringe) do express some of the hyperbolic messaging that is being provided by some of the media and some Democrats and it may require additional reflection. I would argue that during the election process, there was an overwhelming subjective view that the sheer #’s of votes being received for Joe Biden, who was not campaigning as a change agent and was #3 in the Democratic Primaries up until the final few months before the nomination, had to be false. The majority of Republicans may argue distrust comes from a lack of transparency from the time that voters are registered throughout the election cycle, but aren’t going to be joining the Proud Boys or a militia.

The challenge for Republicans was that there was no clear way of validating their views and leadership was unwilling/unable to properly create a cogent framework for questioning the results. I work in a risk-based corporate environment and the potential reviews and assessments of specific risks were never sufficiently explained. Audits/recounts of mail-in votes in swing states were conducted but they did not capture the true potential risk whereby votes could have been harvested, were not completed by the registered voter, and submitted to vote boxes that were incapable of identifying harvest activities. There has been no intention of independently reviewing data to look for patterns (voter registrations were received in batches, mail-in ballot requests were received in batches, reconciling the populations that have data in both sets, etc.) Also, audits of voting machines were performed, but the details on ‘how’ this audit was performed was never questioned in full and did not explain the lineage of data from voting machines to registry and whether outside forces could have affected the data at any point in the chain. I think it is reasonable to question these points and if they have been explained, then we need a better outlet to get these details. Most Republicans could still believe that there is a chance that the election results could have been false, but almost all understand that there is no way to further prove these points and move on with their lives.

It would benefit Republicans to accept this information (from any legitimate source) and allow for honest assessment based on these factors. The current administration might also benefit by providing this assessment, but they must be able/willing to support the facts/details that support the assessment. A very partisan activity like the creation of the Jan 6th committee is not going to be the answer and would cause more chaos.

Also, John Wood Jr for President!