Even More Dumb Stuff That's Happened Since the Insurrection

While the actual day of the recent Capitol insurrection contained plenty of dumb things, the days since have been filled with even more, even dumber events. As it turns out, a group of Trump-supporters cannot simply incite chaos at the nation’s most sacred building without leaving in its wake a slew of dumbfounding anecdotes. In the days following, law enforcement is haphazardly pursuing justice against various identifiable people from the insurrection. The events that transpired were so well-documented and unambiguously illegal that one lawyer, asked about his defense strategy, said, “I’m not a magician.” Not to mention Trump may have finally lost his sheen, and brands are bravely attempting to do their part to curtail alt-right or neo-Nazi activity on their platforms, approximately several years too late. 

Emerging details and consequences for the more tawdry events surrounding the insurrection means it’s time for another roundup of insurrection-related dumb stuff. 

People were initially horrified by the man carrying handfuls of zip ties around the Capitol, but as we later learned, he also brought his mom along. Unclear if this makes him more or less scary, and also unclear if his mom was arrested along with him in Nashville on Sunday. 

After Twitter made the bold and brave decision to permanently ban @realDonaldTrump forever and ever, Trump tiptoed on over to @POTUS, an account he’s seldom used during his tenure, and tried a little tweet action from there. Twitter was immediately wise to the scheme, and promptly deleted the tweets. Trump, or his staff, attempted to post the same statement on other accounts including @TeamTrump, and were also banned. Ban evasion is a longstanding unequivocal internet crime, and it’s satisfying to see, finally, that no one is above forum law and order.

Adam Johnson, the man captured in a photo stealing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s lectern, was arrested over the weekend, and he immediately lawyered up. The challenge now for his legal team is somehow proving that what is happening in the photo did not actually happen. “Yeah, we’ve got a problem; I’m not a magician,” Johnson’s lawyer stated. “Yeah, we’ve got a photograph of our client in what appears to be inside the federal building, or inside the Capitol, with government property.”

Midday Monday, the U.S. Department of State posted that Donald Trump’s presidential term officially ended at 7:49 p.m. EST on January 11, 2021. A little odd, since that did not happen. BuzzFeed News dug into it, and apparently the change came from a “disgruntled staffer” with access to the freaking Department of State CMS. Amazing this hasn’t happened before now.

Of the four deaths associated with the Capitol insurrection, the details of one, in particular, were striking: Early reports suggested a man involved in the riot died of a heart attack, incurred as a result of accidentally tasing himself. Snopes took it upon itself to run a full fact-check and interviewed the man’s wife, who claimed, “to her knowledge,” he was only carrying a flagpole, and did not own a taser. In our journalistic duty, we must note that this would not preclude her husband owning a secret taser, and accidentally deploying it during a moment of confusion.

While Democrats in Congress promised a speedy impeachment process on the same evening as the Capitol insurrection, the process has also been delayed, due to circumstances, and so, actually, would it be cool with everyone if the impeachment trial didn’t start until January 20? We’re all very worried about what the man will do in the next two weeks, but also, we will pursue action in two weeks. 

Peloton has struggled with an odd amount of consvervative vitriol and political speak throughout the past year, but none of it compares to the recent decision to ban #StopTheSteal from its leaderboard tags, after last week’s Capitol insurrection. As the Cut previously reported, leaderboard tags are typically things like #pelotonmoms and #sweatingforthewedding, not miniature screeds making false claims about presidential election results. 

According to ABC reporter Melissa Blasius, Chansley’s mother said he’s been refusing food in jail since Friday, adding recently that “he gets very sick” if he eats non-organic food.  There’s nothing more that can possibly be said about this, except that that’s not how food works and it’s not possible to have any sensitivity to non-organic food. 

According to Wired, a very basic bug allows users on the conservative-leaning social network Parler to download photos, videos, messages, and attached geolocation from the “free speech” app, which quickly turned into a haven for conservative disinformation. The service is now offline after Amazon cut off its service, but we wonder what people who managed to download the entire thing before that will do with this info!

Golf, and not being President, is the way to Trump’s heart, as we all perhaps should have known by now. According to White House correspondent Maggie Haberman, Trump was “gutted” by the PGA declining to host a tournament at one of his New Jersey golf courses in 2022, and was far more upset by this news than the news of impeachment papers being introduced by House Democrats.