Ari Fleischer downplays links between right-wing politics and Capitol insurrection
Right-wing figures incited and participated in the insurrection
Published
Citation From the January 21, 2021 edition of Fox News' Outnumbered
LISA KENNEDY MONTGOMERY (CO-HOST): So Ari, John Brennan, the former CIA director is now defining libertarians as the problem. He says that libertarians are religious, fervents, they are bigots, they are nativists, and authoritarians. Clearly, John Brennan has a different dictionary in terms of what libertarianism really is. How dangerous is this?
ARI FLEISCHER (FOX CONTRIBUTOR, FORMER WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY): Here's what I wish the left side of America and the media side of America would understand. The 74 million people who voted for Donald Trump did so intelligently, they did so thoughtfully, they did so caringly. It's their heartfelt view that what he represented and his policies were the best for America.
If they try to shoehorn all those people into white supremacy, racist extremism, they then become the extremists with their rhetoric. It's not the way America is built.
There are fringes indeed on both sides. And when it comes for violence, I'm for going after both fringes. There is a famous expression, it's on the Supreme Court, it's at the Justice Department, and that is that justice is blind. And the lady who represents justice in marble, in statues, she has a blindfold around her eyes, a scale that is even.
I don't look at this as left or right. I look at it as fringe and fringe. The people at the Capitol that wore Camp Auschwitz sweatshirt, they're not right-wing, they're looney off the wing. People on the left, ANTIFA in Portland last night, I did not, you noticed earlier, call them as you noticed call them left-wing; I called them anti-police radicals. We should not shoehorn left and right into normal talk of politics when it comes to violence. So I'm for targeting those who engage in violence, but not those that engage in politics.