Left-Wing Journalist Pens Apology Letter After Major Jan. 6 Revelation - 'I Am So Sorry'
There are apologies that are not apologies.
You can spot a non-apology when it uses words like “mistakes were made,” or “If I offended anyone …” or “that’s not who I am.” You know language like that is not an apology.
Then there’s a real apology. Like the “full-throated apology” of leftist Naomi Wolf, regretting being “duped” by the false narrative regarding the Capitol incursion of Jan. 6, 2021.
Essentially, Tucker Carlson’s airing of raw footage from the breach of the U.S. Capitol prompted her change of heart.
And she realized “there is no way to avoid this moment. The formal letter of apology.”
“I made mistakes in judgment,” wrote Wolf — who is a liberal progressive feminist author, journalist and former political advisor to Al Gore and Bill Clinton — in her online “Outspoken” column.
But she didn’t use that as an excuse, as her apology continued with, “[t]hese mistakes, multiplied by the tens of thousands and millions on the part of people just like me, hurt millions of other people like you all, in existential ways.”
And she was specific in the “you all” to whom she was apologizing – “Conservatives, Republicans, MAGA: I am so sorry.”
That was an apology.
And grace demands its acceptance.
Especially in that Wolf’s mea culpa is undergirded by several thousand words of specifically how she and other Jan. 6 narrative believers failed.
My letter of apology. https://t.co/tZqglhoQTj
— Dr Naomi Wolf (@naomirwolf) March 9, 2023
She noted how former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was in charge of Capitol Police on Jan. 6, 2021, despite claims of “misinformation” by alleged fact-checkers.
Wolf decried the multi-million dollar January 6 Committee labeling former President Trump as a terrorist and Republicans “by association as ‘insurrectionists,’ or as insurrectionists’ sympathizers and fellow-travelers.”
Outlining other events underscoring her apology was the blaming of those entering the Capitol as having killed Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who was determined to have died not at the hands of rioters at the Capitol, but of natural causes two days after the event.
“There is no way to unsee Officer Brian Sicknick … alive in at least one section of the newly released video,” she said.
Wolf was critical of both Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, for not saying the video Carlson presented was false.
Rather, Schumer said it was “shameful” for Fox to show it, Wolf wrote, and McConnell stated it was “a mistake” to stray from the official position of the Capitol Police chief.
Yet, Wolf disagreed with Carlson’s description of the Jan. 6 event as “mostly peaceful chaos.”
“But you don’t have to agree with Mr. Carlson’s interpretation of the videos, to believe, as I do, that he engaged in valuable journalism simply by airing the footage that was leaked to him,” she said.
“And remember, by law that footage belongs to us – it is a public record, and all public records literally belong to the American people. ‘In a democracy, records belong to the people,’ explains the National Archives” Wolf wrote.
She also noted the hypocrisy of leftists praising Daniel Ellsberg for leaking the “Pentagon Papers” critical of the Vietnam War and published in The New York Times in 1971 while being critical of Carlson for his “airing of video material of national significance that the current government would prefer to keep hidden.”
“You don’t have to agree with Mr Carlson’s interpretation of the videos, to conclude that the Democrats in leadership, for their own part, have cherry-picked, hyped, spun, and in some ways appear to have lied about, aspects of January 6, turning a tragedy for the nation into a politicized talking point aimed at discrediting half of our electorate,” according to Wolf.
She wrote that one cannot “un-hear” former Capitol Police officer Tarik Johnson telling Carlson how he received no direction when, terrified, he contacted his superiors to find out what to do as the Capitol was being breached.
Commented Wolf: “There is always a security chain of command in the Capitol, at the Rayburn Building, at the White House, of course, and so on, which is part of a rock-solid ‘security plan.’”
“The fact that so much confusion in security practice took place on January 6 is hard to understand,” Wolf wrote, since Washington’s security protocols mean an incursion like what occurred “can never happen.”
Regarding so-called “Q-Anon Shaman” Jacob Chansley, who can be seen on the newly released videos receiving friendly escort by Capitol Police, “the barbaric nature of his appearance was so illustrative of exactly the message that Democrats in leadership wished to send about the event – that I am not surprised to see that his path to the center of events was not blocked but was apparently facilitated by Capitol Police.”
Chansley was “escorted to the beating heart of the action, where his image could be memorialized by a battery of cameras forever.”
Having studied history and the theatrics of history, Wolf said the placement of Chansley did not surprise her.
In her apology, Wolf noted that despite security concerns, the White House and Capitol are public buildings and are, for the most part, open to the people.
“Massing peacefully at the Capitol and other public buildings, is part of our rights and inheritance as citizens, and this use of our First Amendment right to assemble has a long history.
“… The Capitol is not a sealed space exclusively for legislators, but it is one that is supposed to welcome the public in an orderly way.”
According to Wolf: “I must say that I am sorry for believing the dominant legacy-media “narrative” pretty completely from the time it was rolled out, without asking questions.”
While those who engaged in violence at the Capitol must be held accountable, those who misrepresented the event must also be held accountable, she said.
“Jan. 6 has become, as the DNC intended it to become, after the fact, a ‘third rail;’ a shorthand used to dismiss or criminalize an entire population and political point of view.
“Peaceful Republicans and conservatives as a whole have been demonized by the story told by Democrats in leadership of what happened that day.
“So half of the country has been tarred by association, and is now in many quarters presumed to consist of chaotic berserkers, anti-democratic rabble, and violent upstarts, whose sole goal is the murder of our democracy.
“Republicans, conservatives, I am sorry.”
Wolf also said she’s become skeptical of establishment media stories on the Hunter Biden laptop, the Trump-Russia collusion claim, and that Trump instigated a riot at the Capitol.
She’s even called into question her dislike of Trump, since she says she’s been lied to about him for so long.
“I am sorry the nation was damaged by so much untruth issued by those with whom I identified at the time.
“I am sorry my former ‘tribe’ is angry at a journalist for engaging in —- journalism.
“I am sorry I believed so much nonsense.
“Though it is no doubt too little, too late —
“Conservatives, Republicans, MAGA:
“I am so sorry.”
CORRECTION, March 13, 2023: Mitch McConnell is minority leader of the Senate. An earlier version of this article gave him an incorrect title.
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