A week after U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Athens, described the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol as a ‘normal tourist visit,’ Democrats repeatedly threw Clyde’s words back at the Georgia Republican as the U.S. House on Wednesday approved a bill to set up a bipartisan commission to investigate the attack.
“They were not ordinary tourists who came in here,” U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said on the House floor, opening debate on the Jan. 6 commission.
“There were not tourists in the Capitol on Jan. 6th,” said U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlihan, D-Pa. “There were terrorists.”
Clyde’s ‘normal tourist visit’ comment in a Congressional hearing clearly got under the skin of Democrats, many of whom believe Republicans like Clyde and U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, R-Greensboro, are doing all they can to whitewash the Capitol Attack, and to blur any responsibility for former President Donald Trump.
Democrats pointed to photographs from inside the House chamber on Jan. 6 which showed Clyde helping to barricade the doors, as rioters tried to bust their way onto the House floor, where dozens and dozens of lawmakers were sheltering from the violence.
“It has been suggested that this was simply a ‘normal tourist event,’” U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J. said, just a few steps from where Clyde had been on Jan. 6. “No tourism event that I have ever seen looks like that day.”
“This was not, as you now say, a ‘normal tourist visit,’” said U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif. “140 police officers were injured, some severely.”
“I thought the GOP supported the police,” said U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams, D-Atlanta.
Clyde has said his ‘tourist’ comment referred to video showing people walking peacefully between the ropes through the Capitol — but that was also the exact route taken by rioters who tried to knock down the doors to the House chamber that Clyde himself was barricading on Jan. 6.
Much like Republicans embraced the term ‘deplorables’ from Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign, Democrats moved to turn Clyde’s ‘tourist’ comment into a boilerplate attack on the GOP, transposed with pictures of Trump supporters scaling the walls of the Capitol, and clashing with police.
“Very much not what a typical tourist visit looks like,” tweeted Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL).
Clyde — who has been on Capitol Hill wearing what seems to be a leather shoulder holster in recent weeks — did not join the January 6 commission debate on the House floor, leaving U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Rome, to lead the opposition to the commission investigation.
“What’s going to happen with a Jan. 6 commission is the media is going to use this to smear Trump supporters and President Trump for the next few years,” Greene said, as she demanded a probe instead into Black Lives Matter protests and Antifa.
But Democrats weren’t having any of that.
“The world saw what happened on Jan. 6,” said U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss.
And it wasn’t tourism. As Congressman Clyde may hear his words echo back to him for many months to come.
Jamie Dupree has covered national politics and the Congress from Washington, D.C. since the Reagan administration. His column appears weekly in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. For more, check out his Capitol Hill newsletter at http://jamiedupree.substack.com
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