January 6 isn’t real if Tommy Tuberville didn’t see it

This is an opinion column.

Tommy Tuberville said this week that he does not believe that January 6 protesters attacked police officers because he did not see it.

Perhaps you — as I — wonder how that could be.

Hasn’t everyone seen it?

Yet, among a scrum of journalists, an ABC news reporter asked Tuberville about Trump’s pardons for people who beat police officers. Tuberville downplayed the protestors’ actions, particularly the idea that there was violence against cops.

“We’re talking about people that were beating officers with fire hydrants, with metal batons,” the reporter replied. “Is that acceptable to you?”

Tuberville said beating police officers with pipes is not acceptable but …

“But I didn’t see it,” he said. And then he gave an actual shrug.

Not quite believing what was coming from Tuberville’s mouth, another reporter asked him, what did he mean, he didn’t see it?

“I didn’t see it,” he repeated. “I didn’t see it. You’ll have to show me. I didn’t see that.”

Another reporter in the scrum asked whether he believed it happened. There’s video, after all.

“I didn’t believe it because I didn’t see it,” he said again. “Now, if I see it, I would believe it, but I didn’t see any of that video.”

Let’s imagine for a moment there was a large group of people outside the building you’re in right now, banging on the door, busting out windows, waving weapons in the air and threatening the public execution of people in the room with you. If you had access to it, wouldn’t you watch a live stream of what was going on to see what they were up to?

Apparently, Tommy Tuberville lacked the curiosity that day.

Or imagine, that those scenes were broadcast for days and weeks on TV. Pictures of it ran in newspapers and in magazines.

And if that weren’t enough, what if a major national political candidate then used video of those events to run incessant campaign ads from roughly the end of September through the beginning of November 2024?

He didn’t see any of that?

Let’s not forget some of those very police officers appeared before Congress to tell folks like Tuberville what they saw that day.

It must have been a bye week for Coach.

Tuberville has struggled with memory issues before, and maybe we should take that into consideration.

For instance, Tuberville has forgotten his broken promise while coaching Ole Miss that he would have to leave in a pine box. That might sound trivial compared to, say, the events of January 6, except that he was under oath at the time, being deposed in a fraud lawsuit against his company.

However, Tuberville did recall the comment later, when he recounted it on a sports talk radio show. So maybe his memory comes and goes.

Tuberville has also struggled with facts and historical events. He once revealed in an interview that he didn’t know what the three branches of government were, and he has said his dad fought against communism during World War II.

(If you’re studying for your citizenship test, the Judiciary is the third branch of government, and although a frosty ally, the Soviet Union fought with the United States, not against it.)

Should we be worried for Tuberville? Perhaps.

But we’d better be worried for ourselves and our country. Because there’s something going on here and it has everything do with memory — our collective memory.

Tuberville isn’t the only politician to crowd the foxhole of willful ignorance when reporters asked about January 6.

This week, Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tennesee, went on CNN for reasons that quickly became unclear. When Jim Acosta asked him the same sort of questions Tuberville got, Burchett gave similar perplexing answers.

“If they were truly violent, no. But do I know that they were? I don’t know that,” he said of January 6 defendants who received pardons.

Acosta responded with the same incredulity as Tubberville’s press gaggle, only with the help of video. CNN showed the familiar images of cops getting pummelled. It played right next to Burchett’s head.

“What do you mean you don’t know?” Acosta asked. “We’re showing the footage on the air right now. You were there that day!”

The president’s allies are trying to overwrite his most embarrassing hours with stubbornness, stupidity and lies.

At the outset of the first Trump administration, the president’s press aide told us his inaugural crowd had been larger than Obama’s when simple side-by-side comparisons showed otherwise.

At the outset of the second Trump administration, we’re being told the first term didn’t end as we all saw it end.

The first began with a stupid lie about crowd size. The second begins with a Big Lie about another crowd.

We’re being told to forget. We’re being told what we saw on TV never happened.

When officials such as Tommy Tuberville argue that police weren’t viciously attacked on January 6, they aren’t trying to persuade us. They are trying to put us in our place. They are telling us the truth doesn’t matter anymore and we should just accept that.

Nice try, Waterboy, but no thank you.

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