Republican lawmakers rarely speak of Jan. 6, few have condemned it, and some, such as Sen. Ron Johnson, have actually questioned whether the mob was made up of Trump supporters. And of course, the nearly two-thirds of the House GOP conference that voted to decertify the election outcome, just hours after the attack, aren’t pushing for a commission. Twelve GOP lawmakers voted against a resolution to bestow the Congressional Gold Medal on the U.S. Capitol Police and the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department because the word “insurrectionists” was in the resolution.

Meanwhile, Trump is busy gaslighting conservative media audiences and his supporters about the assault. Last month he acknowledged that hundreds have been charged and said “some things should happen to them,” but blatantly lied about the events on Laura Ingraham’s show on Fox News Channel…

All of that vigorous scrubbing is working well with his supporters, and has helped GOP officeholders desperate for his help in 2022 whitewash Jan. 6 as another protest gone awry. A new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows roughly half of Republican voters see the insurrection as nonviolent or a foil by left-wing extremists to “make Trump look bad.” The same survey shows six of 10 GOP voters believe Trump’s lies about a stolen election, and that fewer than a third of them believe Trump was at all responsible for inciting the riot.