In the middle of the siege of the Capitol on Jan. 6, while a mob of insurrectionists still roamed the halls and ransacked offices, leaving five dead and dozens injured, Madison Cawthorn called a friendly conservative radio host and blamed the violence on left-wing agitators sent by “the Democratic machine” to make President Trump look bad.

“I believe that this was agitators strategically placed inside of this group — you can call them antifa, you can call them people paid by the Democratic machine — but to make the Trump campaign, the Trump movement, look bad. And to make this look like it was a violent outrage, when really the battle was being fought by people like myself and other great patriots who are standing up against the establishment and standing up against this tyranny that we see in our country.”

Cawthorn to The Charlie Kirk Show, Jan. 6

Only hours earlier, as the only member of Congress to speak at the Jan. 6 “March to Save America” protest in Washington, D.C., Cawthorn shouted, “Wow, this crowd has some fight in it!” He called the protesters “lions,” and repeatedly called his Congressional colleagues “cowards” who were hiding in their offices.