David Graham, The Atlantic: “One of my favorite things about covering political rallies is that they typically start with a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. For anyone above school age, occasions to recite the pledge with a large group of people are irregular, and the ritual serves as a good reminder of what politics is about at its best, no matter how divisive what follows might be. The pledge at a rally for the Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin in Virginia on Wednesday was different. At the beginning of the event, which Steve Bannon hosted and Donald Trump phoned into, an emcee called an attendee up onstage and announced, ‘She’s carrying an American flag that was carried at the peaceful rally with Donald J. Trump on January 6.'”

“Attendees then said the pledge while facing the flag. (Youngkin didn’t attend, and later tepidly criticized the moment.) In the immediate aftermath of the failed January 6 insurrection, Trump flailed in his efforts to interpret the day’s events. He praised the participants even as the riot was ongoing, saying, ‘Go home; we love you.’ He insisted (despite ample video footage) that what had happened was a peaceful protest – some demonstrators were pacific, while many others were not – though he has also falsely claimed that antifa and Black Lives Matter had instigated a riot. He praised the protesters for courageously fighting back against what he insists, again falsely, was a stolen election, but also criticized police for using excessive force. Out of this murk, a unified mythology has begun to form. Trump hasn’t so much resolved the contradictions as transcended them. To him and his movement, January 6 was a righteous attempt by brave patriots to take back an election stolen from them. The day’s events produced a martyr – Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer as she tried to enter the Speaker’s Lobby of the House. The rioters who remain imprisoned, meanwhile, are ‘political prisoners.’ Now objects carried that day have become sacred too.”