Families of the victims of those killed during the New York City terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, are calling out those who compared the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot to the deadliest attack on American soil.
Retired New York Deputy Fire Chief Jim Riches told Fox News that he was outraged when Democrats, their media supporters, and certain former Republicans claimed the Capitol riot was actually worse than 9/11.
“It’s a shame,” Riches told the outlet. “Are they kidding me? 3,000 people died, plus we have more people dying from the air that was down there … They’re comparing it to score points politically. The families are really [angry]. When I talk to them, when they compare it to that, they find that outrageous.”
Other family members of those who died 20 years ago also spoke to Fox about the ludicrous comparison, including Debra Burlingame, whose brother was piloting American Airlines Flight 77 when he was killed by terrorists who hijacked the plane and crashed it into the Pentagon.
“It’s unfortunate because we’re coming up in the 20th anniversary,” Burlingame said. “There are a lot of young people who have no living memory of 9/11 … When you have all these comparisons and analogies, which are inflated and ridiculous, it minimizes what actually happened, and that’s what’s happening here. It’s a deliberate ploy.”
Burlingame also wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed about the ridiculous comparisons, writing that “It is deeply offensive and sad that the brutal and harrowing memories of the worst terrorist attack in American history are being deployed by political partisans.”
Joe Connor, who lost his cousin Steven Schlag during in the World Trade Center, said those who would compare 9/11 to the Capitol riot “dehumanize our families for political gain.”
“I guess they call it gaslighting. They can say these things that will make people believe that these riots were worse than the worst thing that happened on American soil. Either they’re ignorant or they’re just really devious and clever, and you can put nothing past them, because if you’re willing to lie to that degree … It’s a disturbing trend to me,” he told Fox.
Connor was in Manhattan when the towers fell.
“I saw people jumping out. I saw the sides of the buildings explode. I saw papers floating in the wind, and I tried to call my cousin,” he said. “No one picked up … The terror, the carnage, the horror of 9/11, 20 years ago. They’ve forgotten or they think the rest of us have forgotten.”
Numerous Democrats and other Leftists have compared the Capitol riot to the 9/11 attacks, even though the terrorist attacks killed more than 3,000 Americans. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called for a “9/11-type Commission” to investigate what happened on January 6, during which supporters of then-President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol building in an attempt to stop the 2020 election from being certified. One protester, Ashli Babbitt, was killed by police during the riot. Matthew Dowd, a former President George W. Bush strategist who now acts as a left-wing pundit on MSNBC, said the Capitol riot was “worse than 9/11.”
“To me, though there was less loss of life on Jan. 6 – Jan. 6 was worse than 9/11 because it’s continued to rip our country apart and give permission for people to pursue autocratic means,” Dowd said on MSNBC.
At the Huffington Post, White House correspondent S.V. Dáte said what happened on January 6 was “1000 percent worse” than 9/11 because the Osama bin Laden-backed terrorists “never threatened the heart of the American experiment.”
“The 1/6 terrorists and Donald Trump absolutely did exactly that. Trump continues that effort today,” Dáte tweeted in May.
Former Republican, current Democratic strategist Steve Schmidt, co-founder of the disgraced Lincoln Project, went even further than others, saying the Capitol riot was “a profoundly more dangerous event than the 9/11 attacks.”
“And in the end, the 1/6 attacks are likely to kill a lot more Americans than were killed in the 9/11 attacks, which will include the casualties of the wars that lasted 20 years following it,” Schmidt added while speaking at a town hall.
This is an impossible prediction on its face. More than 3,000 Americans died during the 9/11 terrorist attacks, about 4,500 U.S. military members died during the war in Iraq, and another 2,400 troops died in Afghanistan. That means the Capitol riots would have to result in nearly 10,000 American deaths to prove Schmidt correct.
So far, only one person – one of the protesters – has died. It’s been six months since the riot.