Majority in new poll say Jan. 6 was attack on democracy that should never be forgotten

A majority of Americans say the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot was an “attack on democracy that should never be forgotten,” according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll released this week.

In the poll, 55 percent of respondents said the Capitol riot was an “attack on democracy that should never be forgotten,” but 43 percent said “too much is being made” of the riot and that it is “time to move on.”

Thirty-seven percent of respondents said former President Trump bears “a great deal” of responsibility for the Capitol riot, and 16 percent said he bears a “good amount” of responsibility for it.

Trump’s actions on the day of the riot nearly three years ago are center stage in the race for the White House.

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) last week decided to remove Trump from the ballot in her state, citing the 14th Amendment.

Bellows said she had concluded the former president “over the course of several months and culminating on January 6, 2021, used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters and direct them to the Capitol to prevent certification of the 2020 election and the peaceful transfer of power.”

Bellows’s decision made Maine the second state to take such an action, after the Colorado Supreme Court in a 4-3 ruling decided Trump should be removed from that state’s ballot under the 14th Amendment.

Trump is expected to appeal that decision, and the U.S. Supreme Court is likely to be confronted with the issue.

“Mr. Trump’s occasional requests that rioters be peaceful and support law enforcement do not immunize his actions,” Bellows said explaining her decision. “A brief call to obey the law does not erase conduct over the course of months, culminating in his speech on the Ellipse. The weight of the evidence makes clear that Mr. Trump was aware of the tinder laid by his multi-month effort to delegitimize a democratic election, and then chose to light a match.”

Trump’s campaign has denounced the decision and called Bellows a “virulent leftist and a hyper-partisan Biden-supporting Democrat.”

“We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter,” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said. “Make no mistake, these partisan election interference efforts are a hostile assault on American democracy.”

The poll was conducted Dec. 14-18 and included 1,024 respondents. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.