Do the Proud Boys want to go to prison?
For those who have been following the seemingly endless D.C. trial for five leaders accused of crimes related to the insurrection of January 6, it's starting to become a serious question. To start, the defense attorneys have been pulling stunts and filing nuisance motions, likely annoying the jury by drawing out a trial that was initially supposed to last a few weeks into a months-long affair. But most bizarrely, the defense keeps undermining its own strategy.
Despite the circus atmosphere that has prevailed since the court procedures began late last year, the legal team for the Proud Boys seemingly has a simple defense: The right-wing group never intended to be the vanguard of Donald Trump's insurrection but were just innocent protesters who got caught up in the moment. It's always been a tough case to make. As with the members of a similar neo-fascist gang that was convicted on similar charges, the Oath Keepers, there's a pile of text messages and video evidence demonstrating how intentional the attack was. This may be why the defense team decided to let Proud Boys defend themselves from the stand, hoping they could "humanize" them to the jury.
Time will tell, of course, but so far, this feels like a risky bet.
Defense witnesses have been cantankerous and revealed themselves to be dishonest. They have done a poor job of showing remorse, and instead have often doubled down on the conspiratorial thinking that got them into trouble in the first place. That it's even gotten this far is part of a more disturbing phenomenon that's characterized the past couple of years after the insurrection: The outsized egos that characterize MAGA America will not allow Trump supporters to admit they were wrong. Not even when the costs of refusing to back down are spiraling. In some cases, the massive losses are financial. In others, as with the Proud Boys, they are literally facing the loss of freedom.
On Thursday, Proud Boy defendant Dominic Pezzola had what the New York Times described as an "outburst." Initially, Pezzola's plan seemed to be to present a face of remorse to the jury, claiming he wants "to take responsibility for my actions on Jan. 6." But this sad boy act seems to have fallen apart pretty quickly under cross-examination by the prosecutor. Pezzola started raving about "this corrupt trial with your fake charges." He also ranted about the pandemic restrictions on the stand, complaining about "unconstitutional lockdowns" from "a tyrannical government," a stance that's even harder to sell in an era when those restrictions are long over.
If they were trying to be martyrs, they'd own their behavior openly, instead of playing weaselly word games on the stand.
This was after Wednesday's testimony, when Pezzola revealed that he's still deeply buried in the world of conspiracy theories, by repeating claims that have circulated in insurrectionist circles falsely accusing one of the rioters of working for the FBI. Pezzola further undermined his credibility on Thursday by saying he had lied to investigators earlier when he said at least one fellow Proud Boy had been armed with a gun. Was he lying then or now? Hard to say, but either way, he's reminding jurors he's not trustworthy.
While less incendiary, similar testimony from defendant Zachary Rehl makes it look like putting him on the stand may not have been the best idea. While he claims to "truly apologize" for the events that day, his claims that he meant no harm are hard to swallow and undermine his credibility. After he presented what the prosecutor derided as a "choirboy image," the Justice Department lawyers reminded jurors of how Proud Boys actually behaved on January 6, showing videos of them pepper-spraying cops and punching a woman to the ground. In response, Rehl got defensive. "That's a hard thing to try to defend to the public," he admitted before claiming to not remember if it was him on the video pepper-spraying police.
One does start to wonder why these fools went to trial instead of trying to plead down, especially after the Oath Keepers made the same play and ended up being sent to prison. If they were trying to be martyrs, they'd own their behavior openly, instead of playing weaselly word games on the stand. No, it appears the Proud Boys, like the Oath Keepers before them, went this route for a simple reason: Their egos will not let them admit that it was a stupid thing, following Trump to the point of rioting at the Capitol. They'd rather risk hefty prison sentences than say out loud that the liberals were right all along.
This MAGA bullheadedness is, alas, not limited to the realm of those who are so far gone they joined the insurrection.
Most Republican voters, at this point, would rather lose the 2024 election than concede liberals were right about Trump in the first place.
It's why Fox News agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems $787.5 million in their recent defamation settlement. It's a number that is nearly 10 times what Dominion was valued at in 2018, which means that it's likely larger than what Dominion could have gotten at trial, despite overwhelming evidence that Fox knowingly spread lies accusing Dominion of stealing the 2020 election for President Joe Biden. By paying that eye-poppingly huge number, it's likely Fox avoided having to apologize, much less admit out loud that the Big Lie was a lie. That's what it's worth to the company to avoid the dreaded "liberals were right" statement: Over three-quarters of a billion dollars. But it's probably less about the egos at Fox than it is about the snowflake-fragile egos of their audience. If Fox apologized, that would be tantamount to telling their viewers that it was wrong and foolish to profess the Big Lie or to let a monster like Trump lead them down this path. Fox viewers can never, ever accept that liberals were right about Trump. So their favorite network will write out as many massive checks as it takes to avoid saying out loud that, in retrospect, maybe that whole MAGA thing was a bad idea.
In her most recent Contrapoints video, YouTuber Natalie Wynn talks about what she calls the "bigotry whirlpool," which helps explain why radicalized people tend to dig in deeper, even as the personal costs of doing so mount higher.
"Reformed bigots have to face not only the shame of being dupes, but also the guilt of having devoted years of life to harming vulnerable people," she explains. She points to people who have lost marriages, been fired, or otherwise paid enormous personal costs, all because they couldn't, for instance, stop ranting about how they hate trans people on social media. The higher the costs become, the more they dig into their hateful beliefs, because otherwise they have to admit they gave it all up for nothing. The bigotry whirlpool effect is in play with MAGA. They're just so wrong that they can never admit it without terrible shame, and so the costs they'll pay to avoid that are unbelievably high.
This is why Trump will be the GOP nominee in 2024. If Republican primary voters could humble themselves and think strategically, they would realize he's very likely to lose again in a rematch with Biden. But saying that would be tantamount to admitting that it was probably a bad idea to back a grifting, sociopathic reality TV host in the first place. Most Republican voters, at this point, would rather lose the 2024 election than concede liberals were right about Trump in the first place. And they will soothe their hurt egos with more lies if that happens, by saying that Biden "stole" it again. Anything but dial down their egos by entertaining the possibility that they were wrong.
