Republicans Pledge Allegiance to Flag Carried on Jan. 6 at Rally Trump Called In To

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The insurrection was good, actually.

This was the message sent last night at a high-profile rally for Virginia gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin, where attendees stood up and said the Pledge of Allegiance to a flag that was carried during what was described as “the peaceful rally with Donald J. Trump on January 6th.”

When grilled about the incident on Thursday, Youngkin manage to stammer that “we shouldn’t pledge allegiance to that flag.” In a statement provided to Rolling Stone later on Thursday, Youngkin said it is “weird and wrong to pledge allegiance to a flag connected to January 6.”

Youngkin was not present at the “Take Back Virginia” rally on Wednesday night, but it was headlined by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who cited the close race between Youngkin and his Democratic opponent, Terry McAufflife, to argue that the state’s 2020 election results were illegitimate. “He didn’t win by 10 points, OK?” Bannon said of Biden. “No doubt about that.”

The rally also featured Trump himself, who called into the rally to freshen up his endorsement of Youngkin. “Glenn Youngkin is a great gentleman,” the former president said. “Really successful, he loves this state, we gotta get him in.”

Trump continued to allege, once again, that the 2020 election was rigged against him. “We won in 2016,” he said. “We won in 2020, the most corrupt election in the history of our country, probably one of the most corrupt anywhere. But we’re gonna win it again.”

The idea that the election was stolen was the theme of the night — from pledging allegiance to a flag Trump supporters carried at the “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6th, to the comments from Bannon and Trump, to the presence of Mark Finchem, who is currently running for secretary of State of Arizona on the strength his role in the state’s election audit, which cost millions of dollars before turning up no evidence of significant fraud.

From Arizona, to Virginia, to Michigan, where Trump is trying to purge lawmakers who have acknowledged Biden won the election, it’s been made abundantly clear that the guiding tenet of the Trump-led Republican Party heading into 2022 is that democracy is bad, and that it must be subverted by any means necessary in service of the former president returning to power. They can’t say this out loud, so they instead continue to push the baseless idea that the 2020 election was fraudulent.

“Donald Trump won,” Finchem said in Virginia on Wednesday, reportedly to a standing ovation.

This post has been updated.