Five months after the January 6 Insurrection, there is finally an agreement between the House and Senate to award Congressional Gold Medals to the police officers who protected the Capitol from a violent mob. But yet again, political considerations kept it from being a unanimous vote.
Twenty-one Republican members of the House voted “No” to the legislation on Tuesday. The final vote in the House was 406-21. In fact, the number of GOP lawmakers who were against honoring the officers actually increased since the previous vote.
Back in March, the bill passed the House by a 413-12 vote. The only Republican who voted no the last time who changed his vote to a yes was Rep. Lance Gooden of Texas. The list of Republicans who voted against the bill includes some of the lawmakers who have worked overtime to downplay the events of Jan. 6. They include Georgia lawmakers Marjorie Taylor Greene and Andrew Clyde, Florida’s Matt Gaetz and Texas Representative Louie Gohmert.
Gohmert has spent time on the House floor doing embarrassing show-and-tell presentations trying to defend some of the people who stormed the Capitol and injured dozens of Capitol police officers and other law enforcement officials.
Clyde is the congressman who compared the violent siege on Jan. 6 to a “normal tourist visit,” even though he was was one of the lawmakers helping Capitol police barricade the House chamber. That’s him below circled in the photo shared by CNN’s Brianna Keilar.
Gosar, one of the most notorious proponents of trying to alter the history of that day’s events, has tried to make a martyr of Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by a Capitol Police Officer after she breached doors that led to the Speaker’s Lobby.
Marjorie Taylor Greene told reporters as she left the Capitol that she voted against the bill because she disagreed with the language in the legislation. Specifically, she said it should not refer to the events of January 6 as an insurrection. She also said she did not like that it referred to the Capitol as the temple of U.S. democracy.
“This is not a temple. That is for sure.”
Republican congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky also said he voted no due to the language of the bill, calling it partisan and saying it could have an impact on the legal cases of people who have been arrested for taking part in the riot.
Per CNN, the revised bills will now award three medals — one to the entire US Capitol Police force, and one to the Metropolitan Police Department, “so that the sacrifices of fallen officers and their families, and the contributions of other law enforcement agencies who answered the call of duty on January 6, 2021, can be recognized and honored in a timely manner.”
A third will be put on display at the Smithsonian.
