Dan Patrick Runs Risk of Trump Mob Revenge
with Silence Shattering Insurrection Admission

Mike Hailey
Capitol Inside
January 10, 2021

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick put his personal security at risk on Sunday when he acknowledged that President Donald Trump supporters had been responsible for the deadly attack on the Capitol in Washington D.C. last week.

With the Legislature set to convene in regular session just two days from now, Patrick sent shock waves through GOP circles in Texas and beyond with the candid admission on the attempted coup in his role as Trump's campaign manager and chief mouthpiece in the Lone Star State during the past five years.

Patrick had remained mum on the Trump election challenge since a publicity stunt that backfired dramatically with a voter fraud bounty fund that he created exactly two months ago a week after Democratic President-elect Joe Biden's victory in November.

Capitol Inside has written in recent days about the possibility that Patrick had been attempting to distance himself from the president by holding his tongue so long in highly uncharacteristic fashion. Governor Greg Abbott hasn't said anything publicly since the days after the election when he endorsed the president's bid to contest the election based on claims of electoral thievery that Trump's own lawyers have effectively proved to be a fantasy.

But Patrick has given the governor and fellow Republican lawmakers substantial cover to join the faction that hopes to take the GOP back from a president who's hijacked the party and reshaped the grassroots base into a QAnon chapter with militant right-wingers as the new sergeants at arms.

"There are no excuses for those who stormed the Capitol on Wednesday." Patrick said today in an email to supporters. "Five people died. And, sadly, it appears that most of the protesters inside the Capitol were Trump supporters. Antifa wears face coverings obscuring their identity."

Some of Patrick's closest conservative allies in Texas like U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and state Attorney General Ken Paxton may stained themselves permanently with the major supporting roles they had in the Trump insurrection.

Cruz has appeared to be trying to weather the storm by falsely portraying himself as a frequent Trump critic after four years as his most outspoken defender and apologist. Paxton tried and failed to blame the Capitol assault on Antifa before the FBI announced this weekend that there wasn't any evidence to tie liberal anti-fascists to the riot that Trump will be accused of inciting in articles of impeachment that are being filed in the U.S. House. State Senator Angela Paxton - a McKinney Republican who's married to the AG - could be tarred politically beyond repair as a result of photos that show her standing stoically by her husband's side while he was firing the Trump mob up shortly before the attack that killed at least five people including a police officer.

While Patrick didn't offer to accept any responsibility himself for partying Trump lies for years, the apparent break with the president marks a dramatic pirouette for the Texas Senate president who might have put himself in danger as a direct and immediate consequence of the belated honesty.

Patrick might have given Trump and the violent supporters added ammunition for potential revenge with a pitch for unity at a time when the president has been doing everything in his power to keep the nation as bitterly divided as possible before he's forced out of office when Democratic President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in 10 days from now.

“Most importantly, we must end the caustic hateful rhetoric toward each other that proliferates on social media, electronic, print media, and in our streets.”

"If we cannot respect others political views and are bent are destroying everyone who supports a candidate we don't agree with or who runs for or holds public office, our nation is doomed.