Earlier this week, a routine Rules Committee meeting turned into a viral back-and-forth over how members talk about the January 6 insurrection. Chairman of the Committee on Rules Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, pleaded for members to stick to the topic at hand as partisan fights started brewing and detracting from members’ work. “I wish we weren’t going down this road right now,” McGovern said. “We’re now prone to too many generalizations here that paint people here with a broad brush that is inaccurate. And I think if we want to get back to a time where we can actually find common ground, we all got to kind of cool it a little bit.” But things reached a fever pitch when Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who serves on the select committee investigating the riot, utilized part of his time to rail on GOP Rep. Andrew Clyde and pin him down on whether he still stands by his previous comments of calling scenes of the January 6 “a normal tourist visit.” Many members called for order, but Raskin pushed to get Clyde to admit that he did not regret his previous statement characterizing January 6 as “a normal tourist visit” even though Clyde refused to concede that by extension he was calling the rioters from that day tourists.
