During an appearance on CNN, Sgt. Aquilino Gonell of the U.S. Capitol Police responded to mockery from Fox News host Laura Ingraham of testimony that he and other officers recently delivered to the House committee investigating the Capitol riot. Ingraham mocked the officers for being emotional, although they — quite literally — came seemingly close to death as Trump supporters rampaged through the Capitol building on January 6. As Gonell put it, describing one point amid the violence: “I could feel myself losing oxygen and recall thinking to myself, ‘This is how I’m going to die, trampled defending this entrance.'” How little basic human decency must Ingraham have to mock Gonell and the other officers for responding as they have to almost dying?
Gonell called Ingraham’s rhetoric “trash,” and the officer pointedly added that what the Fox host said was “not worthy of saying if you were somebody serious.” Ingraham, though, is not “somebody serious” — instead, she operates according to similar principles as fellow Fox host Tucker Carlson, promoting whatever self-serving nonsense happens to suit her purposes at any given moment. Ingraham went so far that, on her show, she gave out mock awards in response to the officers’ testimony, characterizing what unfolded as a “performance.” These officers put their lives on the line — literally, it turns out — to defend the Capitol and the people inside it, and this pathetic, disgraceful nonsense is what Ingraham comes up with.
As Gonell put it, discussing Ingraham’s comments:
‘I don’t watch her trash. Because that’s what it is — a commentator, a trash somebody who, in my opinion, wasn’t there. So, unless you were there in that crowd, being attacked by the rioters, by the insurrectionists, the terrorists — you will not know, and you will never know; you never served this country. My devotion for the country is bigger than the vitriol that she’s puking out, because that’s not news. That’s not worthy of saying if you were somebody serious. But that person never served, who will never serve the country, who will never raise her hand like I did so many times. And yes, I got emotional, but I got emotional because it hurt me that my patriotism is bigger than people who were born in this country.’
Check out Gonell’s remarks while on CNN below:
