Today is the fifth anniversary of the attempted violent insurrection at the United States Capitol. We all watched it play out on live television, as a riotous mob attacked police officers who were doing their duty defending the building and the members of Congress inside it. We saw it all with our own eyes, both on that sad day and afterwards, as more video footage was released. It is obvious what the video footage shows. All you have to do is watch it to understand exactly what happened that day.

Donald Trump, however, has an alternate version of history. And now that he's president again, his delusional fantasy has become the official U.S. history of the event. The White House today posted a new webpage detailing Trump's version of the day, which bears little resemblance to the truth of what happened (which, once again, we all saw with our own eyes).

The word "Orwellian" gets tossed around in political analysis, sometimes with justification and sometimes without. But it's hard to call such a rewrite of history anything but Orwellian. Trump is attempting to toss the reality down the "memory hole" of George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. His version of the "Ministry of Truth" has already been running rampant over many historical truths in American history, dictating to museums and the National Park Service what can and cannot be said about our shared history. The evils of slavery, for instance, are being tossed down the memory hole as well. And that's just one prominent example.

I am not going to dig through the new webpage and show how the truth has been twisted or just outright ignored, because it would take a long time to do so and doing so would be following Trump down his delusional memory/rabbit hole. The New York Times points out just a few of the worst lies the website contains:

The site blames Capitol Police officers, who defended lawmakers that day, for starting the assault; Democrats, who were the rioters' main targets, for failing to prevent it; and former Vice President Mike Pence, who rejected falsehoods about the 2020 election, for allowing the results to be certified.

Mr. Trump has long sought to whitewash the violence and vandalism committed on Jan. 6, 2021, and reject responsibility for having instigated it. But the webpage, promoted on government social media accounts, put the official imprimatur of the White House on an astonishingly misleading account of the Capitol attack.

. . .

The webpage includes a timeline of events on Jan. 6 that accuses the Capitol Police, who were attacked by the rioters for hours, of instigating the violence, and blames Mr. Pence for refusing to subvert the will of the voters to keep Mr. Trump in power.

. . .

In a breathtaking reversal of reality, the site accuses Democrats of creating a "gaslighting narrative" about Jan. 6 in their efforts to certify "a fraud-ridden election" and to "persecute innocent Americans," though those who were prosecuted for storming the Capitol were caught on video taken either by surveillance cameras or by other participants.

Instead, it is the White House account that twists the facts of the riot.

. . .

The webpage also contains blatant falsehoods about the Justice Department's efforts to hold the rioters accountable. In a section the timeline titled, "Mass Arrests of Patriotic Protesters," it says that the "Biden DOJ" began "a coordinated nationwide dragnet" leading to the arrest of more than 1,500 rioters.

In fact, the arrests began well before Mr. Trump left office on Jan. 20, 2021, and the investigation was carried out for weeks by Justice Department leaders that he had put in place.

That's just a smattering of the lies the White House is now officially promoting. There are plenty of others. But, once again -- we all saw what we all saw. No attempt to nakedly rewrite the history of that day can erase the memories we all have of watching it unfold on live television. A violent mob attacked and occupied the U.S. Capitol. They were crying "Hang Mike Pence!" and threatening lawmakers from both parties with violence or death. They interrupted the solemn duty of certifying the results of a free and fair presidential election, in an attempt to leave the loser of that election in power. It was an attack not just on the Capitol, but on the American form of democratic government. It was an attack on us all.

Of course, the new White House document pins all the blame on "anybody not named Donald Trump," since the Dear Leader can never do anything wrong (perish the thought!). Instead, the finger is pointed at the people who were in actual danger that day as somehow having been behind it all. One Democrat in particular is pushing back on this fantasy:

The new White House website also repeats a claim made often by Trump and his allies -- that Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic House speaker at the time of the attack, is to blame for "security lapses" at the Capitol. Pelosi has vehemently rejected those accusations, saying again Tuesday that Trump resisted appeals to intervene in the attack for more than three hours.

"For over three hours we begged [Trump] to send the National Guard! He never did it. He took joy in not doing it. He was savoring it.... What he's saying today is an insult to the American people," Pelosi said at a Tuesday House event, noting that Trump had again repeated his claim.

Pelosi spokesman Ian Krager slammed the new website as an attempt to rewrite history.

"Cherry-picked, out-of-context clips do not change the fact that the Speaker of the House is not in charge of the security of the Capitol Complex -- on January 6th or any other day of the week," Krager said in a statement. "The ongoing attempts to whitewash the deadly insurrection are shameful, unpatriotic, and pathetic."

Recently, in the midst of the new year celebrations, the transcript of Jack Smith testifying to a House committee were made public. The Republicans on the committee tried their hardest to force Smith to somehow admit that the prosecutions of Donald Trump were all somehow politically motivated and not based on any reality. Smith defended himself by telling the truth. Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury on four criminal counts over his involvement with January 6th, and the case would have gone to trial if Trump hadn't been re-elected president. From the transcript, here's what Smith had to say about Trump's involvement:

Former special counsel Jack Smith, who led the federal prosecution of Trump, has denied that the case was politically motivated. Smith dropped the case after Trump was reelected in 2024, citing federal regulations that prohibit prosecutions against sitting presidents.

"The evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy," Smith testified to lawmakers last month, according to a transcript released by the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee. "These crimes were committed for his benefit. The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without him."

Trump can try to shove the events of January 6th -- the real events, not the fantasy that he believes -- down the memory hole all he wants. He could even give rise to a new "Lost Cause" myth, as Southerners did after they lost the Civil War. Children's history books in red states might have Trump's version in them. But in the end this effort will fail. Because we all saw what we all saw, and there are hundreds (if not thousands) of hours of video footage showing exactly what happened, in brutal detail.

The way to counter such a blatant attempt to rewrite history is for everyone to say: "But that's not what happened." Fact is fact and fantasy is fantasy, and never the twain shall meet. Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. He then threw the biggest sore-loser hissy fit in American history. This culminated with an attack on the seat of the American government by an angry and violent mob. Over 1,500 of them were later prosecuted for their crimes -- and then Donald Trump pardoned these cop-beaters en masse.

The truth is the truth -- not what Donald Trump's "Ministry of Truth" says it is. You know... the truth that we all saw with our own eyes. No attempt to whitewash that will ever work, as long as the event is still in the living memory of most Americans.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant