By Andrea Widburg(American Thinker)
If there is one person who became the living emblem of the incursion into the Capitol on January 6, it is the man dubbed the “QAnon Shaman.” Jacob Chansley showed up in several pictures with his face painted red, white, and blue; his body covered with shamanistic tattoos; and his head attired with a fur hat sporting large horns. This horror, the media told America, was the living emblem of the evil, racist Trump supporters who were committing a deadly, armed insurrection against the seat of the American government.
Interestingly, the best evidence that, as is often the case, Democrats’ narrative was a lie came from a video The New Yorker published. It shows that Chansley is an odd bird, but obviously was not acting violently. Instead, he engages very politely with a Capitol Hill police officer:
Because of Chansley’s costume (which he’s worn before – and more on that later), he was easy to identify and the government quickly arrested him. He’s been in solitary confinement ever since, with no bail. This is in stark contrast to the way in which BLM and Antifa protesters were treated last year. Despite their heinous acts of looting, property destruction, and attacks on police officers, they were usually released instantly, whether without bail or with monies from leftist celebrities who paid for their bail. And just yesterday, we learned that the Biden DOJ is dismissing Portland Antifa cases left and right — or just left and left, I guess.
On Thursday, 60 Minutes+ put online an interview with Chansley. Without his rather magnificent costume, he seems very shrunken but, to his credit, he’s not going to accept the reporter’s accusations against him. (And again, just try to imagine Laurie Segall taking that antagonistic tone with someone from BLM or Antifa. The media treated those “peaceful” protesters with something akin to reverence.
Chansley denies completely having engaged in any violent or destructive acts – and there’s no video footage showing anything to the contrary. Meanwhile, Segall lies right from the get-go, referring to “one officer killed.” In fact, there’s no evidence at all that poor Officer Sicknick was “killed.” He died either from a stroke or, possibly, from an allergic reaction. Of course, the FBI’s Christopher Wray refuses to say – despite Sicknick having already been subject to a coroner’s report and then cremated.
Segall also calls her on her lie that he violently broke into the Senate chambers. In fact, he says, a police officer escorted him in. At every turn, Segall lies and Chansley corrects her. He may be loopy, but she’s a leftist shill pushing a dishonest narrative. Thus, in another example of dishonesty, she says a “mob broke through Capitol doors,” but footage she doesn’t show reveals that the police opened the doors from inside and invited people in.
What the media doesn’t report is that Chansley may be a patriot and non-violent (and good for him on both those scores) but he hasn’t always been a friend to Trump. Instead, less than two years ago, Chansley was an ardent Climate Change activist who opposed Trump. For copyright reasons, I can’t reproduce the photos here, but you can see him in the first picture from the report about a September 2019 march on the Arizona State Capitol to protest Trump’s policies. The sample caption says:
Jake Angeli [aka Chansley], shamanic practitioner, leads the crowd in a yell before the march in solidarity with climate activism groups across the country to the Arizona State Capitol Building Friday, September 20, 2019.
He shows up in another photo saying that he is in the march “to demand action on climate change.” And in another photo, in which he’s in a bull costume and identified as Jake Chansley, he’s holding this sign:
At some point, Chansley lost interest in climate change and found QAnon.
Chansley is a character; indeed, he’s a lost soul. As he moves from one issue to another, his motives are always because he’s always searching, never finding.
But as between a 60 Minutes talking head and Jake Angeli Chansley, the latter is more honest. He’s defending himself and she’s spouting the leftist party line as if it’s the truth. Incidentally, I cannot find any evidence of Segall speaking out against BLM, Antifa, or the shrieking hysterics who invaded the Senate during the Kavanaugh hearings.
