Sen. Johnson downplays talk about Capitol threat

The U.S. Capitol is partly shut down for Thursday, because of threats in social media to launch another citizen attack on the building, like the one on January 6th. 

Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson tells WIZM’S ‘La Crosse Talk’ there’s always concern about threats in Washington, but he hopes that nothing will come of this latest conspiracy talk.

“The vast majority of these threats are some crackpot just using social media to make wild threats that really nothing ever comes of them,” said Johnson. “Keep your fingers crossed that that’s the case here as well.”    

The new threat involves a supposed attack on the Capitol on March 4th, which was the original date set aside for inaugurating a U.S. president, through 1933.  Messages suggest that such an attack would be aimed at restoring former President Donald Trump to power.    

Johnson says although the January riot at the Capitol in Washington was a very bad experience, he thinks some people make it sound worse than it was.  The senator says it appears only a small number of the protesters had firearms.

“There’s all the narrative that this was thousands of armed insurrectionists intent on overthrowing the government. I just don’t think that’s really an accurate description of what happened,” said Johnson. He criticizes Democrats for promoting a “narrative” portraying supporters of former President Trump as terrorists.